In marketing, attribution is an important metric that helps you understand a customer's journey to purchase. Along with other metrics, attribution helps paint an important picture of the whole process – not just the last steps.
Without attribution, you're missing key parts of your data and your customer's journey. Yet, attribution data is often overlooked by companies, especially as they set up their initial dashboards and metrics.
Read more about why you need attribution data, Code3's approach to gathering and analyzing it, and how we can help you get started.
About Attribution
Most of your data is probably based on last-click, or the last part of the customer's journey to purchase. In that case, maybe a channel, such as display, appears to have poor performance. In reality, that display is driving consumers to search or engage on social, which then in turn drives consumers to conversion – data that's not displayed in last-click-based metrics.
Google Analytics has some simple rule-based attributions you can use: First/Last-click, Linear, time-decay, and position-based. But these may not show the whole story, either.
Find out how Code3 can help you set up GA4.
As opposed to last-click data, Code3’s data-driven attribution model estimates the transitional probabilities based on historical paths to conversion. Based on this model, conversions are distributed among the respective channels, making the model more accurate than rule-based models, such as the ones in GA. If you use GA (or Adobe) Code3 would approach attribution using these tools.
Code3's Approach to Attribution
Code3 recommends and supports a ‘parallel attribution approach.' This entails selecting several attribution models and measuring performance in parallel to continuously understand performance from a relative perspective. Total Customer Value is completely and universally flexible to work with all attribution models and windows as well as types:
- Models: First/Last-click, Last non-direct, Linear, Time-decay, Position-based, Data-driven
- Windows: 1-day, 7-day, 14-day, 28-day, 90-day, etc.
- Types: Conversions, Revenue, etc.
Results From This Analysis
Insights from Code3’s Data-driven model include:
- The most likely starting point in the consumer journey.
- The exact transitional probabilities to and from each channel.
- The percentages of direct website conversions and organic searches that were in fact paid media driven.
- How ads drove consumer behavior, even when the consumers did not click on the ad.
- Possible follow-up testing recommendations.
Insights by comparing the various models to each other include:
- Seeing how the various models’ performance compare to your usually reporting.
- Determining if your media is accomplishing their funnel goals and if there are any new opportunities.
- Having a more holistic view of everything that is happening, rather than one particular slice of reality.
Visualizing the Various Attribution Models
Code3 can build custom attribution visualizations, in addition to Code3's Standard Insights Dashboards that are used for all reporting needs. The visualizations can include revenue or conversions broken out by channel for each attribution model, so you can quickly see how each attribution model is giving credit to each channel. There can be views to see how many days until a consumer converts for each channel, and geographical views to break down where the revenue and conversions are coming from.
A More Comprehensive Modeling and Full Measurement Solution
If you are looking for something even more wide-ranging and far-reaching and have a longer time frame, then a single solution Multi-Touch-Attribution (MTA) and Media Mix Modeling (MMM) might be the best option.
The MTA/MMM approach might be best for you if:
- Your media is accomplishing its funnel goals.
- You would have different reporting results with different attributions.
- Want to know the likelihood of transitioning from channel A to channel B.
- Want to know how paid media drives organic search.
- See how an MTA & MMM measurement solution can help drive success
Ready to learn more? Reach out to Code3 to see how we can help you get started.
