Unlocking the Power of Multi-Touch Attribution for Enhanced Campaign Insights
Discover the impact of multi-touch attribution on unraveling the customer journey. Harness the synergy of first and last-touch data to uncover valuable marketing insights.
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To succeed in digital marketing, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the complete customer journey. This will help you make well-informed decisions when it comes to your marketing strategies and resource allocation.
But, understanding the impact of a single digital tactic, let alone a complex network of nonlinear user touch points, can be challenging for any SEO practitioner.
So, where should you start?
Marketers have traditionally relied on first-touch and last-touch attribution models to enhance the effectiveness of their campaigns.
While each approach has its advantages, combining them creates a more powerful strategy known as multi-touch attribution.
In This Guide:
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First-Touch Attribution: Capturing Initial Engagement
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Last-Touch Attribution: Closing The Conversion Loop
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Best Of Both Worlds: Layering First- And Last-Touch For Holistic Insights
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Analyze How Users Are Exposed To Your Site
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Assess The Likelihood Of A Session Converting
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Determine The Impact Of Your First Entry Point On Last-Touch Conversion Rates
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Determine The Impact Of Your First Entry Point On Last-Touch Average Order Values
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Evaluate The Contribution Of Early-Journey Marketing On Other Channel Revenue
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Measure The Impact Of Early-Journey Content (Blog)
First-Touch Attribution: Capturing Initial Engagement
Discover how first-touch and last-touch attribution can work together to uncover the impact of each channel, including organic search. This combined approach will help you gain insights into the entire customer journey, from the first moment of awareness to the final conversion.
First-touch attribution is all about focusing on the very first interaction a user has with your brand. This initial touch point can happen on different channels like social media, organic search, or through referral links.
When it comes to incorporating first-touch attribution into your digital marketing strategy, there are some important benefits to consider. One of these is gaining a better understanding of awareness. First-touch attribution helps marketers see how effective their top-of-funnel marketing efforts are. By pinpointing the channels that first attract users, brands can improve their strategies for building awareness and attracting more potential customers.
Budget allocation: By understanding which channels are responsible for the first interaction, you can allocate your marketing budgets more efficiently. This means investing in the channels that drive initial engagement, helping you optimize your spending and improve your ROI.
Tailoring content: Analyzing the first touch point gives you insights into the type of content that resonates with your audience. With this information, you can tailor your content strategies to create more engaging and relevant material for your target audiences.
Last-Touch Attribution: Closing The Conversion Loop
On the flip side, last-touch attribution identifies only the final interaction before a conversion event.
Last-touch attribution may seem simple, but it actually offers several advantages. One key benefit is conversion optimization. By looking at the last touch point, marketers can pinpoint the channels or campaigns that lead directly to conversions. This insight is essential for improving strategies and boosting conversion rates.
Efficient resource allocation: By understanding the last touch point, you can allocate resources more effectively. This means investing more in the channels or campaigns that directly impact closing deals and generating revenue.
Campaign effectiveness: Last-touch attribution shows which marketing effort is responsible for driving users to take action. This insight is crucial for measuring campaign success and making data-driven decisions.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
Maximizing Insights: Integrating First-Touch and Last-Touch Attribution
When it comes to understanding customer behavior, utilizing both first-touch and last-touch attribution models can offer a more comprehensive and insightful view of the customer journey.
The result of multi-touch attribution is that it enables marketers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire conversion path. This, in turn, empowers them to make well-informed decisions at every stage. In simpler terms, multi-touch attribution will significantly enhance your insights in a variety of ways.
These are six of the most common methods.
1. Analyze How Users Are Exposed To Your Site
When using first-touch attribution, clicks are counted based on the first channel that drove a user to the site.
By utilizing this methodology, marketers can gain a clearer insight into the impact of each channel on driving initial site visibility.
In a standard last-touch attribution model, only the clicks from the final channel that a user interacted with are taken into account. This approach may result in an inflated perception of the significance of channels that are predominantly involved towards the end of the conversion process.
By using multi-touch attribution, credit for a customer's journey is spread out between the first-touch and last-touch interactions. This method offers a clearer understanding of how each channel contributes from the start of interest to the final purchase, preventing the last interaction from being overvalued or the first interaction from being undervalued.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by Search Engine Journal
2. Assess The Likelihood Of A Session Converting
In typical last-touch attribution, conversion rates are based on the channel a user last interacted with.
By focusing on late-journey channels and tactics, there is a tendency to overlook the importance of early-journey efforts.
Marketers can gain a better understanding of the impact of early-journey marketing tactics and channels by analyzing first-touch conversion rates.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
3. Determine The Impact Of Your First Entry Point On Last-Touch Conversion Rates
In this analysis, we look at the impact of early-journey marketing on last-touch conversion rates.
By comparing the typical channel conversion rate to when organic search was the first entry point, we can measure the impact of deploying early-journey tactics on late-journey performance.
In our analysis, we discovered that almost every channel showed a higher conversion rate when organic search was the initial entry point.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
4. Analyze The Influence Of Your Initial Entry Point On Last-Touch Average Order Values
When evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, it is important to consider not only the first-touch channel but also the user's initial entry point. By analyzing this data, you can gain insights into how the user's first interaction with your website or platform influences their later order value.
In this instance, we found that when organic search was the first touch point, almost all last-touch channels saw an increase in average order value.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
5. Evaluate The Contribution Of Early-Journey Marketing On Other Channel Revenue
By comparing revenue attribution between first-touch and last-touch, marketers can gain insight into how much revenue is credited to a different channel. This helps in understanding the specific contribution of each channel in guiding users through the conversion process.
In the below example, DAC discovered that 38% of revenue driven by first-touch organic search was later attributed to other channels:
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
6. Measure The Impact Of Early-Journey Content (Blog)
Early-stage research and informational content is often overlooked when using last-touch attribution to measure its value.
This content may not lead to immediate conversions, leading last-touch attribution to credit the final channel for downstream conversions. However, when looking at a longer timeline, we discovered that visitors who read blog posts tend to come back to make purchases within five weeks.
Using last-touch attribution alone, this trend would not have been identified.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
Beyond analyzing whether or not blog users convert, we can also look at the impact on conversions.
In analyzing, we found that users who visit the blog convert at a higher rate, have higher page views per visit, and a much lower bounce rate.
6 Ways To Supercharge Your Campaign Insights With Multi-Touch Attribution
Image created by DAC Group, March 2024
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, understanding how customers interact with your brand is essential for success.
First-touch and Last-touch attribution models have their own unique benefits. They can help optimize awareness-building strategies and improve conversion-focused campaigns. By combining the insights from both models, marketers can develop more targeted and successful campaigns. This can lead to better results and a higher return on investment.
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Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by DAC Group. Used with permission.
Editor's P/S:
The article provides a comprehensive overview of the benefits and limitations of first-touch and last-touch attribution models. It effectively explains how combining these models through multi-touch attribution can provide a more holistic view of the customer journey. The article also offers practical insights and examples to demonstrate how to analyze the impact of each channel and touchpoint on key metrics such as conversion rates and average order values.
Overall, the article emphasizes the importance of understanding the customer journey and using a multi-touch attribution approach to make data-driven decisions. It is a valuable resource for marketers who want to improve their campaigns and optimize their marketing efforts for better results.
