Marketing Attribution Definition

A marketing attribution model is the method by which a business or organization tracks lead generation across any number of different advertising campaigns and customer touch points. A touch point (or contact point) is considered any influential encounter between consumers and a business where some form of exchange or interaction takes place, whether that’s communication, the sharing of information, a consultation, etc. As a whole, touch points make up the overall customer experience.

There are different approaches to marketing attribution models, but all of them aim to measure the efficacy of important touch points along the buying cycle, specifically, which points are responsible/credited with a conversion later on.

First-touch attribution is a model which credits the first advertising campaign encountered by a potential customer. Last-touch attribution credits the last. Finally, the most complicated but data-rich model is the multi-touch attribution model, which attempts to split credit between all of the different advertising campaigns a customer might encounter. For multi-touch attribution to be successful, a business will typically employ some kind of rule set or statistical model.

Marketing Attribution Models Example

A business has several introductory points to their website—in this example, we might say that these are landing pages which receive paid traffic, popular blog posts that get shared on social media, and clickthroughs from an email marketing campaign.

The business wants to determine which entry points can be credited for the most conversions later on, so they decide to use a first-touch attribution model. By using tracking software to follow the movements and ultimate conversion of leads to paying customers, the business can determine which of their touch points are the most valuable and which may benefit from improvement.

Why are Marketing Attribution Models Important for Strategic Marketing?

Lead Generation

A properly implemented marketing attribution model can help find the touch points which resonate the most with a target audience, thus allowing businesses to refine areas where leads are most likely to respond.

Closing Sales

A properly implemented marketing attribution model can help find the touch points which resonate the most with a target audience, thus allowing businesses to refine areas where leads are most likely to respond.