What is multi-touch attribution? Multi-touch attribution is calculating the value of each customer-brand interaction that leads to a conversion. Once you complete this calculation and determine the most profitable marketing channel, you can precisely allocate marketing funds to surge ahead of the competition.
Understanding the web of touchpoints from the first impression to a conversion can be complex, but accurately collecting and consolidating this data can help you increase revenue while decreasing customer acquisition costs.
In a perfect world, potential customers would stumble upon your website, convert on the first visit, and remember your brand every time they need to make a purchase.
Unfortunately, with the growing competition surrounding online shopping and social media, it’s difficult to tell precisely which marketing efforts are succeeding with top consumer influencers such as Gen Z and millennials.
The main multi-touch attribution models
- Linear: Focuses on each touchpoint in the overall customer journey. It provides a clear path for each customer but doesn’t rate the effectiveness of each touchpoint in creating a conversion.
- Time-decay: Centers around the events closer to conversion, giving initial touchpoints credit but less weight than bottom-funnel interactions.
- U-shape: Emphasizes the first and last interactions, with less importance on the mid-funnel touchpoints.
- W-shape: Focuses on all touchpoints from beginning to end. It can be best for complex, cross-channel campaigns.
- Custom: Mixes more than one multi-touch attribution model or applies different models at different times, depending on your specific business model. It’s vital to A/B test and be comfortable with all models before using a custom multi-touch attribution model.
How to automate multi-touch attribution
For marketers, utilizing multi-channel attribution can help narrow down the touchpoints in which leads become revenue generators. To automate this process, marketers often look to a customer data platform (CDP). A CDP can consolidate data from multiple marketing sources and send that information to a data warehouse or other AI tool. Use the following steps to automate multi-touch attribution:
- Find analytics software that specializes in your business type (B2B, B2C, mobile).
- Look for available integrations like a flexible API to communicate with your email marketing, SEO, ad campaigns, and CRM.
- Choose the devices that you’ll run your paid ads (desktop, mobile, TV).
- Consider security and compliance factors to protect visitor and customer data.
Need help figuring out which platforms would work best for your brand? Talk to a content specialist at ClearVoice today about getting a content strategy developed for your business.
