What is Attribution in Marketing: The Role of Channel Attribution in the Customer Journey

Know your audience. If you’ve been in digital marketing for any time at all, you’ll have heard the expression, and understand its value.

Having a detailed insight into the behaviors, interests, and needs of your target customer base is absolutely essential to succeed in modern marketing.

But how important is it to know where your leads are coming from?

In this article, we’ll look at channel attribution, and consider the customer journey in more detail to learn more about our audience.

What is Customer Journey Analytics?

The concept of mapping the customer journey is not new — marketers have been tracking their customer’s movements for years. However, it is only in recent times that data analytics has found its way to the forefront of marketing.

Not so long ago, it was a little more challenging to get a good overview of your ad performance for all the following together:

• Ad views without clicks
• Direct traffic
• Organic traffic
• Referral traffic
• Cross-device journeys

Nowadays though, marketers have more advanced tools at their disposal, which paves the way for analytics-driven solutions when it comes to our traffic.

What is the Google Multi-Channel Funnel (MCF)?

Google MCF allows you to see how all your separate marketing channels are working together to generate conversions or sales on your website. This enables marketers to capture various digital touchpoints in the customer journey so that they can chart the paths users are taking before they convert.

Typically, the conversion is viewed as the end of the journey. But knowing more about how they got there is important because it allows us to see how we can streamline our marketing funnel for future visitors.

What is Multi-Session Touch Point?

Let’s say you have an online store selling sports shoes. Your SEO is looking good, and you’re building brand awareness with some paid ads.

The customer journey may look a little like this:

• A few weeks ago, a user saw your ad, clicked on it, and then browsed a few categories on your website. He decided not to buy at that point and left your site after a few minutes.
• The following week, he sees your ad while browsing Facebook. With the prior encounter in mind, he is drawn to click this ad and again does a little “window shopping” before leaving without purchasing.
• The day before conversion, he searches Google for “men’s sports shoes”, and sees your organic link. He clicks on it to visit your site and eventually buys some shoes.

This user may follow the same process in several different sessions. This is known as a multi-session touchpoint. Some users may even use several devices throughout this conversion path.

Google uses cookies to track the different interactions users make, and it can track these interactions for up to 90 days. Unfortunately, if someone clears their cookies or takes longer than 90 days, you’ll not be able to track the data.

The Key Role of Channel Attribution in the Customer Journey

From the earlier example, we can see there were several channels involved before the conversion:

• Google Search Paid Ad
• Facebook Ads
• Google Organic Search (SEO)

So, which channel really gets credited with the conversion?

Google will credit the “last click” with the conversion, so your SEO is the winner here. However, that’s not to disregard the impact of your paid ads.

Here’s the thing:

Typically, people need to be exposed to a brand at least seven times before they buy. Therefore, without your paid ads, you would not have had the brand awareness that influenced your customer’s decision.

It would be a rash decision to cut out your paid ads just because the SEO got the credit, and doing so may seriously damage your conversion rates.

Some channels may be better at clinching the sale, while others are better for boosting brand awareness, and effectively lighting the touch paper on the conversion path.

How You Can Learn From Channel Attribution Analysis?

You can learn a lot about the customer journey by looking at your channel attribution, such as discovering:

• Which channel is starting the customer journey?
• Which channel has the biggest impact on conversions?
• Which channel helps close the most sales?
• How do different channels interact and intertwine to generate conversions?
• How many channels do users engage in before converting?
• How many different unique paths are there before conversions?

Google Ads has introduced multiple ways for marketers to measure the attribution on the platform:

• Last Click — This is the default attribution model. The last click before conversion is given the credit.
• First Click — This will credit the first click in the conversion path.
• Linear — Every digital touch point along the conversion path will get equal credit of the conversion.
• Time Decay — Whichever touchpoints are closest to the sale will get most of the credit. This is time-based, so older touchpoints get less credit.
• Position-Based — The first click and the last click each get 40% of the credit, while the other 20% is evenly shared between the middle touchpoints.

Dig Into the Data to Understand the Customer Journey

The customer journey is not a random wandering through the web before a final impulsive decision to buy — it is a gradual process that is aligned with user intent. The more we know about that intent and the journey towards a purchase, the better we can serve our audiences.

Using the Google Multi-Channel Funnel allows you to measure the attribution of your various marketing channels, including organic search and Facebook Ads. This is different from the data you can get it Google Analytics, and should be treated separately.

To really get the most from this type of analysis, you should visualize the data to understand the customer journey on a deeper level.