Conversion attribution is a complicated-sounding term that appears to be extremely advanced when it comes to a marketing technique. In part it is true, but it actually touches upon the basics of the marketing craft.
What is conversion attribution?
Conversion attribution is one of those concepts that marketing students learn. It is also useful to all those who professionally deal with on-line marketing. Even if you want to delegate responsibilities related to promotion and sales to someone, it is worth knowing what they will do on your behalf and what tools they will use.
Conversion attribution is perhaps a poorly translated term from English. In fact, its meaning is simple. Conversion - that is, a sale or other specific action performed by the customer, and attribution is the assignment of that action to the traffic source. Conversion attribution can be done on a general level when we evaluate which sources brought traffic (e.g. search engine, Instagram, newsletter, etc.).
You can also compare specific posts, advertising campaigns, Google Ads, etc. This allows you to select the most effective of them. Currently, this offers a chance to minimize missed advertising spending. Because the one that "does not work" can be removed very quickly, and free funds can be transferred to one that attracts more users. These tools are mainly used by marketers. However, by being aware of how it works, you can control their actions and use such services consciously.
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How conversion attribution modeling works
It very often happens that a customer makes a purchase decision only after a long time. It is not enough to see an advertisement once to make a choice. Especially if it is a product that is complex and expensive. Then, modeling conversion attribution allows you to track which communication channels are responsible for the final purchase decision and to what extent.
You may find that your purchasing decision is influenced by many small elements of your strategy, each of which is very important. Eg banners, e-mail marketing, content marketing and YouTube guides. They all result in clicking on a link or visiting a website, although the purchase is made through organic search.) On the other hand, you may find that many different expensive techniques and steps are not producing any results and that your customers visit you from only one source, for example.
On-line and off-line activities
It is worth mentioning the risk that conversion attribution can pose without taking into account different traffic sources. Suppose the customer ultimately enters the site through organic search and their decision was made up of several previous visits through different sources that were key to gradually building brand awareness and trust.
Conversion attribution alone will indicate that search engines are the source of the traffic. An inexperienced marketer on this basis could decide to abandon the remaining activities. After a few months, there would be fewer buyers, and he would not know why ... For this reason, modeling cannot be avoided. What is it about?
"The research conducted so far on the problem of attribution from various sources ignores the impact of pre-conversion actions (e.g. clicks) and is often not able to present a model of trends and sequence of behaviors based on data on user behavior. Worse, the current market standard is to use arbitrary rules to model attribution. Np. the popular rule of the last point of contact, which grants 100 percent. merit for the last place where the customer meets the brand, without taking real factors into account"- write researchers from University College London in the study" Learning Multi-touch Conversion Attributionwith Dual-attention Mechanisms for Online Advertising ".
Advantages and disadvantages of conversion attribution
The advantage of conversion attribution is, of course, the ability to optimize costs and accurately track customer behavior paths. It's invaluable sales support, building campaigns or sales funnels.
"In recent years, online advertising has shifted from the traditional payment-per-impression model to the pay-per-click page, and more recently to the pay-per-conversion model. " This is the opinion of the authors of the work "The Multiple Attribution Problem in Pay-Per-Conversion Advertising" published in 2011. Since then, conversion attribution has become a standard tool for marketers who could start measuring the effects of their work and advertising campaigns.
Conversion attribution modeling and conversion itself, however, can fail both in the online and offline world. Despite the arsenal of expensive tools, it may turn out that they are simply unreliable. Live surveys or measuring traffic in the store, and online activity tracking do not always give reliable results. In addition, you may not consider one of the traffic sources that will prove to be crucial. Such an often overlooked factor is e.g. ROPO effect or recommendations and recommendations. However, an experienced marketer knows how to use data on all traffic sources to the maximum efficiency and how to model attribution in Google Ads, on Facebook or thanks to Google Analytics.