Is your agency or marketing department identifying when customers convert?
This is an important question as digital marketing becomes the predominant method of advertising your business or product. It’s no longer sufficient to claim XX people clicked on your ad, so that’s the point of conversion.
Decision-makers want to know…
- What drove people to their business
- Which segment of their digital campaign was most effective
- At what point did people convert online
With more available data than ever before, it’s essential to follow customer’s journey and determine where he or she converted — then decide what’s working and what isn’t working.
Attribution (n) — process of assigning a value to touch points throughout a customer’s decision journey.
Okay, so that’s my digital marketing definition. But it’s important to understand it this way because it helps you understand the profits associated with actions. This could mean that every time a customer submits their information on a contact form, that lead is worth a specific dollar amount. Hitting “Submit” on the contact form is where we would attribute the conversion.
But what if the conversion happened earlier in the customer’s journey?
This is where Google Attribution comes into play and hopes to fill in that particular gap.
Why Does Attribution Matter?
Google Attribution aspires to give brands deeper insight about the journey across platforms as we see that customers browse across their devices: on smartphones, computers, and tablets. The big questions we receive from our clients are “What is this important?” and “How does this help me?”
- Data! — More information means better optimization of digital marketing efforts and more effective conversions with lower costs. With attribution, we can determine whether seeing a remarketing display ad on a website or seeing a regular ad led to the conversion.
- Cost-per-Click — Knowing what ads convert customers allows your marketing consultant to make adjustments of your digital marketing efforts for better performance.
- Ex: Remarketing display ads for new shoes that consumers see on their mobile phones leads them to search for that brand on Google; however, they see the search ad and click on it to get to the website and purchase shoes — we want to capture more consumers with display ads. This means paying more for display ad clicks and less for search ads as we can now attribute the conversion to the display ads.
- Quality Conversions — Marketing agencies have acclimated themselves to relying solely on clicks and calls from ads to measure digital campaign results. With the attribution model, we have greater insights about where a click or call converted earlier rather than focus on the last click (again, focusing on the journey to their destination). If clicks on a search ad alone aren’t driving quality leads, but a video placement on Youtube is, your agency can identify that and make the appropriate adjustments to your digital campaign.
Goodbye, Last-Click Attribution Model
Marketing agencies gain more insights as they evolve from the last-click attribution model, measuring the impact of their efforts across different devices and channels more precisely. Google Attribution helps make the move to data-driven attribution, so we can weigh how much each step contributed to a conversion.
You can analyze your campaign’s conversion patterns with the attribution model. Comparing the paths of customers who converted and those who didn’t in real-time can have a huge impact on your marketing. Being able to update bids and move budget between different channels allows you to customize your marketing to your customers, which overall leads to more leads and a better quality of conversions.
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