Marketing attribution involves linking spend on advertising and other awareness campaigns to revenue. Getting attribution right has been a problem for years - John Wanamaker, a US retail magnate in the early 20th century is quoted as saying “I know half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.” For other teams within this business, this perception of marketing spend being “wasted” is a difficult one to swallow.

Today, we have many more marketing channels than the last century; the growth of online, social and mobile channels expands the number of areas where marketers can spend time and budgets to reach customers. This growth in the number of channels represents another problem; more channels either mean stretching budgets thinly across them all, or missing out on opportunities to gain awareness in front of the right people at the right time. Since the growing rise of channels has been in online and digital as opposed to traditional ones, there is fortunately more data available for analysis, however making sense of all that data for attribution has been hard – particularly when it comes to understanding which combination of channels, campaigns and events – online and offline - best influence groups of buyers, and ultimately lead to sales.

For most companies, there is no “magic moment” for a sale to take place. Instead, the buying process is gradual. Measuring each interaction with multi-touch attribution is therefore arguably the most important measurement for marketing departments. However, this can be difficult to get right without the right approach to data. Here are five best practices for creating a marketing attribution measurement that provides results quickly, and fosters buy-in and trust across the wider business.

1. Focus on the Right Reasons

Many marketers make the mistake of treating attribution as a way to prove the value of their spend. This is a direct response to that perception of wastefulness. In other words, they report on attribution as a way to validate the approach that they have taken.

A better way to look at attribution is to treat it as a discovery tool. This involves examining which marketing campaigns and activities produce revenue and then using the insights to set out the future strategy. To start off with, this discovery process can be rather painful for many marketers as it may show that specific channels are not working. However, this should be viewed as part of the attribution process - upon further analysis you may discover that some channels actually work for some regions or products rather than others. Alternatively, it may demonstrate that a specific channel does not work at all; in this case, budget can be stopped much faster and redirected to where it can produce better results.

Focusing on the right reasons to build an attribution model - even if it means taking the blame for investing in all the wrong places - can be rather powerful. It opens up opportunities for improvement across the whole marketing process, as data can be used to support a more iterative approach to marketing strategy. Over time, this attribution model can support bidding for additional funding and provide a great leadership opportunity for marketers who are looking for more influence across the organisation.

2. Pick a Platform and Own the Attribution Model

CRM and Marketing Automation tools are limited in their ability to calculate multi-touch, multi-channel attribution. Other applications, such as attribution-specific applications tend to be solely focused on digital channels and are often a ‘black box’ where the attribution rules are locked in and there is no ability to customise the models. The reality is that attribute rules differ from company to company.

Therefore, it’s important to own your attribution model, so you can decide on what suits their business. This includes knowing when it is right to apply a ‘Linear’ style of attribution and when to customise the calculations based on your business rules and policies around operations and revenue.

3. Get Consensus on What Matters, Then Create the Rules

Speaking of rules... many marketers make the mistake of building an attribution measurement model without getting organisational consensus on the rules that are created. This immediately creates skepticism within other teams on how the data for attribution is managed. Once this is in place, attribution quickly starts to become an uphill battle, and a lot of back-peddling is needed to prove that the model works!

A better approach is to build cross-departmental consensus first. Create a core group of people that define what should be measured and how the data for this is sourced. This group is often made of people from across business departments including marketing, sales operations and customer success teams.

Once the framework is in place, create another group that can review and approve the framework. This second group will typically be an executive level team. Establishing consensus and then getting C-level backing means that any marketing attribution data should be accepted by the whole business.

4. Build a Pilot

There should always be a balance between getting consensus and making a decision – and marketing attribution is no exception to that rule. To make this model easier, start with only a few Key Value Indicators (KVIs) and make these the focus of the initial pilot. For example, generating a KVI around Marketing Generated Pipeline (MGP) could be a good first step. To create this value, it’s important to look at all the drivers of this KVI.

Calculating MGP involves bringing together data on the number of programs run, leads generated, and lead-to-opportunity conversion rates. Once this set of data is in place, add another driver such as a ‘look-back’ window. To get an accurate picture on something like MGP, a look-back window of six months means that you would only consider campaigns that started within that period, and anything prior does not count towards revenue. In this example, having a defined time limit for campaigns can help show how well each program is performing in context.

Each business is different, so the scope of each pilot should be set out clearly with the KVIs and the KVI drivers that are most critical for that organisation. The important thing here is to look at getting one to three KVIs implemented quickly and share the results. This means that the complete project can be implemented later, but in the meantime you have created value for everyone involved. In most marketing organisations, this initial pilot will actually generate more interesting data that the team can use to define a full project in a different way to what was assumed at the beginning.

5. Share the Dirty Details to Gain Trust

Marketing attribution programmes can often throw up interesting data points that contradict some of the received wisdom on what is taking place in the company. The point of attribution – as I covered in point 1 – is not to prove the value of what has been done. It is in setting the direction on what should be done in the future.

Making this work well in practice requires trust around the data that marketing shares with the business. It can often seem like admitting where projects did not generate return is an admission of failure. However, being upfront on where each project worked – and where it didn’t – should be viewed as an ongoing opportunity, rather than looking backwards.

Couple this with a collaborative mindset, and the emphasis of attribution will shift from attributing blame to being part of a continuous improvement approach and the journey that it entails.

 

By Farnaz Erfan, Birst.

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