Digital attribution is changing as we know it heading into 2022. These shifts have been spearheaded by 1st-party data changes (e.g., going cookieless), bringing businesses–such as yours–into a brave new world. 

Fortunately, those changes won’t impact your company negatively if you follow the sound digital marketing strategy and planning suggestions discussed below.

What is Digital Marketing Attribution?

In short, marketing attribution, in general, involves understanding the “where” of your closed sales. 

What was the sequence of events/user actions that drove the conversion? Who/what initiated the user action? And what were the steps and the channels that made the magic happen?

Understanding your attribution gives you a clear picture of your most successful (and, in turn, least successful) marketing channels. This way, you know where to allocate your efforts and resources and what you should avoid. 

Where is Digital Marketing Attribution Headed?

Sure–it’d be simpler for your digital marketing strategy and planning if all customers/clients took the same path toward conversions. But that’s not how it works. Especially heading into 2022. 

As such, knowing what’s required during each touchpoint (e.g., the time each touch takes and what nurturing action is needed) becomes that much more challenging. 

Most important current-day is an awareness of the original lead source and the marketing/sales initiative that truly initiated the conversion.

Playing the Long Game With Digital Marketing Attribution

Here’s an example from our own business to show we practice what we preach at Goose Digital.

Several financial organizations we’ve partnered with hired us 2 years after their first touchpoint at a tradeshow. They just needed time before their needs aligned with our services.

These long-term opportunities arose because we nurtured those companies through:

  • A go-to-market program
  • Email newsletters
  • Webinars

Then, EVENTUALLY, down the line, these companies realized we had a need we could meet due to our branding and education efforts.

This awareness development is often missed these days, thus making it even more crucial moving forward. We also ensure these various marketing and branding facets are aligned with sales to drive the conversion and refine the go-to-market program.

Measuring What’s Immeasurable

Yes–you can measure quality/qualified leads you pull in at a tradeshow. And you can ascertain cost per conversion and cost per customer on keyword campaigns, for instance. All of this is highly valuable, but you have to go beyond what’s measurable to bolster your digital marketing attribution efforts, making things tricky.

Many brands must take various actions to become a strong presence in their given market that plainly can’t be measured. So, you have to ask how to attribute anything to these intangible actions that you can’t put a precise number on. 

As such, you need to position your data to attribute those long-term branding-based conversions. 

In the above vein, you don’t want to get too stuck on what single channels (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, GoogleAds) are delivering in a vacuum. 

While getting “micro” with your assessments has its place, a better indicator is looking at your total marketing spend versus revenue earned. With that ratio, you can see what percentage of the earnings comes from multi-year branding/marketing efforts. 

Also, some marketing experts even suggest dedicating part of your marketing budget strictly toward non-attributable/immeasurable branding tactics. This number might add up to 10% of your spending. The rest of your initiatives must be highly measurable to make up the difference.  

Prioritizing Short-Term Attribution

There is a delicate balance here. You need to play the long game, but you also need results now. 

Thus, there’s a need for a near-term revenue strategy based on direct responses and Google keywords, for instance. After all, calendar years have targets. So don’t ignore those directly measurable efforts.

Digital marketing attribution requires plenty of nuances. Fortunately, we’re here to help at Goose Digital. Contact us today to learn more.