Understanding Attribution models for Marketing Campaigns

Whatis Attribution Modeling?

Attribution models are those models that help the marketers understand which customer touchpoints helped into conversion. Attribution models are used to assign credit to touchpoints of customer click to conversion.

Every marketer needs to know which attribution model is helping them in leads. For example, The conversion path is not that easy now, some consumers take the complicated way of buying the product, and some consumers will click on your ad and make the purchase. Some consumers visit your site multiple times before purchase and even come again after a week to purchase. This all depends on your marketing channels. Which attribution modeling is creating more traffic, which leads to conversion? With every touchpoint of the customer journey into a purchase, every marketing channel plays an important role.

The Attribution modeling analyzes the analytics and stats and lets the marketer know which channel creates more sales and distribution of each model into conversion. There are six attribution models. By analyzing each model, you will understand the ROI for every marketing channel. You have to use the attribution model too for the fullest to see the stats, compare the performance of each model, and check different factors of the buyer's purchase cycle. This will help you in finding which model works better for your business than others. You can also understand the importance of each touchpoint of the customer's journey. Following are the attribution models:

Last-Click Attribution

Example: Customer finds your website through organic search but doesn't make any purchase but then see your ad on any social media platform and then make quick sales. This means that 100% credit goes to this one last interaction attribution model

This attribution model gives all credit to customers' last click or last interaction. The last click of the customer is responsible for the conversion; any other marketing channels or routes are not included in the purchase's success than the last one. This one-touch model is called last-click attribution, which lets you know the previous click of customer lead into a conversion.

First-Click Attribution

This attribution model gives all the credit to the first click of the customer journey into the purchase. Any other engagement or marketing channel won't be responsible for the conversion other than the customer's first click on your website or any marketing channel.

Example: Customer finds your website through Instagram, then 100% credit value will go to Instagram, not to any touchpoints after the first click into the purchase. It doesn't matter if the customer then clicks on your page display, clicked on some ads. All the credit will be for Instagram in the first place.

Time Decay Attribution

This attribution model gives all the credit to the closer touchpoints of the customer into a purchase. It means that the customer clicked on the marketing channel, which is closer in time of sales than the further back in time like the first click. The most recent click at the time of conversion, the more credit this touchpoint receives.

Example: This attribution model takes when each touchpoint occurs into consideration. As when a customer clicks on Facebook ads just right before they purchase, this touchpoint will have more credit than the first touchpoint.

Linear Attribution

This attribution model distributes the credit to each touchpoint of the customer purchase. As the customer leads to purchase, each touchpoint gets the same honor for sale.

Example: In this model, credit is split into each touchpoint as the customer finds your website through a Facebook ad, then he signed up on your email list and then clicked on any of your email links. Then after a week, he makes the purchase. This means that these three touchpoints are equally responsible for the sale.

U-Shaped Attribution

This attribution model gives more credit to the first and last touchpoints of the customer. Google Analytics gives 40% credit to the customer's first and last touchpoints, and other touchpoints distribute 20% of the credit.

Custom Attirbution

This customer attribution will help you assign credit to each touchpoint by your own rules and set it on the conversion path. This custom attribution model gives you more control in handling your marketing channels and credits so you can prompt the conversion yourself. You can create this attribution model in Google Analytics easily. This type of model attribution is a little complex to crate and takes a lot of data.

Data-Driven Attribution

This attribution model is set algorithmically, and you have no set of own rules to give credit to every touchpoint. This model analyzes every touchpoint of customers and then creates an attribution model based on these touchpoints. Algorithms can consider any touchpoints while modeling or weighing touchpoints.

Finding the right attribution model from all the models can be a bit of a task as it is hard to assign credit to one for all. You have to stick with your business's attribution model, which makes more sense to you and leads to more conversion.

Marketers need to understand each marketing strategy and the impact of the existing plan and implement it wisely. You don't have to make the buyer's journey more complex. Impression and click capacity of buyers/customers are essential for the marketer, which helps them understand which modeling attribution is more suitable for their business. Analyzing your marketing campaigns and sought which modeling attribution gives more conversion is the best takeaway.