Imagine your client asks, “How many leads did our SEO, social media, or PPC strategies land for us this month?” Would you talk about Twitter engagement, long-term brand awareness, and “staying top-of-mind”? Or could you confidently say, “We drove 12,000 quality hits to your blog last month, converting at least 2% into leads”?
Via attribution modeling, a simplified answer to such questions is possible. The First and the Last touch models often help. The first touch model gives credit to the initial interaction a customer has with your brand. While the last touch model attributes success to the final interaction before conversion.
Many agencies still rely on these basic models. First and last-touch attribution models do not fully capture the complicated nature of the customer journey. There are significant gaps in what you know about how your marketing initiatives actually influence conversions.
Let's discuss the limitations of both models along with the solutions.
The Challenges With Content Marketing Attribution
Devesh Khanal, co-founder of Grow & Convert, explains why most agencies don’t do content marketing attribution:
- Increasing business metrics (such as leads, trial signups, or sales) is hard.
- Reporting on and communicating those results is also hard (at least when it comes to blog content)
Marketing attribution is challenging for a number of reasons, including:
- Which metrics do you track—impressions, social engagement, views?
- Tracking is often device-specific. What if a customer sees a post on their phone but buys on their desktop?
- You only see online interactions, missing offline touchpoints like word-of-mouth.
- Different attribution models yield varying results, adding to the confusion.
First-Touch Attribution Model
First touch attribution credits the conversion to the first interaction the lead has with your site, whether that’s a landing page from a Facebook ad or a clickthrough to your site from organic search results. First-touch attribution is useful for learning which pieces of content are converting brand-new leads.
First-touch attribution, for example, would attribute the initial spark of interest in your brand to early touchpoints such as an engaging blog post, fascinating social media post, or educational video.
The model is effective for companies that focus on "demand generation" or expose their brand to potential clients. Using first-touch attribution, you can see which marketing channels lead customers to your website. For instance, it can demonstrate how well content marketing, paid advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO) draw in new customers.
Last-Touch Attribution Model
Last touch attribution credits conversion to the last step a user took, such as clicking on a marketing channel that generates new sales opportunities. Only the final touchpoint will receive credit for the conversion, even if a user clicks on 50 separate marketing touchpoints prior to converting.
The last-touch attribution is good at showing you which pieces of content tend to lead immediately to a conversion. This typically means the topic is one that brings in bottom-of-funnel traffic — i.e., people who are ready to buy. For example, for software companies, bottom-of-the-funnel pieces might rank for comparison terms like this:
Or direct-product-related queries like this:
Covering topics like these is part of a good marketing strategy because they tend to bring in lots of last-click conversions. If you set up last-touch attribution, you’ll be able to put a finger exactly on which piece of content — if it is a piece of content — is the last touchpoint that leads to a free trial or a consultation call.
The Limitations of First and Last Touch Attribution
The market is too complex these days, so one can not just rely solely on first or last-touch attribution models. If they do so, it can lead to an incomplete understanding of their marketing effectiveness. These models do provide some insight, but they fall short in several key areas.
Let us discuss why these models aren’t enough and how they are limiting the marketing strategies to meet their ultimate potential.
A. Overemphasis on Single Touchpoints
Too much focus is placed on a single interaction in the customer journey by both first and last-touch attribution models. A typical modern retail consumer needs 56 touch points on average before completing a purchase. Brands miss out on 55 additional encounters that could have led to the ultimate conversion if they concentrated entirely on the first or last interaction. This restricted focus may cause lost opportunities for optimizing the marketing approach overall.
B. Ignoring the Customer Journey's Complexity
The consumer journey of today is intricate, involving numerous platforms, channels, and electronic devices. Over 80% of consumers conduct internet research before making an offline purchase, or the other way around, according to studies. First and last-touch attribution models, on the other hand, overlook these details and do not take into consideration the full series of encounters that impact a purchase decision. Because of this, these models only paint a partial picture, ignoring the ways in which many marketing channels interact to increase sales.
C. Inaccurate Allocation of Credit to Marketing Channels
While last-touch attribution only credits the last interaction before conversion for success, first-touch attribution offers full credit to the initial one. However, just 4% of internet users click on advertisements, and there is almost no link between click-through rates and purchasing patterns. These models wrongly assign credit by concentrating only on the first or last interaction, neglecting the contributions of other channels that are key in pushing the client toward conversion.
D. Negative Impact on Marketing Decision-making
As stated earlier, they misquote the ultimate channels for conversion, which might have negative effects on the decisions that the marketing teams make when relying on them. For example, first-touch attribution simply reveals which campaign first exposed the customer to the company; it does not tell which marketing pieces promoted actual sales. Also, earlier interactions that were helpful in directing the customer through the buying funnel are overlooked by last-touch attribution. This could result in an emphasis on initiatives that are not quite as successful. Therefore, there is a possible negative impact on the business's return on investment and general marketing performance.
The Importance of Multi-Touch Attribution
Basically, the marketing rule of seven says - that a purchase will not occur until after an average of 7 interactions with your brand. Thus, multi-touch attribution is required to ensure that every touchpoint receives the appropriate credit so that marketers may decide where to invest the budget.
Multi-touch attribution offers the most comprehensive picture of the customer journey if there is more than just one channel. Using this strategy, you can see which activities have the biggest influence on conversions by giving each client touchpoint a value.
Therefore, Multi-touch attribution credits each marketing touchpoint that impacts a customer's conversion, not just the first or last touchpoint.
Common Multi-Touch Attribution Models
Multi-touch attribution comes in several types. It is the responsibility of every type to assign varying degrees of credit to various stages of the journey. The table below clearly depicts the ultimate breakdown.
Attribution Model
Description
Credit Distribution
Key Benefits
Drawbacks
Linear Multi-Touch
Distributes credit equally across all touchpoints in the customer journey.
Equal credit to all touchpoints
It provides a balanced view of all interactions and is simple to understand and implement.
Does not highlight which touchpoints were most influential; it lacks detailed insights.
Time Decay Multi-Touch
Gives more credit to touchpoints closer to the final sale, assuming they have more influence.
More credit to recent touchpoints
It reflects the influence of recent interactions and is useful for understanding the impact of the last interactions.
It may undervalue earlier touchpoints that contributed to initial interest and be biased toward final interactions.
U-Shaped Multi-Touch
Assigns more credit to the first and last touchpoints in the journey, with less to the middle.
First and last touchpoints receive 40% each; middle touchpoints receive 20%
It highlights the importance of initial and final interactions and is useful for understanding top- and bottom-of-funnel effectiveness.
It overlooks the significance of middle touchpoints; it may miss important insights about the journey.
W-Shaped Multi-Touch
Provides credit to the first touch, lead creation, and last touchpoints, focusing on key stages.
First touch, lead creation, and last touch each receive significant credit
It offers a more detailed view by recognizing key stages in the journey, which is good for complex sales processes.
It may not fully capture the impact of all touchpoints; it is best suited for journeys with clear lead creation points.
Full Path Multi-Touch
Distributes credit equally across four key stages: first touch, lead creation, opportunity creation, and close.
Equal credit to four key stages (22.5% each)
A comprehensive model that covers the entire journey is useful for high-consideration purchases.
Complex to implement and interpret; it may be too granular for simpler sales processes.
Custom Multi-Touch
Tailor-made attribution model based on specific business needs and insights.
Custom distribution based on chosen touchpoints
Highly flexible; can be adjusted to fit unique business models and customer journeys.
It requires significant time and experimentation to design; it may be complex to manage.
Implementing Multi-Touch Attribution
Implementing multi-touch attribution models requires the important steps given below:
Choosing the Right Attribution Model
You can implement the attribution model only after you choose the correct one for your requirements. This is a bit of a task as the current customer journey is way more complicated than that of earlier times. There is no linear path from discovery to purchase, and on top of that, it is threatening to get more complicated due to buyer journeys’ constant evolution.
So, what do you do to choose the best model to implement?
- Keep well-defined goals
- Know what touchpoints you need to track
- Decide on your marketing campaigns and your company’s needs
Data Collection and Analysis
After deciding what to track, one can collect data and do a proper analysis. Analytics software or integrations are a simpler method for companies without internal technological expertise to collect data. These tools can be easily integrated with customer relationship management tools, and some marketing platforms have built-in attribution features.
A JavaScript tracking on-page code can also be added to a website to track users' movements, page views, clicks, and origins, providing valuable insights into the customer journey. The majority of analytics programs track website visitors with a straightforward code snippet. However, other companies would rather design their own tracking system from scratch. They now have more control, but putting it up requires programmers.
Integrating Attribution Data into Marketing Decision-making
Lastly comes the attribution part. The data collected tells it all—the most effective touchpoints. Now, companies will know very well the –
- Places of successful customer acquisition
- Places to spend their marketing budget
As a business, you need to continuously experiment with attribution models and refine them in line with the customer journey.
How to Set Up Any-Touch Attribution in Google Analytics?
1. On the Landing Pages Tab, Click ‘Add Segment.’
2. Click ‘New Segment.’
3. Choose the ‘Sequence’ Filter.
This lets you know about anyone who lands on a set of pages that you created for the client.
4. Enter the Regex.
A regex should consist of all the URLs you’ve created for the client, separated by the “;” symbol. You can learn more about regular expressions (regex) and how to format them here.
5. Pick the Goal You Want to Track.
Make sure the picker is set to “per session >= 1”
6. Choose ‘Sequence start’ to Be Either ‘First user interaction’ or ‘Any user interaction.’
If you choose “Sequence start” to be “First user interaction,” you’ll see how many sessions and how many users started their session on one of the pages you created for the client before converting at the end of the session.
On the other hand, if you choose “Any user interaction,” you’ll see how many users landed on any one of your pages before they converted in that session. (This results in the data for any-touch attribution).
Devesh says that Grow & Convert uses the any-touch model in client conversations because "This lets you tell your client, ‘Here's the effect of our SEO work, that unique content that we created.’"And honestly? This just makes you look really good.
Choose Comprehensive Dashboards by ReportGarden for Better Attribution
Now, attribution can be an easy ongoing process. This is where your business may maximize its marketing efforts to concentrate on the powerful channels that result in sales. With ReportGarden, excelling in attribution is easier than ever. You can optimize your marketing strategies by focusing on influential channels with our elegant, customizable dashboards.
Additionally, you can automate reporting, save time, and integrate data from multiple sources in no time. There are custom widgets plus a unified platform that will help you gain a comprehensive view of your marketing performance and curate compelling stories effortlessly.
FAQs
1. What are the drawbacks of the multi-touch attribution model?
Some drawbacks of MTA models are as follows:
- Complex and time-consuming implementation
- Challenges in model selection
- Difficulty in measuring and comparing performance because of limitations and assumptions
2. How to Talk to Clients About Marketing Attribution?
Here are some ways you can help your client understand all the data:
- Use a dashboard tool like Google Data Studio or ReportGarden to help your client visualize this info.
- Explain the buyer’s journey to them
- Show them how your content strategy ties into that journey, even if a lead didn’t convert directly from one of your posts.
It makes it easier to manage your clients, make them feel happy about you, and distinguish yourself from other SEO agencies that are only reporting on organic traffic.
