Attribution reports are a key factor in determining marketing success. In fact, we’d go as far as saying they’re probably one of the most important factors to consider.
In other words:
If you’re not running attribution reports, you’ll consequently lack data and, therefore, be further away from success.
Attribution reports are used to measure your marketing campaign’s impacts on online and offline conversions. It’s easy to see why they’re of such significant importance.
To convert customers, marketers need to understand which channels generate the most leads.
A successful marketing strategy depends on predicting what will happen when spending on these channels increases or decreases.
With multiple engagement points and customers’ journeys becoming increasingly complex, it becomes much more difficult for marketers to have visibility into their customers.
In this blog post, we’re going to explore what you can learn from attribution reports and why they’re so pivotal for online sales insights.
Attribution Reports and Their Relationship With Marketing Campaigns
With the use of pre-built models, marketing attribution reports collect the relevant interactions along the buyer’s journey, allowing you to pinpoint which channels and content are contributing to your marketing objectives.
In multi-touch attribution, all of the interactions have been assessed and apportioned value.
With the help of attribution reports, you see all the information about a campaign in one place. As a result, you learn a lot. For instance, you’ll be able to:
- Analyze network performance by looking at Click-Through rates (CTR);
- Observe retention rates to help inform re-engagement strategies;
- Learn more about user behavior on Cohort reports, and use that data to create effective retargeting campaigns.
And, there are many other ways in which attribution reports can help you better understand your user acquisition rates and assist with retargeting leads, too.
In fact, it can be extremely helpful to understand the different types of attribution reports before discovering what can learn from them as a whole.
Different Types of Attribution Models Used Across Marketing
Learning about the industry standards within the marketing sector gives you a better idea of what you can expect from attribution reports.
We want to keep this part of the blog as concise as possible, but, alas, there’s some learning involved.
So, get ready, and let’s do it!
Attribution reporting has 3 major approaches: First-click Attribution, last-click Attribution, and multi-touch Attribution.
The first and last-click attributions make single-source attribution methods, attributing conversions to the user’s first or last click.
If the final click before a conversion takes place on a Google ad, Google receives 100% credit. On the other hand, multi-touch Attribution recognizes every touchpoint that contributed to a user’s installation.
Here are the top 5 things you can take away from using marketing attribution reports as part of your marketing efforts:
1. Gain Insights for Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) Attribution Reporting
Reports on conversions can be attributed to online and offline activities and provide a holistic view of your marketing efforts.
Any business owner with a physical storefront cannot afford to ignore OCT when it’s properly implemented.
Adverts run as part of digital marketing campaigns simply kickstart the process of an offline conversion. Therefore, it’s imperative to utilize marketing attribution reporting to track each stage of the process and measure effectiveness.
Attribution AI software allows you to do just that. Our attribution reporting software provides you with deep insights along every step of the conversion path.
By implementing and using our software, your conversion data is always available, giving you more control of identifying specifics of PPC campaigns, for instance.
2. Gain a Deeper Understanding of the User’s Behavior for Clarification
As users are often unpredictable, their data can become complicated to interpret. By utilizing the power of an attribution model, you make sense of what you see.
Before making a purchase, take a moment and consider: How many times do users see an ad? Why do they click? How important are impressions?
Attribution reports aim to simplify these complexities and will do that when used correctly.
By analyzing these reports, you can optimize your marketing strategy by getting an insight into user behavior. Some examples of additional insights you could gain:
- Click-through rate (CTR): Calculate the click-to-impression ratio for a campaign by comparing the number of times an ad was clicked to the number of times it was seen.
- Click-to-install conversion rate: Optimize your ad spend by looking at the number of clicks an ad receives versus the number of installs.
- Click-through cost (CPC): Evaluate your budget based on how much an ad averages every time it’s clicked.
With the above data, you can assess where your company stands compared to the data pulled from competitors.
You can even use it to adjust your marketing goals and make informed decisions about where you want to focus your marketing strategy.
A greater sense of the buyer’s journey and what feeds into their psyche on a marketing level empowers you to take charge of your leads and generate more conversions.
3. Identify the Channel or Channels That Contribute Most to Your ROI
When it comes to what you can learn from attribution reports, one of the biggest insights is identifying the channel that contributes most to return on investment (ROI).
Many marketing attribution models enable you to better understand the customer journey and whether your marketing efforts are successful.
By using this data to increase the frequency of campaigns and channels incorporated into the customer journey, you improve it.
Marketing attribution tools allow you to budget behind the most profitable channels for the desired outcome.
By driving conversions in a more data-centric way, you can generate the most revenue for the targeted channel.
4. Get a Deeper Insight into Budgets and Reallocate Accordingly
Marketing ROI is the top priority for any marketer. Whether you’ve been in the industry for decades or you are just starting, money matters, and it always will.
When you gain an insight into the customer journey, you can make better-informed decisions about where your budgets should be allocated.
But, if you see that the investment for social campaigns isn’t contributing much in terms of overall ROI, it might be time to rethink your marketing strategy.
Spending more in areas where revenue generation is more efficient increases your marketing ROI. So, if you aren’t utilizing marketing attribution reports as a means of assessing your budgets and adjusting accordingly, do it now.
5. Develop New Down-Funnel Strategies Where Needed
Marketing attribution reports allow you to develop new strategies that work better than your old digital marketing approaches.
Hands-down, certain campaigns or channels are even more effective when paired together. This collaboration can be prioritized across the customer journey, giving you a better chance of a conversion.
The data in your attribution report should help you identify and refine the best way to run campaigns on any channel.
And with the help of tools like Google Analytics, you’ll have everything you need to craft an unstoppable marketing approach both online and offline.
From running paid ads on Facebook that you know will bring about the leads you need to implementing new strategies for email marketing, the possibilities are endless when you have the right tracking software to hand.
Creating a Successful Marketing Attribution Report
First, you need to set up a marketing attribution model in Google Analytics or another analytics platform. The marketing attribution model you choose must be aligned with your business’s marketing objectives and the KPIs you use to measure your success.
After you set this marketing attribution model, it’ll take at least 2 weeks for preliminary data to be available and approximately 30 days before robust marketing attribution data is available through your analytics platform.
You can find the attribution report on the Google Analytics dashboard. There, the most recent data to give you the most accurate insights will be available.
Remember: You can always change your marketing attribution model or build your own custom model using Google Analytics.
Depending on what you want to know about your customer journey and marketing success, you may opt for different types of attribution models.
In the case you change this attribution model again in 30 days, you’ll have robust data. The value of data in any particular attribution report may decline if you change reports before that point, though.
How Attribution Can Help You
At Attribution, we help marketers and salespeople come together. Whether lead attribution through AI distribution or targeted sales representatives, we offer an end-to-end tracking and compliance solution that works seamlessly for diverse marketing projects.
Our solid experience and innovative technological approach provide you with software to gain deeper insights into marketing attribution data. From identifying leads to pushing through with sales efforts, Attribution AI is a powerful tool to deploy.
In fact, with Attribution AI, you gain greater control over your leads. In this way, you can focus your energy on the marketing campaigns to generate exciting and winning results.
Download Our Marketing Attribution Resource Today
If you run a business and are interested in learning more about marketing attribution reports and lead scorecards, download our lead scorecard.
With the scorecard, you’ll be able to identify which type of lead scoring approach will work best for your needs based on the leads you target.
You’ll also gain a better understanding of the benefits that come with scoring leads and where you can change your approach to enhance the buyer’s journey.
Marketers should use a combination of lead scoring and attribution reports to meet conversion goals. Failing to do so leads to hitting the same obstacles over and over.
Click here to read more about multi-touch attribution.