How to Use Marketing Attribution to Grow Your Business

Marketing attribution gives you insight into your marketing and what’s working (or not) when it comes to making sales and conversions. It shows the value that your marketing efforts bring to your company, and can help you identify what you should keep doing or improve on for better results in the future.

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This is especially important when you are working with many different channels (like organic search, social media, paid marketing, emails and more). When attribution is done correctly, you can know exactly which channel contributed to a sale or conversion.

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Without attribution, you won’t know what works or where your customers found you. That can make it hard to grow your business. Let’s dive a little deeper into how you can use marketing attribution for business growth.

3 Steps to Grow Your Business With Marketing Attribution

Marketing attribution should be easy, but sometimes it can seem complicated and overwhelming. Put simply, though, it’s just identifying which touch points a customer had with your company before they decided to buy your product or service.

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Here are three steps you can take to use attribution in growing your business.‍

1. Decide on a marketing attribution model.

‍A marketing attribution model is just the rules that you or your marketing team use to assign the credit to each campaign or channel.

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There are several different marketing attribution models that marketers use, each with their own pros and cons:

‍First touch attribution‍

This model gives all the credit, or attribution, to the touch point (organic search, social media, an ad, etc.) that led that person to your website for the very first time, whether or not they make a purchase or complete another identified conversion.

‍Last touch attribution‍

This model, the complete opposite of first touch attribution, assigns all the credit to the last interaction a customer had with your marketing, whether that was an email or something on social media. (This is often the default people use with marketing attribution because it’s an easy set up, however it ignores much of the buyer’s journey.)

‍Lead conversion touch attribution‍

This one gives all the credit to whatever touch point ended up generating that lead or contact for your business.

‍Multi-touch attribution

‍This model, also called linear attribution, gives credit to all the different touch points equally. For example, if someone had four touch points, each one gets 25% credit. It gives a better view of the customer journey overall, and allows you to see everywhere a customer interacted with you.

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There are often other multi-touch attribution methods that may place different weight on the different touch points (like weighted attribution or a custom attribution method).

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When you choose an attribution model, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Your customer journey and the general purchase timeline (do you have a longer or shorter journey?)
• Your campaign objectives for the current phase of your business.
• Actionable items you might want to take from the marketing attribution model.

2. Generate campaign reports on your marketing attribution.

‍After you know what attribution method works best for your particular customer base and buyer’s journey, you or your marketing team will be able to begin to run reports on your different marketing campaigns. Sometimes, a marketing team will already have a software or process in place to help with marketing attribution.

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Other times, you may need to decide if you are ready to make an investment. Talk to your marketing team about this, if you are unsure.

‍3. Reassess marketing strategy and budget to align with attribution goals and results.

‍After you have reviewed a few marketing attribution reports, you may be able to take a deeper look at your current strategy and see areas for improvement.

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Likewise, you may see areas that are very successful, like paid advertising, where you may decide to increase your budget for the next quarter or campaign to generate even more results and grow your business.

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If you are ready to grow your business with marketing attribution, but you don’t know where to start, using a team for fully managed digital services is a great way to begin!

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Contact Us at elk today! Our teams focus on your business growth, and can provide you with the insight into how your marketing is performing while allowing you the time to focus on other areas of your business.