How much of an understanding do you have regarding your buyers and their purchase journey? No matter what your knowledge level is in this area, it’s important to remember that a buyer’s journey travels through various touchpoints before it results in a successful conversion. To enhance the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and create more personalized buyer experiences, B2B marketers must not only understand the various touchpoints and messages that make up a buyer's journey, but also which channels should receive a chunk of their marketing budget. Interestingly, this is where multi-touch attribution marketing comes into the picture.
In this blog, you’ll learn what multi-touch attribution is all about, its disparate models, benefits, and more. By the end of the blog, you’ll also understand the pitfalls that restrict B2B marketers from implementing this marketing strategy in their business.
What Is Multi-Touch Attribution?
In addition to learning about what multi-touch attribution is, this article breaks down details regarding its main models, benefits, and obstacles to look out for. Prepare to take away knowledge regarding the pitfalls that prevent B2B marketers from implementing this marketing strategy and its significance within both the B2B and B2C landscape.
Put simply, multi-touch attribution can be described as a marketing measurement process that determines the value of each touchpoint when it comes to conversions. Rather than focusing on only one ad, multi-touch attribution touches every advertising platform that customers touch.
Oftentimes, B2B marketers utilize a multi-touch marketing strategy to identify campaigns or strategies that are ideal for attracting and engaging customers. Brands can even analyze the success of their marketing efforts and also gain insights into their customers’ journey and then convert them.
Four Major Multi-Touch Attribution Models
Multi-touch attribution is comprised of four models, which consist of linear attribution, time-decay attribution, U-shaped attribution, and W-shaped attribution:
1. Linear Attribution: This model is often referred to as the even-weighting attribution model, which gives equal weight to each touchpoint within the buyer’s journey. When it comes to multi-touch attribution marketing, the linear attribution model is known as the standard.
2. Time-Decay Attribution: This model consists of prioritizing touchpoints based on their impact on conversions. In the time-decay attribution model, the least-influential touchpoint with a lower percentage should be first while the most-influential touchpoint with a higher percentage should be last.
3. U-shaped Attribution: This model is sometimes referred to as the bathtub attribution model. Within a buyer’s journey, it gives the first and last touchpoints a higher percentage of credit than the touchpoints in the middle of a buyer’s journey.
4. W-shaped Attribution: Distributing 90 percent of the credit between the first, third, and last marketing touchpoints, the W-shaped attribution model forms a particular pattern. The last 10 percent is divided between the second and fourth touchpoint, which forms the "W" shape of this model. Visits, leads, and sales are the three pivotal stages of a buyer’s journey in which the W-shaped model focuses the most.
How Important Is Multi-Touch Attribution?
In addition to multi-touch attribution providing an array of benefits, it’s important and worthwhile for companies to consider taking action if they haven’t already. Different prospects, customers, and decision-makers within numerous organizations have become more digital-savvy in recent years. They often use various devices such as mobile phones and computers as well as digital channels like social media platforms for researching and purchasing purposes.
To attract prospects, effectively engage with them, and turn them into buyers, multi-touch attribution can be a game-changing strategy. Unlike single-touch attribution, which gives credit to the first or last touchpoint before a conversion takes place, multi-touch marketing attribution gives credit to all channels and touchpoints a prospect crosses. Multi-touch attribution goes further and can provide the following benefits to a variety of companies:
1. Increase Revenue: By utilizing multi-touch attribution, brands can optimize their marketing campaigns and reach target prospects with the right content at an optimal time. Typically, companies can achieve higher conversion rates and an increase in their ROI for various marketing campaigns. B2B companies practicing multi-touch attribution reported a 15-18 percent hike in overall revenue and a 15-30 percent surge in marketing campaign efficiency.
2. Personalize Buyer Experience: By implementing the process of multi-touch attribution, brands can gather complete insights into their prospects. Then, by using those insights, brands can better understand their prospects' preferences, understand the times they’re most active within the buying journey, and from there, create messages to fit their preferences and requirements.
3. Optimize Data Utilization and Analysis: To drive personalized and customized buyers’ experiences, leveraging accurate data is crucial. With multi-touch attribution, companies can discover their prospects’ likes, dislikes, pain points, and preferences across different touchpoints and marketing channels. Then, that information can be analyzed to gain more meaningful and valuable insights to further develop a company’s products or services to suit their buyers’ wants and needs.
Multi-Touch Attribution Pitfalls to Remember
Nearly every marketing strategy or method has its own drawbacks, and the multi-touch attribution model is no exception. Below are several major roadblocks to keep in mind:
- It’s an expensive approach
- It doesn’t consider and factor in offline marketing touchpoints that buyers experience
- It’s difficult to find a correlation between spending and conversions
- The linear attribution model doesn’t give credit to every touchpoint within a buyer’s journey
By having the power to identify various factors that influence a buyer’s purchasing decisions, the multi-touch attribution model is transforming B2B marketing campaigns. It also empowers marketers to determine the most influential touchpoint within the buying-decision process and then continue their path in order to reach their goals. How does multi-touch attribution impact your organization, and would you recommend it to others?
