The customer’s journey can be complex: first, they click on your ad, then search on Google, fill out a form, and finally, they are retargeted with a Facebook ad and buy from you.
As a marketing manager, these complicated journeys make your job more difficult, and you need a more sophisticated way to measure what channels are driving your leads and sales.
Marketers rely on marketing attribution software like leadsources.io to prove to their CEO the dollar value they bring to the business and advance their career as a result.
Let’s review how to implement marketing attribution for your company.
What is marketing attribution?
Marketing attribution is the process of determining which marketing channel(s) contribute to the leads and sales, enabling marketing managers to optimize their marketing strategy and increase their ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) as a result.
It helps marketers map out the customer journeys, and understand which touchpoint really contributes to the lead or sale.
A marketing attribution software tracks the customer interaction with the different touchpoints (E.G. Google Ads click –> Google search –> email click). It then attributes a percentage value to each touchpoint as a way to quantify the respective impact of each channel in the sale.
Example:
- Google Ads: 5%
- Google Search: 20%
- Facebook ad: 25%
- Email: 50%
If the sale that resulted from this customer journey is 1,000$, then each channel contributed to the respective sale amount:
- Google Ads: 50$
- Google Search: 200$
- Facebook ad: 250$
- Email: 500$
By aggregating the sale amount to each channel for all your sales, you see how much contribution each channel brings to your sales. For example:
- Email: 15,200$
- Google Search: 10,500$
- Facebook ad: 2,550$
- Google Ads: 1,750$
You can then adapt your marketing strategy by promoting the channels that contribute the most to the sale.
Why is marketing attribution important?
Marketers often struggle to demonstrate their value to the CEO. When I was head of online marketing at Frederique Constant, I would show my results in terms of number of followers gained, traffic, and leads. All these vanity metrics were not enough to show my impact on the business.
After I started using marketing attribution software (like leadsources.io), I demonstrated the impact of my work on the revenue by accurately calculating the ROI and ROAS. This allowed me to get higher marketing budgets during the annual marketing strategy meeting, and to negotiate a higher salary by proving to the CEO my dollar impact on the business.
What are the different types of marketing attribution tools?
Marketing attribution tools use different attribution models to credit the sale back to a single channel (single-touch) or multiple channels (multi-touch). Let’s review the different attribution models used.
1. Last-click marketing attribution software
Last-click attribution model assigns 100% of the credit for a sale to the last touchpoint in the customer’s journey toward making a conversion (lead or sale), while all the channels the customer interacted with before that last interaction are assigned a 0% credit. That’s the most popular attribution model, at leadsources.io we use it to attribute the source of your leads to the last channel your leads interacted with.
Best suited for:
- Companies focusing on immediate results and requiring simple yet actionable analytics.
- Campaigns with short sales cycles: Helps identify which touchpoints are most effective at driving immediate leads or sales
Pros:
- Widely used in many analytics platforms (e.g., Google Analytics) as the default attribution model, making it familiar to most marketers.
- Easy to implement and understand, as it attributes credit to just one touchpoint.
Cons:
- Does not account for the complexity of a customer’s decision-making process if your marketing strategy involves multiple touchpoints.
Website: leadsources.io
2. First-click attribution tools
The First-click attribution model assigns 100% of the credit for a sale to the initial touchpoint in the customer’s journey toward making a purchase, while all the channels the customer interacted with after that first interaction are assigned a 0% credit.
Best suited for:
- Short customer journeys
- Businesses focused on identifying and optimizing top-of-funnel activities.
Pros:
- Simplicity: It is straightforward to implement and understand since it assigns all credit to the first touchpoint, avoiding complex calculations
- Useful for brands prioritizing top-of-funnel activities, such as ads, content, or campaigns designed to capture attention.
Cons:
- This may lead to over-investment in channels that introduce the customer without fully understanding the role of nurturing efforts.
- Does not account for the complexity of a customer’s decision-making process, where multiple touchpoints often work together.
3. Linear attribution software
In the linear attribution model, the credits are allocated evenly across all the touchpoints that a customer went through, from the discovery to the conversion.
Best suited for:
- Businesses and campaigns that prioritize understanding the overall customer journey and value consistent engagement across multiple touchpoints.
- Businesses with long sales cycles.
Pros:
- Easier to set up and interpret compared to algorithmic models, while still providing a more balanced approach than single-touch models.
- Highlights the role of every channel, which helps teams understand how multiple touchpoints work together to drive conversions.
Cons:
- In campaigns where certain touchpoints play a larger role (e.g., discovery or closing), the model can misrepresent the importance of those interactions.
4. Time-decay attribution tools
Time-decay attribution model assigns more credit to touchpoints that occur closer in time to the final conversion.
Best suited for: Sales funnels with long durations, where customer journeys extend over weeks or months, such as real estate, SaaS, or enterprise solutions.
Pros:
- Matches customer behavior where recent interactions are often more influential in driving purchases.
- Accounts for multiple touchpoints over an extended period, making it suitable for complex customer journeys.
Cons:
- Early-stage activities like awareness campaigns may appear less impactful, despite their role in initiating the customer journey.
- In quick conversion paths, the distinction between touchpoints may not be significant, reducing the model’s utility.
5. U-shaped attribution software
The U-shaped attribution model assigns most of the credit to the first and last touchpoints in a customer’s journey. Typically, 40% of the credit is given to the first interaction (awareness), 40% to the last interaction (conversion), and the remaining 20% is distributed across the middle touchpoints.
Best suited for: Companies with a clear emphasis on brand awareness campaigns (e.g., ads, social media) and conversion efforts (e.g., direct sales, closing campaigns).
Pros:
- Highlights the importance of both initial lead generation and final conversion efforts, making it ideal for understanding top and bottom-funnel activities.
Cons:
- More difficult to implement than single-touch models like first-click or last-click due to the need for data tracking and tool integration.
6. W-shaped attribution tools
The W-shaped attribution model assigns the majority of credit (usually 90%) to three key touchpoints in the customer journey: the first interaction, the lead creation, and the final conversion. The remaining 10% is distributed across any additional touchpoints that occur between these three milestones.
Best suited for:
- B2B businesses with longer, more complex sales cycles where lead nurturing and multiple interactions are essential to close a sale.
Pros:
- Highlights the importance of discovery, nurturing, and closing touchpoints, providing a comprehensive view of critical interactions.
Cons:
- More challenging to set up compared to simpler models like first- or last-click attribution, as it involves multiple touchpoints and weighted credit allocation.
7. Full-path attribution software
The full-path attribution model assigns credit to every touchpoint in the customer journey, from the first interaction to conversion and beyond. It distributes credit across touchpoints, often giving higher weight to significant interactions like first touch, lead creation, opportunity creation, and final conversion.
Best suited for:
Pros:
- Tracks and evaluates the performance of every stage in the customer journey, providing a holistic view of marketing efforts.
Cons:
- Requires advanced tracking systems and data analytics tools to capture and analyze all interactions.
Leadsources.io: last-click marketing attribution software
Leadsources is a marketing attribution software that uses the last-click attribution model for your lead generation campaigns. It tracks the last channel that was clicked before a lead is generated. The lead source is populated in the contact form directly and is saved in your form builder and CRM.
Click on the different last-click channels to visualize the information Leadsources populates into your form:
Best suited for:
- Companies focusing on immediate results and requiring simple yet actionable analytics.
- Campaigns with short sales cycles: Helps identify which touchpoints are most effective at driving immediate leads or sales
- Where the final touchpoint is the most critical in driving conversions
Features:
- Populates 5 lead source data into your form: channel, source, campaign, term, content
- Tracks the landing page where the lead was generated
Price:
- Starts at 49$/month
- 14-day free trial
Website: leadsources.io
