How Attribution Helps Search Marketing Inform Other Channels

One of the many beauties of attribution management is the multi-dimensional nature of the analysis that it performs, and the extremely granular nature of the cross channel insights that it delivers to marketers as a result.

So not only can a marketer learn which publisher is producing the best ROI or most revenue, but he/she can learn which creative within that publisher is producing the best performance based on the offer, size, placement, day, time and frequency (among other campaign attributes) – taking into account all the influences that exist between campaigns and channels.

As long as there is available inventory, the marketer can then devote budget to the best performing combination of campaign attributes in addition to now being able to find inventories with similar profiles.

How Does This Apply To Search?

One of the very basic findings that attribution uncovers within search marketing results are the keywords, ad creatives, and landing pages that serve as the best “introducers,” “influencers” and “closers” within consumers conversion funnel.

In simple terms, attribution does this by analyzing all touchpoints that were experienced by its target audience – those on which a conversion took place and those that took place earlier in the funnel on which a conversion did not take place.

It then calculates the impact that those non-converting touchpoints had on an eventual conversion by comparing conversions on which those earlier touchpoints existed to conversions where those earlier touchpoints did not exist.

No search marketer will be surprised to hear that one type of insight that this attribution process uncovers is that non-branded keywords searched early in the conversion funnel don’t get as much credit as they deserve for an eventual conversion that takes place on a branded keyword. Without being introduced to a brand and influenced by a brand due to certain keywords, a branded search/conversion may never have taken place.

Attribution quantifies that credit and in doing so identifies in a multi-dimensional way the combination of search marketing attributes that serve as the best “introducers,” “influencers” and “closers.”

Applying Those Findings To Other Channels

Once a marketer has discovered the keyword, ad creative and landing page copy that serves as the best “introducer,” these attributes can be translated into the channels being used to introduce new prospects to his/her products.

This could mean the insertion of a keyword that didn’t previously exist in a print ad, TV ad or email campaign into new versions of those campaigns/channels. It could mean changing the messaging, call to action or offer of those channels.

Similarly, if you knew the combination of keyword, creative, offer, message, etc., that served as the best “closer,” these attributes could be translated into use within the channels that marketers choose to use as their best conversions.

Delving A Little Deeper

Taken one step further – which once again, a beauty of attribution management is its multi-dimensions– these best performing “introducer,” “influencer” and “closer” attribution combinations could very well vary from one product to another, one business unit to another, or any other business-specific criteria.

Armed with this level of granularity of findings, marketers could create variations of offer, creative, calls to action and messaging for each channel for each product, business unit, etc.

Will every marketer’s post-attribution search marketing findings point to dozens or hundreds of combinations of creatives that need to be crafted? Probably not, but if marketers discover that their best performing keywords, offers and messaging within the search channel are nowhere to be found within their other channels, there is definitely some low-hanging fruit waiting to be harvested.