Why Agencies Need Market Attribution

Market attribution – or marketing attribution – is determining the media channel driving purchases. Prior to the purchase of a product or service, customers are exposed to numerous marketing touchpoints which cover a wide range of interactions. To Illustrate, these interactions can be seeing an online promotion, visiting your website, calling the number on a roadside sign, and much more. Tracking engagements and assigning the value from a sale to the marketing touchpoints a customer experienced before the purchase is marketing attribution. Simply attribution is knowing the full buyer’s journey from the first contact through to the final purchase.

The Importance of Market Attribution

Attribution is a vital part of any digital marketing agency’s planning strategy because marketing attribution highlights which marketing efforts are working and the cost in relation to the result. It’s about determining the steps taken by a prospect prior to converting. While the numbers vary greatly depending on the type of product or service being sold, various research papers show qualified prospects on your website are there to research, and a significant portion of them will eventually buy from you – or your competitors. Effective marketing attribution provides data on the history of prospects to your site. History such as where they came from, what they engaged with on your site is appended with other channel activity like social media, email and tracked phones. The more data the sales team has regarding prospect activity and interests, the better prepared they are to engage. The ability to track conversions accurately directly correlates to the success of meeting a client’s needs and closing the sale.

The Different Channels of Market Attribution

The goal of marketing attribution is to quantify each advertising influence impression regarding a buyer’s choice of purchase. With attribution engaged, compare the value of different marketing channels including:

• Paid and Organic Search
• Email
• Display Ads
• Social Media
• Website conversions
• Appointment scheduling
• Live chat interaction
• and other channels

The Ultimate Benefits Yielded by Market Attribution

The three major benefits of attribution marketers have recognized after using attribution solutions themselves:

1. Clear View of the Entire Purchasing Process: It provides data and analysis for how marketing and outbound efforts are affecting the whole purchasing process. Agencies can effectively demonstrate the value they provide their clients.
2. Channel and Campaign Performance Measurement: Marketers see what channels and programs are driving the most revenue, and are able to optimize programs based on those insights. Agencies can clearly show how their efforts are impacting their client’s bottom line.
3. Monitor After the Conversion: You got the conversion! Congratulations. But this does not mean the buyer’s journey is at an end. Attribution not only tracks the journey before the sale, it continues to track the buyer post-conversion.

Do you have full marketing attribution for your prospects buyer’s journey? If not, ActiveDEMAND can help.

How to Adopt Marketing Automation as an Agency

So as an agency where do you begin? How do you implement a digital marketing agency solution? We have a white paper and it outlines:

• What marketing automation brings to the table
• How to deploy it first for your agency
• Options on billing clients for marketing automation
• New service lanes that you can add through use of this technology

Written by Eric Murphy

Eric Murphy is the Digital Marketing Manager at ActiveDEMAND. He is responsible for driving the marketing strategy for the ActiveDEMAND integrated marketing platform. He has a strong background in online marketing, communications and working closely with sales teams. For many years Eric was an evangelist and marketer for the industrial communications community through guest articles, maintaining industry blogs and speaking at conferences and other events.