How Marketing Attribution Tools Are Transforming Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a universal form of promotion for many businesses, especially with the advent of the Internet and social media. Its importance grows every year as more customers rely on the web for research and purchases. Organizations interested in improving marketing effectiveness must understand the intricacies of digital marketing and how to measure its results correctly. Various tools and approaches around digital marketing, primarily single and multi-touch attribution tools, allow you to engage your audience while scaling your company’s growth effectively.

 

The Benefits of Using Digital Marketing

Digital marketing allows you to reach a larger audience at a lower cost. Traditional marketing methods like television have too many unknown factors, making them somewhat unreliable. With digital marketing, you can dial directly into your strengths and target the audience you want. It’s a very personalized form of marketing that drives the most profit and growth to a brand. Here are some of the reasons why digital marketing should be on every business owner’s mind.

• Personalized offers: Machine learning and predictive analysis allow you to track the behavior of your consumers. You’ll know what they want and which ads they are interacting with as they scroll. You’ll see what works and more effectively match customer needs with your offers.
• Wider reach: At a fraction of the cost of television and print ads, you can create digital marketing campaigns that reach a vast yet more distinct audience. It’s easy to have global reach if you implement marketing campaigns via the proper channels. Digital marketing opens the door for you to find newer markets.
• Better engagement: Using platforms like social media allows you to connect more effectively to your target audience. By providing valuable content, you build brand awareness. Eventually, the customers who keep interacting with you will increase their brand loyalty.
• Higher conversion: Having an online presence that works seamlessly with physical store locations makes it easier for your customers to buy from you. They no longer need to have different, completely unrelated experiences online and offline.

 

The Digital Marketing Tools Used Today

Like any industry, the right tools help make any job more manageable. The right tools also allow you to create and manage marketing campaigns. Digital marketing tools can track, compile, and analyze information, giving you greater insight and the ability to make better marketing decisions. Here are several of the most effective tools and approaches marketers use to maximize digital marketing efficiency.

 

• Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)

A CRM system helps compile relevant information about new and existing customers. It handles contact information, sales data, and the workflow process. You’ll know exactly where each prospect is within the sales funnel. By having accessible data, you improve productivity significantly.

CRM software can connect to your other digital tools. Marketing, finance, sales, and customer service teams, to name a few, can have access to them. Using the system, you can transition quickly from marketing to sales to supply chain management and more.

 

• Marketing Automation Tools

Many modern marketing tools automate processes so that you can work more efficiently. Instead of developing and implementing digital campaigns manually, marketing automation solutions streamline the process. The best marketing automation tools can deliver email messages, manage eBook promotions, handle landing page campaigns, and more, all while pouring information into your CRM solution.

 

• Digital Tracking

It is necessary to track activity across multiple channels to measure prospects’ and customers’ behavior correctly and determine how effective your tracking behavior through Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters or Facebook pixels is essential keeping track of where your visitors go and why.

Using tracking tools will give you an idea of how effective your digital marketing campaigns are and how you might want to tweak or refine them.

 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Customers rely on search engines to help them find information. If they’re looking for a product or service, they likely will use Google, Bing, and Yahoo. When you optimize your site and incorporate the best SEO principles, results for your site will appear higher in searches for relevant keywords you’ve used.

Good SEO practices help bring awareness to your brand and enable you to stay visible.

By climbing higher in search engine rankings, you can significantly increase the amount of traffic you get. Optimization can occur on many fronts, including:

• Optimizing content using relevant keywords
• Improving backend and website performance
• Linking from and to high-authority websites
• Ranking higher on specific keywords
• Reducing redundant and error pages

Check out this guide by keyword.com to learn some actionable ways to increase your website’s organic traffic using advanced SEO tactics.

• Social Media

Everyone has access to the major social media platforms. Social media platforms have helped revolutionize digital marketing, as they offer access to an unlimited number of prospects for both B2B and consumer purposes. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter help you engage with audiences and build preferences for your brand.

You can even extend your influence on these platforms by taking advantage of their advertising tools. Companies can engage and drive prospects to conversion for just pennies per interaction. It is a significant increase in efficiency compared to non-digital means of advertising.

 

The 6 Attribution Models for Digital Marketing

Understanding and incorporating attribution models help maximize digital marketing efforts. Attribution models help combine all information from multiple channels used, allowing marketers to understand better which interactions lead to conversions. You can see what components of your digital marketing strategy are resulting in the most significant revenue and which ones are lagging.

You can then devote more resources to what’s working while spending less on those that are not. There are six models to choose from when considering attribution to maximize digital marketing efforts.

 

1. First Touch Attribution Model

Using the first-touch model, you’ll be able to see which channel was responsible for the very first interaction with your brand. This model only considers the aspect of your marketing that first introduced them to your business. For example, a customer clicks your ad and then subscribes to a webinar that links to a landing page. The credit for the first interaction is attributed to your ad.

 

2. Last Touch Attribution Model

The opposite of the first touch model, last-touch attribution gives credit to the final engagement before conversion. This approach ignores other engagements and only focuses on the conversion aspect. It is vital if you want to learn more about the metrics within the transformation. Last touch models are easy to implement and track.

 

3. Linear Attribution Model

A linear model considers every engagement the customer had during the buying journey. Each interaction receives an equal amount of credit. For example, linear attribution considers the social media ad, webinar, and landing page equally when they lead a prospect to conversion. This model provides a complete overview, allowing you to examine multiple elements of your marketing strategy.

Linear attribution works well with marketing strategies that incorporate multiple engagements or require a longer lead time.

 

4. Time Decay Attribution Model

Like the linear model, time decay attribution considers all engagement of a buyer’s journey. However, it puts greater weight on the interactions closer to conversion than those earlier in the journey. This approach brings attention to the bottom of the funnel, allowing marketers to see which engagements after a prospect has become familiar with the brand, might be more responsible for closing the sale.

 

5. Position-Based Attribution Model

The position-based model gives the most value to the beginning and end of the marketing funnel. It only touches the middle point slightly in comparison. This model brings more importance to the first point of interaction and the conversion, assigning 40% of the credit to each. No matter how many there are, the remaining interactions receive a division of the remaining 20% of the credit.

Using the position-based model isn’t ideal if you’re implementing long nurturing campaigns, as they likely would require more attention paid to the interactions occurring between the first and the last.

 

6. Algorithm Attribution Model

The algorithm model is the most accurate model available. It doesn’t assign a predetermined amount of credit to a particular interaction. Instead, each organization determines which interactions deserve the most credit according to their specific situation, sales cycle, and industry.

This model is best for large companies with complex sales cycles and multiple touchpoints. This model may require additional resources to implement and measure in addition to tools adept at data analysis.

 

Attribution Models Must Be a Part of Digital Marketing

Marketing attribution is necessary for today’s marketing environment. Digital marketing enables brands to pinpoint customer behavior while implementing strategies to maximize returns. While digital marketing has been a revolution for marketers and brands that want the best return on their marketing spend, understanding what works and what does not is remains necessary. Utilizing attribution is a critical component in developing that understanding.