Tell an accurate story backed by powerful data with multi-touch attribution.
The goal of effective marketing is to reach the right person with the right message at the right time. This is easier said than done since, traditionally, attributing marketing results to a specific marketing effort can be a laborious process at best and a simple guessing game at worst.
Advancements in marketing technology and the rise of first-party data, however, have created an environment where marketers can get incredibly specific with who they are reaching, when, and with what content.
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) not only gives valuable insight into the content that resonates with customers, it also allows you as a small business marketer to better understand your audience and make smarter decisions earlier (and faster).
Knowing what MTA is and understanding the models that make it possible allows you to start thinking about your content in a more intelligent and customer-focused way which leads to improved marketing results for less time and energy spent. Intrigued? Read on to see how you can apply these principles to your own business.
What is multi-touch attribution (MTA)?
Multi-touch attribution is a performance measuring technique in marketing that seeks to take into account all touchpoints of the consumer journey. It assigns partial credit to a given activity so marketers can understand what level of influence that tactic or piece of content has in producing results. Many marketing analytics platforms feature multi-touch (or multi-channel) attribution as part of their feature set.
This type of thinking lends itself to accomplishing what experts like technical marketing manager Jesse Liebman[1] call true attribution. True attribution represents the spirit behind multi-touch attribution in that it seeks to assign results to specific pieces of content on a granular level, truly attributing the results to the specific touchpoint that elicited them.
Platforms specifically designed for marketing attribution can help accomplish this by filtering and displaying results based on user touchpoints, a specific attribution model (more on attribution models below), or content buckets such as paid vs. organic search.
An example of conversion tracking functionality from Rockerbox (Source)
Why is multi-touch attribution important?
Traditionally, assigning marketing results to a piece of content has relied on single-touch attribution which only focuses on one touch point of the customer journey. While this data is certainly useful, it doesn’t tell the full story of how a customer ultimately converts. Multi-touch attribution seeks to contextualize multiple touch points, assigning weight to each one based on models that have been designed for this purpose.
For technical marketers like Liebman, embracing MTA is especially important for a small business:
“If you're a small business, you're testing everything all at once, and you want to know which one is working… It's nearly impossible to do it with basic platforms since the base of any analytics platform is last click. I am a huge proponent of integrating some sort of multi-touch platform.”
For example, if a customer finds a business on social media, visits the website a few days later to offer their email, then eventually converts after receiving their first send, which touch point should get the credit? With a traditional last-click approach, that marketing email would receive 100% of the credit. With MTA, however, credit can be assigned to all three touchpoints with proper (and customizable) weight given to each.
How you choose to weigh these is determined by your marketing goals and chosen key performance indicators (KPIs). If building awareness is your primary KPI, you might give more weight to social media. If sales is your primary KPI, the marketing email that led to a purchase would get most of the credit. Credit can also be assigned equally to each or divided another way based on other models.
Multi–touch attribution examples: A brief overview of popular MTA models
Linear attribution
Linear attribution means every touch point along the customer journey gets an even share of the credit for a conversion. This model represents a good starting point for multi-touch attribution as it takes multiple events into account while not being overly complicated to track. For example, if a customer visits a business’ website, signs up for the mailing list, then returns to the site through a social post to purchase, each of these three touch points would get 33% of the conversion credit.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Easier tracking compared to more-complex models | Doesn’t offer differentiation between the individual performance of channels |
Quantifies the impact of individual marketing channels | Doesn’t provide context on the proportion of credit each event receives |
Time decay attribution
Time decay attribution assigns credit to each touch point along the customer journey, and the amount of credit increases the closer the interaction is to the conversion. This is a great model for businesses who want to track multiple KPIs in order to contextualize their tactics within all stages of the journey: awareness, lead creation, lead qualification, and conversion.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Contextualizes multiple KPIs | Top-of-funnel activities may not receive proper credit for building awareness |
Good for zeroing in on the tactic(s) that trigger conversions | Less effective for business with short sales and marketing cycles |
Position-based attribution
This model is best suited for businesses who have a large amount of potential touchpoints and/or want to take a simplified approach to multi-touch attribution. The most common position-based model (the U-shaped model) assigns 40% of the credit to the first customer interaction, 40% to the last customer interaction, then distributes the remaining 20% evenly amongst any other touchpoints in between.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Works well for businesses with many customer touch points | Doesn’t take into account length of time between the first event and the last event |
Relatively easy to implement | Gives less credit to potentially crucial touchpoints in the middle of the customer journey |
Other position-based models: W-shaped and Z-shaped attribution
Like the U-shaped model, both the W- and Z-shaped models seek to attribute credit using position-based logic.
In the W-shaped model, credit is split between the first-touch interaction, the last-touch interaction, and the interaction where a lead becomes qualified. Each touchpoint is assigned 30% of the credit, and the remaining 10% is attributed to any touch points outside of these three milestones.
The Z-shaped model is extremely similar to the W-shaped model. The key difference is that it takes into account a greater number of milestones (generally lead creation in addition to lead qualification).
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Flexible in that you can choose U-shaped, Z-shaped, or W-shaped | May overestimate the amount of impact a specific event has |
Offers better customization when it comes to choosing which touch points matter | Doesn’t consider potentially important touch points that aren’t tied to an event |
Custom attribution
Custom attribution allows for complete customization of the way touch points are assigned credit. This can be especially useful for businesses who want to track multiple interactions with a focus placed on specific touch points.
If a business is well-established but decides to place a renewed interest on awareness-building tactics, they may want to shift more of the credit toward top-of-funnel activities. Conversely, a brand new business who is still building awareness but is also gearing up for a product launch may add more weight to conversions for the period surrounding launch.
A key benefit of adopting your own custom model means you can update the most important touch points in real time, adjusting based on your goals, milestones, or changes in your marketing road map.
Resources needed and challenges of implementing MTA
Before you decide to go all in on implementing multi-touch attribution, there are certain resources that must be put in place to ensure you see positive ROI as early as possible.
Tools and technology
Marketing attribution: This should be your first stop if the primary goal is beefing up your analytics structure and meaningfully applying MTA. In terms of growth, Liebman says it’s the most important aspect: “From a scalability standpoint, if I’m gonna put my money on one thing it would be an MTA.” This software is specialized, however, so do your due diligence in understanding the functionality you already have with existing software as well as integration opportunities if you do choose to adopt an attribution-specific tool.
Customer data platform: CDPs are an excellent tool to collect and analyze customer data from a variety of sources such as email, social media, and website behavior. For Liebman, their strength lies in the fact you can “track the user on a much more granular level.” Not only can these platforms structure data to create individual profiles, but they can also be well-integrated with other tools in your stack to enhance the depth and breadth of what you can do with that data. As a slightly less-specialized option compared to attribution software, CDPs are a great category to look at if your goal is to start from scratch in building a robust customer data strategy.
Customer relationship management: In the absence of dedicated marketing attribution software, a CRM platform is another good option, especially for businesses that are just getting started. The reason being that—while CRM tools do offer customer data management capabilities—they are more general in nature with a wider breadth of features. This allows businesses to begin the process of collecting and analyzing customer data, establishing connections between their software, and laying the groundwork for more advanced attribution.
The challenge
Choosing the right technology for your business’ goals and growth stage can be an overwhelming task. The challenge lies in understanding what your technology enables now, identifying the features you’re lacking, then choosing the right solution for those needs (all with your budget top of mind).
As you take on this process, think critically before making a purchase. A specialized marketing attribution platform may be the best option on paper, but if you don’t yet have the basics established when it comes to collecting and storing customer data, it might be best to start with a CDP. Even further, if you have yet to even start collecting customer data aside from disparate sources over the course of doing business, a more full-featured CRM will help you cover a lot of ground with the idea that a more specialized platform can be adopted (and integrated with that CRM) later on.
Expertise
The other aspect to consider when taking on a new initiative like this is the necessary expertise. You may have the desire and the tools, but if you don’t have someone to run the program effectively it won’t be successful. Depending on the size of your organization, you may or may not have a team supporting you. In either case, establishing a point person is crucial to see success.
In the event you don’t have someone to take on this task, there’s the possibility of upskilling or reskilling an existing team member, hiring a technical marketing manager like Liebman, or even bringing in a third party service provider to help oversee the process. This is a decision you’ll have to make based on your available resources, with the ideal (and most cost effective) option being to appoint someone within your current organization.
The challenge
The main challenge as a resource-constrained small business is having the personnel (and the bandwidth) to properly manage marketing attribution efforts. If you find yourself in this scenario, hiring a marketing analytics agency to help is an excellent option. Whether you need short-term assistance or a long-term strategic partnership with ongoing support, you can seek out the appropriate level for service for your needs and budget.
Want to learn more about marketing analytics agencies and what they can do for you? Visit Capterra’s Marketing Analytics Company Hiring Guide to discover what services are available, potential costs, and the considerations you need to take into account when choosing an agency partner.
Is MTA right for my marketing program right now?
Armed with the knowledge and considerations above, you should be well-equipped to decide whether or not it’s time to pursue multi-touch attribution today. If you don’t have the tools and expertise in place? It’s ok! That just means it’s time to take incremental steps to get there. For now, focus on embracing customer data to build a solid foundation upon which MTA can reside.
If you do have a customer data solution humming along with information ripe for the picking, it may be time to adopt a marketing attribution platform. In either case, merely thinking about attribution in this way will guide you toward more meaningful customer data insights that will improve marketing ROI in the long run.
Ready to learn more? Keep an eye on the Capterra blog for new content, and start with these helpful resources: