Marketing Attribution: Path to Conversion or Epic Conundrum?

by Maureen Jann, Erika Heald, and Erin Hryciw

#ContentChat is a weekly Twitter chat focused on all things content marketing. Last week, Erika Heald, Maureen Jann, and a host of other content-minded professionals gathered to discuss attribution and the challenge of measuring how content marketing contributes to reaching business goals.

Attribution. Can you think of another term that evokes such stammering discomfort from so many marketing professionals—all in four short syllables? The ambiguity involved in deciding on an attribution model and measuring its results can feel totally overwhelming—so much so that many organizations end up haphazardly choosing an approach and hoping for the best.

We hate to burst your bubble, but “hope” is not an attribution strategy. And no single approach is going to work for every business. If you’re looking to implement or refine an attribution model – or convince your organization about why it’s important to do so—you’ve got your work cut out for you. But don’t despair! We’re here to share some ideas about attribution that will help you understand its landscape—and some of its common pitfalls—in order to make good decisions (or present a convincing argument to sway decision-makers). We’re also here to offer you moral support. You can do this. WE BELIEVE IN YOU.

First, let’s set the stage by hashing out some terminology.

Attribution Basics: What Are We Really Talking About?

We’ve heard lots of definitions for attribution, ranging from formal to simple to tongue-in-cheek. Google defines attribution as "set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths." It  You could think of it as giving credit where credit is due, demonstrating who drove what in the sales process, or “showing your work.” One of our favorite ways to think about attribution in easy-to-understand terms is:

A1 Think of marketing like a road map and attribution like the turns your customer takes in order to reach the point of purchase. #contentchat

— Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski) July 30, 2018

#ContentChat community member @MariaMarchewka points out that “Attribution allows you to attribute credit to a particular source for a certain action whether it's traffic, a purchase, etc. It connects the dots from one point of your marketing funnel to another.” This is important because depending on the kind of attribution model you use, and what values you assign to each step in the process, it can be a way to understand how different activities and channels influence and contribute to conversion. Figuring out how to distribute credit along the customer purchase path—across content types, devices, channels, and time—remains one of the greatest challenges associated with attribution.

What's really important about attribution is that businesses need take into account all of the interactions a potential customer has with a brand to understand what's actually working—something that does not always happen, especially with the last touch-only model. The first and last touches are important, but a lot can happen between those two points.

One more (deliciously salty) way of looking at attribution came from #ContentChat contributor @amy_card89: “Attribution [is] the art of justifying the contribution of a piece of content to the act of moving a customer along the pipeline to conversion. Very often to senior execs who still think cold-calling is the key to closing.”

*Mic drop*

That brings us to the next important question:

How Does Content Contribute to Attribution?

This is where the ambiguous art of attribution takes a turn for the arcane.

​As content-oriented digital marketers, we know that it helps at all stages of the funnel – and the more relevant the content you serve, the more stops it can serve along the path to conversion. For example, a sample attribution path could be: Google Search > White Paper > Advertisement > Word of Mouth > Speaker at Conference > Social Media > Blog Article > Case Study > Contact Form. Bringing your customers along through quality content is paramount to the success of your marketing efforts.

A2c: In my opinion, the heart of attribution is about each interaction with your brand over time creates a cumulative sense of trust that helps a customer take the next step with you. #contentchat

— Maureen Jann (@SuperDeluxeMo) July 30, 2018

​Those of a more cynical bent will argue that that determining (or at least capturing) the causation between content and conversion is rarely that simple. #ContentChat contributor @todcordill summed it up well by saying “Just because someone looked at a piece of content doesn't mean that the content was a stepping stone in the right direction.” To which we say: fine, it may not be easy. But it is possible, as @SrinathV03 points out: “Content can be attributed for instance if you quote references or post links to the page that you have borrowed the content or taken a reference from, shall give due credits to the original content maker.” Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

What are some of the challenges and pitfalls when it comes to measuring attribution?

If we wanted to answer that question with one tweet, it would probably go something like this:

In today's digital-first, mobile-first environment, it's pretty unusual for a customer to make a purchase without consuming some sort of brand content. The challenge is being able to track all the content and map it back to the customer + the purchase it influenced. #ContentChat

— Erika Heald | Marketing Consultant (@SFerika) July 30, 2018

Digging a little deeper, it’s fair to admit there are multiple, often intersecting, issues with trying to accurately track and measure attribution. Some of these include:

• No attribution model chosen, resulting in reliance on last-click attribution by default
• A disconnect between online and offline buyer activities
• Elapsed time between content consumption and buyer decisions. @ImMeganMcCarthy points out, “Sometimes there's a delay between when someone consumes a piece of content, and when they move to the next step in the funnel. That can make it difficult to track, and you don't always know what was the trigger.”
• Absence of leadership support, or conflicting priorities
• An organizational fear of failure (resulting in a reluctance to measure on a granular level
• A lack of dedicated time to analyze results in a meaningful way

Even when organizations are acting with the best of intentions, there is a notable gap between the capabilities of existing attribution technology and the complex marketing technology stacks they’re meant to work with. Community member @pisarose called this out: “In B2B, sometimes there's a problem with technological incompatibility (CRM offline notes + display media) or tracking (linking anonymous web-browsing to a company entity in CRM)."

Finally, not understanding the customer process well enough to be able to read the trends in the data that is collected is an all-too-common problem. Community member @BillSkowronski agreed: “I think this happens most often when [a business] only cares about sales/ROI and doesn't value marketing enough to realize how important it is to understand how/why it happened.”

What's Next?

There was far too much information included in the chat to share here. If you’re interested in reviewing the full conversation, you can read the full recap on Erika’s blog.

Interested in joining the next conversation? #ContentChat happens on Twitter every Monday at 12 noon PDT / 3 p.m. EDT / 7 p.m. GMT. We’d love to see you there.