One way to maximise the ROI of a marketing campaign is to measure, attribute and manage performance throughout the buyer’s journey. However, many companies still measure ROI based on superficial analyses, with no precision or specialised tools.
The most common attribution model used to measure conversion is the so-called ‘last click’, which attributes the total percentage of a conversion to the a consumer’s last point of contact.
There are two problems with this model. First, it considers a linear buyer’s journey, and we know it is no longer linear. Second, the method does not accurately show how much influence each point of contact or campaign had on the buyer’s journey and ultimately the purchase.
We know the buyer’s journey has taken on multiple formats other than the classic conversion funnel. With more channels powered by technology, the user’s contact with the brand may have happened because of several online or offline, organic or sponsored initiatives that directly influenced the final conversion – not always the most successful one was the so-called last click.
This problem blinds or deceives executives who are not familiar with the attribution approach; their investment decisions end up focusing on the last point of contact, a mistake that can have a heavy burden on their budget.