Attribution - Can't Touch This!

What if someone walked into your office and told you that you lost 33 customers in the last 7 days. 33 customers that you wouldn't have lost if you'd done a few things a little differently.

You'd probably want to know specifically what these few things are, and what you could have done that would have made the difference.

What we call Attribution is basically the mapping of digital customer journeys. When you search on google your digital journey begins. But you may already have interacted with a brand or seen an advert on social media for a product or service you later Google for. Every interaction you make is a touch point. Many of these touch points can be tracked. Some cannot.

Your Google search might then lead you to

click on an Ad, or website link that takes you to a website page. Then you might find the product or service you are looking for but aren't yet sure whether you want to commit to purchase. Then you find some reviews and read those. Then the phone rings and you have to go. Later that evening you are shopping online for other things and you see an advert for the product/service you were reading about earlier. You'd forgotten about that so you click on the ad and get right back to the product/service page. Remember all the places you've been today.

Let's say you go on to purchase the product or service , and your whole digital journey has taken 3 weeks. This is a fairly typical timeline, but the problem for marketers is in trying to understand which of your many touchpoints have had the most influence on your decision to purchase.

Googles latest data-driven attribution model learns about these user journeys with a machine learning algorithm that contrasts what happened with what could have occurred to determine which touchpoints are most likely to result in a purchase. Over time these attribution metrics improve and refine with every prospect and customer journey.

Attribution as we know it today, has, like everything else, evolved. Quite honestly it makes my mouth water to thing about how much juice we can squeeze out of the data-driven attribution model - or any other model for that matter. But it's how we interpret this data that matters to business. We need to use this attribution data to guide our marketing spend by delivering conclusions that turn the technical wizardry into meaningful business development strategy.

So next time you're browsing, think touchpoints, think clicks. It's all digital, it's all trackable. Even without third party cookies!

I do have some thoughts about marketing agency bias with human decisions about Attribution weighting but I'll save that for another post. If you'd like to stay informed and up to date , please subscribe.