Does Attribution REALLY Matter for Marketers?

When it comes to marketing buzzwords and the latest, greatest martech “fads,” the idea of marketing attribution is one that is causing a lot of hype and excitement. There are numerous marketing attribution tools and methods, but in today's economy, the role of attribution usually still falls on the shoulders of the marketer, without the option to acquire a new piece of the martech stack. As a result, some marketers don't seem to place as much value on attribution, as it is a manual and time consuming task with lots of room for user error.

However, as CMOs and CEOs continue to shift focus around ROI or the value of your marketing investments, using attribution as an intelligence tool to prove why your efforts are paying off could be the single most important thing you nail down in your role.

So, what exactly does attribution look like for today's marketer? I like this definition from Marketing Evolution: “Marketing attribution is the practice of evaluating the marketing touchpoints a consumer encounters on their path to purchase. The goal of attribution is to determine which channels and messages had the greatest impact on the decision to convert, or take the desired next step.”

With that definition in mind, let's discuss why attribution matters. At a fundamental level, in order for a marketer to prove the value of their role, understanding the exact route a user took prior to a sale can be just as important as the sale itself. The way that demos and wins are attributed can drastically influence important decisions regarding your company's marketing budget and future business goals. The end goal of attribution is for you as a marketer to determine if you are effectively spending your budget and optimizing it effectively based on revenue generated, which means you need to know the channel and creative touchpoint that lead to the demo set or purchase within the conversion process.

Beyond being able to make accurate budgeting decisions and calculate future projections, marketers know that understanding the creative that helped convert your user into a lead can govern the production of future creative pieces - from white papers, to case studies, to ads. When marketers make it a priority to accurately attribute a win all the way back to the ad that was initially clicked, they can use this knowledge to influence ongoing creative production. Media spend can be allocated towards the ads that are leading to concrete ROI, rather than just the ads that are “performing well” from a marketing perspective. As companies continue to set lofty growth goals, the lines between sales KPIs and marketing KPIs will continue to be blurred. Each department will be responsible for contributing to overall ROI, which means that marketers are going to need to have attribution practices in place in order to justify where they are funnelling their resources. Marketers can't be held accountable only for things like total reach, or impressions served, or clicks, or even leads generated. The quality of the leads and traffic that they are bringing to the table needs to be able to speak for itself, and the only way this can happen is if attribution becomes and remains a priority for marketers.

So what does this mean for the modern day marketer? Accurate attribution matters. And in this day and age with all of the technology available to us, it's a simple standard that can easily be applied to your workflow. While many marketers still handle attribution manually, this can get messy and leave much room for error. It's also incredibly time consuming. The alternative could be purchasing software that handles the attribution process, but this can also be a challenge. Oftentimes these solutions come at a price, and require almost as much manual work and training due to difficult integrations and data inputs as doing it by hand. Don't let this deter you. Do your research and find a solution that works for you and your company, that ensures accurate attribution so you can make decisions in real time. Genly's solution offers a cost-per-lead model, with fully scalable digital ad campaigns that generate guaranteed leads, and provides full visibility into the lead journey through a dashboard. The dashboard offers full transparency into both media and sales performance, with a seamless CRM integration. This is the ideal solution that allows companies to accurately project future revenue growth, while having easy access to real-time data to provide the foundation for the projections.

Interested in learning more about Genly's dashboard and attribution features? CLICK HERE to schedule a demo!