The marketing industry now boasts more channels and choices than ever before, and with consumers growing savvier by the day, navigating this vast landscape is becoming increasingly complex.
Marketing attribution technologies provide greater insight into consumer behaviour across channels and can reveal marketing intelligence hidden within the wealth of data at a brand’s disposal. This intelligence and insight is a key advantage to marketers who want to make smarter decisions about how they allocate their budget across their entire marketing ecosystem.
But while many marketers have embraced attribution as an essential tool in their toolkit, others have been slower to accept the benefits of attribution-based optimisation. It is often the case that new technologies are viewed as potentially costly or complicated to implement and maintain. However, as Bob Dylan once said: “Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean”. With this in mind, here are some common misconceptions surrounding the practice of marketing attribution:
Attribution is new and not fully tested
Industry experts have been working on attribution models and software for almost ten years now, so it’s a tried and tested approach. The attribution industry is recognised and recommended by trusted industry advisors such as Forrester Research, and as a result, uptake of this technology is growing. Brands and marketers looking to enter the attribution market should recognise that this is not a test-phase, but an objective, scientific approach that has proven to be extremely successful in delivering results.
Attribution is complex and will stretch technical resources
While aggregating and normalising performance marketing data sounds complicated, the reality is that attribution providers have already done most of the hard work in creating standard process and templates for the collection and processing of client data. And attribution management platforms are designed to work to utilise existing tagging technologies, so new or additional tracking technologies need not be implemented.
Attribution will drastically change the way marketers work
Attribution ensures that a greater depth of information can be extrapolated from marketing data, so insights are more accurate and relevant. The marketer’s role stays largely unchanged, as do the methods of data analysis, decision-making and the way in which necessary changes are identified. Attribution increases the accuracy of measurement so that marketers can make more intelligent decisions when it comes to assigning budget.
Attribution will force organisational change
It’s true to say that implementing an attribution-based approach requires organisations to adjust how they think about, and reward, marketing success. While more traditional approaches review each channel or tactic in silos, attribution allows marketers to adopt a more holistic approach, taking into account all marketing channels and how they relate to each other. This ultimately shifts an organisation’s focus towards achieving the overall goals of the marketing ecosystem, and rewarding those that manage it based on overall success.
Attribution favours technology over creative and human input
Attribution software delivers results based on the information that marketers input into the system rather than the other way round. Marketers control the questions asked and then decide how to optimise campaigns based on what is returned. The fact that recommendations are based on complex and sophisticated technology simply allows marketers to adopt a more scientific approach to their decision-making process.
Attribution helps marketers make sense of the wealth of data available to them, allowing for smarter decision-making when it comes to allocating budget and optimising campaigns. Those who are quick to understand and harness the potential of attribution will be quickest to gain the huge competitive advantage it offers. More information about marketing attribution myths is available here.
By Adit Abhyankar, Executive Director at Visual IQ.
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