Marketing campaigns are often complex and seldom the same. Some elements will keep leads in the funnel and drive conversions, while others might cause them to fall out. The only way you can know which of your marketing elements are effective is by using marketing attribution.
The goal of attribution is to determine which channels and messages had the greatest impact on the decision to convert or take the desired next step. In the era of 20th century direct marketing, constant testing of multiple elements of a campaign made it possible to attribute success to certain choices. In the digital age, attribution is fundamental to any campaign’s online, social media, and mobile advertising.
Tracking activity through a typical customer journey is essential in attributing success to individual elements of a marketing strategy. Digital ads have built-in trackers, but neither advertising in traditional media nor other marketing activities (be it trade shows, customer service or any other customer touchpoint) have those tools. The trick is to implement traditional efforts, while digitising them for attribution.
Good marketers are regularly running reports on web traffic in Google Analytics, HubSpot or a plethora of great marketing attribution software options currently available. They also take inventory of various touchpoints and score them based on available data.
The best place to commence attribution is with Google Analytics, and those with hefty budgets may prefer to build their own custom attribution models. But in between, there is a lot of easily available attribution software to
