How to Report on Marketing Attribution

Now that you’ve learned what marketing attribution is and how it can help you to grow your business, you need to understand how to report on marketing attribution.

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For the most part, if you have a marketing team or agency you work with, they will help with the reporting to ensure you have the information you need to make business decisions.

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If you are just getting started and want to handle it yourself, though, there are a few key things to know:

Marketing Revenue Attribution Models

First touch attribution: The very first touch point (organic search, social media, an ad, etc.) that brings a person to your website for the first time gets all the credit here.

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Last touch attribution: No matter how many touch points a person has with your business, this model gives all credit to the last interaction they had before making a purchase.

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Multi-touch linear attribution: Each touch point gets equal credit to each interaction someone has with your marketing.

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Multi-touch U-shaped attribution: The first and last touch points each get 40% of the credit, then each of the other touch points have the remaining 20% split equally (so if there were six total touch points, the four in the middle get 5% credit each).

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Multi-touch W-shaped attribution: The first interaction gets 30% credit; the interaction that created the contact gets 30%; and the last interaction gets 30% credit. That leaves 10% to be split amongst the remaining interactions.

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Time decay attribution: The more recent interactions get more credit in this model, with older interactions getting less credit.

Using Attribution Reports

Once you’ve selected the attribution model you want to use, you can start putting it to use! And it’s okay if it needs to change in the future, or you decide a different model might work better after a few reports have been run. Sometimes, marketing is all about being flexible!

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When you are ready to begin using the reports, there are a few key ways to make sure they really help your business grow and thrive:

See which marketing channels generate the most leads‍

This shows you where you can spend more time and money. If social media brings in a lot of leads, then you may want to spend more on creating good quality social content.

Find out which pieces of content bring in the most leads‍

If a certain blog post or video is having huge success in conversions, then that is a piece of content you can share more or repurpose to create similar content for the future or other platforms.

Learn which pages on your website are viewed before someone becomes a customer‍

If your pricing page is what gets the most hits that lead to a conversion, then you will know what pages to promote and optimize.

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You may have heard recently that privacy concerns related to GDPR or the new Apple iOS14.5 update have impacted attribution. Marketers and social media companies were prepared to understand the potential impact this may have had, and for the most part there is very little impact.

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The most you may see is a slight delay in attribution reporting, but when done properly, you shouldn’t miss any of the key benefits from marketing attribution due to these new privacy updates.

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Now that you understand how to use marketing attribution, you can create stronger marketing campaigns and put your money where the results are.

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By working with a team like elk, you can be even better positioned for success -- when a marketing team can take your goals and create growth, it frees you up to focus on the other aspects of your business that are important to you. Get in touch today to learn more!