Many businesses face difficulty in efficiently recognizing and measuring user-actions on their websites. This is because, the digital multi-channel web creates chaotic data overload which contributes to the never ending struggle for the businesses to monitor multiple channels, analyze reports on how their marketing budget is consumed, and ultimately optimize their revenues.
But how do they finally realize what is really driving the best ROI? Well, understanding “Attribution” can play a chief role in unlocking valuable data which can highlight the real information that helps in realizing what really drives the best ROI.
This blog post is going to talk about what digital marketing attribution is and how multi channel funnel reports in Google Analytics can help you crack attribution analysis and achieve great results.
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Digital Marketing Attribution
Digital marketing attribution is a model that identifies the value in the action users take on a website which at the end leads to a sale. Here conversion can either be an e-commerce sale, or a visitor giving their contact details.
When it comes to the digital multi channel web you also need to think about multi-channel attribution in relation to your website. Here you need to think about the channels like:
- Organic search traffic
- Paid search traffic
- Referral traffic
- Direct traffic
- Social traffic
- Email traffic
As soon as you dig deep into attribution, you can figure out the actual conversion path structures, the visitor’s journey before they end at sale or share contact details. This would help you in improving your strategy, find ways to optimize conversions and also identify effective ways to distribute your budget.
Attribution models Offered by Google Analytics
Take a look at the different attribution models offered by Google Analytics and know when they are useful:
- Last Interaction – This model gives the entire credit to the final touch point. It can be valuable if your ads/campaigns are planned to attract audience at the point of sale or when your sales funnel is short.
- Last Non-Direct Click – This model gives 100% credit to the last channel clicked and ignores direct sessions. It could be useful for those who ponder consumers from direct sessions who have already been ‘won’ by another channel.
- Last AdWords Click – Just like the Last Interaction model, this model also gives all of the credit to the last touch point but only if there is a paid click from Google AdWords in the conversion path. Here AdWords receives 100% of the credit for the conversion. This model is useful for those who wish to find out which of their ads drive more conversions.
- First Interaction – This model gives 100% credit to the first known touch point that leads to a conversion. It is useful for those who are targeting to raise awareness with their ads/campaigns, and consider first interactions to be of more value.
- Linear – In this model credit is evenly divided on the path of conversion. This model could be useful for those who aim maintain contact and create awareness through each phase of the buying cycle.
- Time Decay – This model gives greater credit to the touchpoints which are nearest to the conversion action, but some share of credit is still given to the earlier ones. Suitable for those who value the actions closer to the sale point more than the others, or for those who have a shorter buying cycle.
- Position Based – Here majority of the credit is split between the first and last touchpoints. This model is useful when first and last interactions are valued more, but attribution is still given to the middle touchpoints.
Selecting The Right Attribution Model
Time and again, the credit for conversion or attribution is given to the user actions made at bottom of the funnel (like landing page conversion or PPC). If this holds true for you, you may be actually ignoring to give the right credit to user actions at the top of the funnel (like social and content marketing) which are equally important for conversions.
When trying to find the best model, you need to dedicate a lot of time and resource to understand and get most out of your Analytics data that you could be missing out on. The question “which marketing channel gets the credit for producing a site conversion when visitors come in your website several times via several channels before converting?” remains unanswered.
The idea should be to track only those actions which are beneficial to your company and your customers. This is where Multi channel funnel reports in Google Analytics can help, let’s know more about them.
Multi Channel Funnel Reports In Google Analytics
The Multi channel funnel Reports in Google Analytics empowers you to request multi-channel funnel data for authentic users. Information for this report is extracted from the conversion path data, which displays user actions with multiple traffic sources over multiple sessions before converting. This further enables you to study how several marketing channels power conversions over time.
Putting in simple words – Multi channel funnel reports are all about spotting the relationship between multiple channels, it basically helps in understanding your users’ actions and your ecosystem better.
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How It Helps In Attribution Modeling
Why should you use attribution modeling? Well, this is crucial to understand the buying behavior of the users who visit your website. One of the biggest benefits of using this model is that it empowers you to determine the most effective marketing channels for investment and multi channel funnel reports tell you just that. With Multi channel funnel reports you can:
- Create custom reports using Multi-Channel Funnels data.
- Integrate Multi-Channel Funnels data with your business data.
- Display Multi-Channel Funnels in new environments.
Main Purpose Of The Multi Channel Funnel Report
- Highlight the goals which bring in highest revenues.
- Evaluate the interaction and contribution of several channels in the conversion for your website.
- Analyze the funnel steps for a number of different goals.
- Observe which channels result in the maximum number of page views.
How Does It Work?
A Google Analytics funnel report analyzes the past visits which took place and if the visitor did not convert, it also sums this visit and related traffic source data as a potential assist/interaction that may lead to a sale. If the visitors convert, then these reports will display it as interactions. There are 5 different types of multi-channel reports which you can use, but selecting the right one requires careful thinking.
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Different Types Multi Channel Funnel Reports
1. Overview Report – There is a “multi channel funnel conversion visualizer” in this report which enables users to envision how multiple marketing channels work together in driving conversions.
2. Assisted Conversions Report – This report displays how many leads were initiated, assisted or completed by individual channels.
3. Top Conversion Paths Report – This report displays the unique paths users followed that led to conversion and also the total number of conversions.
4. Time Lag Report – This one displays the length of time (in days) taken by a visitors to convert.
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5. Path Length Report – Shows the total number of interactions it took in conversion.
In Conclusion
We really need to ditch the idea of last-click attribution now. Multi channel funnel reports are the right tool as it totally declutters your attribution analysis by making data available for free at your fingertips. All you need to do is examine the whole funnel and spot the challenges and opportunities to improve your online marketing mixes.
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