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There was a time when the purchasing process of customers was extremely simple, basic. But that was before. Today, the client can use multiple media (desktop, mobile etc.) and channels to go after a single conversion.
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Concretely ? Imagine Laura. It’s summer and she’s very keen on a new pair of sneakers. 8am, she wakes up. Like every morning, she starts her day watching her Facebook newsfeed on her mobile. She comes across a post sponsoring the latest Nike. She loves it. She clicks on the link starts her visit. It’s time for her to get active. If she hangs out too much, she’ll be late for work. She puts her curiosity on pause. During her lunch break, she will return to the advertiser’s site, typing the brand directly on Google from her professional desktop. She will wander, looking at other models of other brands … But finally, the desire has passed. She will not buy anything for now.
A few days later, a newsletter will present her a 20% offer on Nike that had caught her attention. Perfect. She will click and finalize her purchase.
So here we have a customer journey that, for a single purchase, can extend over several days and involves many marketing channels.
Marketers, multiple questions tickle you already:
Which partner (s) pay for this sale? Which one helped to create engagement? Which touches were useless?
Thanks to the attribution, you will be able to find answers to all your questions.
You can assign a conversion to one or more media partners, depending on the significance of their contribution(s).
Historically, advertisers analyzed the performance of their marketing campaigns in the interfaces of each of their media partners. These media partner attributed themselves the sales. Moreover, for a long time and still often today, the conversion was attributed to the last channel (a little bit as if a soccer victory was played only on the action of the striker and not on the common actions during the 90 minutes of game).
But the channels are multiple, they can be of “traditional” or digital nature. The traditional channels represent the so-called offline channels (letters, SMS, radio, television, press, call center, display panel …). Digital channels include: email, search, display, direct links, affiliation or comparators.
The attribution goes beyond a simple consideration.
It represents the independence of the media and the attribution (it is time not to let the students grade themselves, especially when this grade gives access to a higher level) and the (re)taking in hand of the piloting of its campaigns by:
- An exhaustive collection on the entire Customer Journey,
- The definition of its models in full transparency,
- Understanding the role of channels through Customer Journey Analytics reports & attribution views.
This solution allows to assign: either the conversion to a partner (depending on the model chosen), or a weight of it to each of the partners who contributed (vs. assign the entire conversion to several partners).
Thanks to the attribution, you will be able to make the right decisions every day, by having a real-time and complete vision of your campaigns and making the right choices in the optimization of your media mix.
The attribution simply allows you to value the partners who make the client move on in the Customer Journey
