It stands to reason that brands want to increase the total volume of people coming to their website in the first place:
96% of people leave a website without converting, and 70% abandon shopping carts without purchasing (Source: Google)
With today’s complex customer journey, your business might have a dozen or more interactions with a single person – across search, display, video, social, and on your website or on your mobile app.
Attribution makes it possible for you to measure the impact of your marketing efforts across devices and across channels.
Tracking and assigning a value to your media spend is vital, but many marketers are stuck using last click attribution, which misses the effect on conversion of other marketing customer touch-points.
The Google Marketing Attribution Models
Head on over to your Google Analytics account, click on Conversions > Attribution > Model Comparison Tool.
Here you’ll see the various default marketing attribution mobiles available to you, and see that you are able to compare one model against another:
- Last interaction
- Last non-direct click
- Last Google Ads click
- First interaction
- Linear
- Time decay
- Position-based
There’s also another option that you may see – which is dependent on having an account that has at least 15,000 clicks on Google Search and at least 600 conversions within 30 days:
- Data-driven
You’ll see, and can do the same thing just for your PPC search activity, in Google AdWords.
Which attribution model is best?
There is no one answer to this question. It all depends on your organisation, what you’re trying to achieve, and on what channel you place the most importance.
The great thing is that, with the attribution modelling in both Google Analytics and Google AdWords, you can compare one model against another and see which works best for you – tweaking your activity as you go.
Last interaction attribution
- This does what it says on the tin, and assigns all conversion value to the final touch-point before a conversion.
Last non-direct click attribution
- This model ignores direct traffic and attributes 100 percent of the conversion value to the last channel that the customer clicked through from, before buying or converting.
Last Google Ads click attribution
- Again, this is exactly what it says – all conversion value is assigned to the last Google PPC Ad the visitors clicks on. It is generally only useful to calculate the ROI of Google AdWords itself, as it ignores all other touch-points.
First interaction attribution
- A useful measure of which channel is driving brand awareness for your organisation, it assigns conversion value to the channel the user first clicks on.
Linear attribution
- Credit goes equally to each marketing touch-point along a customer’s journey – e.g., organic search - adwords - press release - social media – to conversion.
Time decay attribution
- Allocates more credit to touch-points closer to the time of the conversion, and is particularly good for a conservative growth strategy or businesses with a long sales cycle.
Position-based attribution
- Assigns more credit to the visitor’s first and last touch-points than any touch-points in-between, and is better for an aggressive growth strategy.
Data-driven attribution
- Data-driven leverages Google’s machine learning capabilities to give credit for conversions based on how people search for your business and decide to become your customers. It uses data from your account to determine which ads, keywords, and campaigns have the greatest impact on your business goals. As mentioned above, you’ll only see this option if your account meets certain criteria.
Want to talk?
Whatever marketing attribution method you choose, it’s important to track your marketing efforts across channels.
With certified experts in both Google Analytics and Google Adwords, we’re working with a number of customers to help them with their Google Analytics set-up and reporting, including attribution, and manage their Google AdWords accounts and activities across various countries. We’re also assisting them with ongoing digital marketing optimisation and the development of a long-term digital marketing road-map to increase conversions and drive success long-term.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we could help you with Google Analytics, Google Adwords, or general website optimisation, just get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
