If you are familiar with marketing online or have been using online advertising to build your business, you may have heard the term ‘attribution’ come up. In the context of Digital Marketing, the term Attribution refers to the ability to accurately assign the value of a conversion or sale to the correct marketing activities which resulted in it. A marketers ability to accurately measure attribution can mean the difference between a successful use of marketing budgets, or a complete waste.
Attribution is a hot topic because in the complex world of online advertising it can be very difficult to see where exactly that last sale or lead came from. When you have a proper attribution system set up for your online advertising campaigns, a marketing professional should be able to associate successes with whichever campaigns, networks, messages or channels were responsible. Over time this deeper understanding allows the marketer to adapt their budgets and strategies away from those campaigns which are less successful, and instead focus on those which are more successful.
So this is all great theory right? But how do I actually get started with Attribution with my campaigns? Well the topic of Attribution is very complex and a whole course could be presented on just this topic, we have a few pointers to get you started. For a deep dive into Attribution, we recommend this Udemy course may be a great place to start.
Steps to Using Attribution for Your Online Ad Campaigns
Know Your Goals
If you do not know what is valuable to your business than attribution will not help you. Before we can track to see what brought you a benefit, be sure you know what benefits you are looking to maximize. For most businesses this is often; increase sales, increase leads, add followers, increase signups, extend brand recognition etc. Before starting an Attribution strategy be sure to list these goals that you want to maximize.
Understand the User Journey & Buying Behaviour
In order to track the points where your ads are making the most impact with your audience, you first need to deeply understand where they may be in their buying process. Once you have an idea of the steps that your ideal customers may take you can be sure to measure these potential interaction points where they engage with your brand online. Before performing attribution you should spend time mapping out the most common steps that your ideal customers will perform while perusing the intended purchase behaviour online.
Track the Interactions
One of the best advantages of the online environment for businesses and marketers is the easy access to data. Using tracking tools such as Google Analytics, or more advanced tools such as Adobe Marketing Cloud and Analytics you will be able to place measurement code to track the activity of your prospective customers. Deep analytics data is the bloodline of an Attribution strategy and good data drives good decisions. Before beginning your attribution program be sure to set up the right tools to power your data. Here are some of the top attribution tools to consider.
Track the Outputs
Now that you know your goals, you know where your audience will be and are tracking the steps they take along the way; you now only need to track the results. It seems simple, but if you aren’t tracking your goals then you really are wasting your time. Be sure you can track your goals clearly and without error. For some, this is simple as tracking online sales, or app downloads. For others, this may mean tapping into third-party platforms or software to get the data that you need. Before conducting attribution exercises, be sure to confirm that you have access to all the relevant outputs to measure your goals.
As a top Online Advertising Agency, we at Hygge take Online Advertising Attribution to heart and build in into each of our client’s campaigns and reports. We make decisions each day based on the performance of these campaigns, and thanks to attribution data we can prioritize our clients’ budgets to ensure the highest return from their advertising budget investments. If you are running your own campaigns, we strongly recommend you learn more about Attribution and how it applies to online advertising.
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