The Gist
- Shift the focus. Understanding that attribution tools have limitations enhances marketing strategy and effectiveness.
- Embrace collaboration. Sharing credit with sales and PR can lead to more successful multichannel marketing efforts.
- Data informs, not dictates. Use attribution data to guide decisions without letting it overshadow your marketing instincts.
The advent of digital marketing attribution tools coupled with the overwhelming desire to validate our efforts has turned many marketers into data junkies.
So desperate to justify our budgets and why we deserve more money, we’ve become obsessed with “claiming” every marketing attribution path to prove it was our work that snagged the lead, drove the sale or netted the new revenue. As a result, some of us have lost sight of what it means to run a successful, integrated, multichannel marketing function — one that even includes sharing the credit with sales and PR.
Listen, I get it. For years marketers have struggled with measuring results. It’s virtually impossible to know how many people actually saw your billboard or heard your radio ad, let alone how many leads they generated. So, it’s easy to see how digital marketing attribution tools have become so attractive. Finally, we can link audience action directly to our efforts!
The problem is too many of us have put all our eggs in the marketing attribution basket, and it’s time we get clear about what attribution can do — and what it can’t. So, let’s take a step back, discuss realistic expectations and why we should obsess less about attribution data in order to start converting more.
Attribution Measures Initiatives, Not Cumulative Effects
Attribution measures active initiatives like ongoing campaigns, live events, paid media placements, client gifts or any other action a marketing department can take.
But these certainly aren’t the only things driving leads and moving them through the funnel. Measuring cumulative initiatives, like branding, word of mouth, PR and earned media, can (and should!) be done as well through market research, customer surveys, web analytics, media metrics, advertising equivalency value (AVE), and share of voice.
While branding and communications may not be attributable to a specific campaign or directly map to lead gen, they do contribute to overall lift and impact revenue. They’re a vital component of any marketing toolkit and contribute to attribution — even if marketers are reluctant to share the credit with PR or communications. Attribution can’t measure everything, and that’s OK. You should measure those things anyway in a way that makes sense and leverage those insights into your overall strategy.
Related Article: Using Social Media as an Entry Point to Marketing Attribution
Attribution Data May Not Be Cut and Dry
Sometimes, marketing attribution numbers can tell conflicting stories depending on your perspective.
For example, one of our clients held an event to promote Product X. In their current attribution model, marketing would only get credit for a lead if an attendee started a conversation about Product X. If they had a conversation about or later decided they were interested in Product Y or Z, marketing got no credit. The attribution went to sales or another initiative, even though the event — funded from the marketing budget — was clearly the lead gen source. Certainly, giving marketing all the credit wasn’t the best solution either.
This is a perfect example of why marketing can’t rely on a one-size-fits-most attribution model; instead, you need to be able to calculate and configure attribution tracking from a variety of angles — both for budgeting and reporting to the wider enterprise about their efforts. A robust attribution solution should be able to adapt to your preferences and parameters rather than take a broad-brush approach to measuring marketing performance.
Related Article: How to Get Attribution in Analytics Right
Accept the Fact That You’ll Never Capture Every Attribution
Marketers have to be realistic about what attribution technology can do and understand its limitations. When human behavior gets involved, even the best-laid planned conversion paths of data-driven marketers often go awry (apologies, Mr. Burns).
For example, I can promise you that never in the history of adding “Forward to a Friend” buttons in email has anyone ever used one to forward that email to a friend, ever. They’ll just hit “Forward” in their email client, and you’ll never know if they forwarded it.
Or, you can adapt your approach by looking at other behaviors or trends to understand campaign impact. They might copy and paste that link from your e-newsletter into a messaging platform at their company, for example. And, that counts as campaign conversion just the same when anyone clicks on that link, right?
While attribution software provides some insights when such behaviors occur, there’s no bulletproof method to know how or why someone interacted with your content or campaigns every time. Once you accept that you’ll never be able to fully track everyone’s behavior, you can set more realistic expectations. Gather what you reasonably and accurately can and work with that data, knowing there will always be a degree of statistical uncertainty. Use this data to inform, but not dictate, your decisions.
Related Arrticle: B2B Marketers Must Embrace New Vision of Lift-Based Metrics
Attribution Is About Trends, Not Direct 1:1 Lead Gen
Years ago, I worked for a CFO who obsessed about daily new lead numbers — particularly the one or two records a day out of thousands that didn’t have a lead source attached. Forcing us to waste time and energy tracking down why a random record didn’t have a lead source was pointless and took us away from the more important issue: what drove net new leads and how to maximize those sources.
It’s a common trap. Leaning too hard on reporting and data to show how marketing contributes to revenue can backfire if you spend more time defending small discrepancies in numbers instead of using that data to inform your strategy. As Carey Picklesimer recently noted, the dose makes the poison.
Instead, use marketing attribution data to understand trends and behavior over time. Realistically, you should aim to know roughly 80% of what drove participation in each digital campaign. It may not provide a full picture, but it’s enough that you can feel confident about your contributions to performance. It still allows you to make data-driven decisions without splitting hairs, and it blends data with day-to-day gut checks that leave room for you to incorporate your marketing instincts.
Attribution is both an art and a science. Beware of letting a dashboard and numbers do the talking for you. Instead, use that data to tell the story of marketing’s performance and revenue contribution — but control the narrative around what insights the attribution is informing.
Attribution Can’t Solve Every Challenge (but It Can Inform Them!)
While marketing attribution is a valuable tool for measuring campaign effectiveness, it’s not without limitations. Marketers need to have realistic expectations and use attribution in conjunction with other methods to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of their marketing efforts. By doing so, they can make better-informed decisions, have real, measurable impact and optimize strategies for long-term success.
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