A Complete Guide To Marketing Attribution
Ok, you hooligans, goblins, and ad wizards, I’m Alex Becker, and in this guide, we’re going to discuss marketing attribution, what you’re doing wrong, and the best way to fix it.
As CEO of Hyros, I can see what people do with their ad tracking and attribution and how they usually get it wrong. And I don’t want that for you, good people.
When people get their tracking wrong, they end up making dumb decisions that cost them money and waste their time. But, again, I don’t want that for you, so I’m here to show you what you need to do differently.
Most people running ads are running them all over the place. Ads on Facebook, YouTube, PPC ads on Google, everywhere. And it can be challenging to figure out what ads are working and what aren’t.
To understand what ads are working, you need to be able to track them correctly so that you can give credit to the ads that are performing and kill the ones that aren’t.
There are two ways to track your ads and give them the credit they deserve (or don’t).
The hard way, doing everything by hand, and the automated way, being able to customize reports and optimize ads based on granular details.
Before we jump too far down the rabbit hole, we need to discuss what attribution is in marketing and why it matters.
What is Attribution In Marketing?
Attribution is giving credit to what ads in your marketing campaigns are working. To do attribution correctly, you need as many details as possible about how your target is interacting with content, the number of times your ads reach your targets, how long they took to decide to convert, and how they accessed your content.
These details create a list of who your target is and what their behaviors are when engaging with your messaging.
Most people like to track their ads by things that just don’t make sense. Most people will track engagements, impressions, likes, and shares. All of those don’t make sense to me.
I track my ads by sales, which is kind of the whole point of advertising, to generate sales calls, opt-ins, and subscriptions, whatever it is that you’re trying to sell.
Tracking your ads by sales will let you get better insight into what is performing, and working backward from there, you can give credit to those ads that are working for you.
Getting better data on what ads are performing and being able to give attribution to those touches that are driving sales lets you optimize your ads and gain better ROI for them.
Why Does Marketing Attribution Matter?
Knowing what ads are doing the heavy lifting for your sales will make you a better advertiser. It’s simple math.
Good data = good decisions. Good decisions increase sales. It’s like the transitive property in algebra. If A=B, and B=C, then A=C.
Okay, enough algebra. It still makes my head spin all these years later.
So knowing the correct type of ads to give credit to will help you increase your ROI by letting you scale the performing ones and killing off the bad ones.
The problem I see all the time is that people rely on different reporting, like Facebook Ad Manager reports, for their attribution. Facebook is its own biggest fan. They like to give themselves credit and don’t like to dig too deep into why a person converted.
You’ll get limited data on who converted and what they performed those conversions on.
For example, suppose you’re running PPC ads and YouTube ads that your target is consuming before coming to Facebook, and let’s say that your target has been following you for a little while. In that case, Facebook is only going to give credit to the ad one step removed from Facebook.
They won’t report how long the target has been following you, what ads they’ve engaged with, or what content they’re checking out. In this example, Facebook will only look at the ad that drove them to Facebook.
So if you follow that attribution, you’d think, “Great! Facebook is killing it for me! I should scale those ads and those that led to the Facebook ad.”
That’s dumb. It’s dumb because your target may have been checking out your blog for months before clicking the one ad that drove them to Facebook.
And if all you did was to trust Facebook’s reporting, you’d end up spending money on ads that maybe aren’t as good as Facebook wants you to think and kill the ads that are doing better if you knew how to track a little bit more effectively.
The main reason you want to get the correct type of data for your marketing attribution then is that it will let you scale your ads correctly and increase your ROI without significant spending increases. That’s the definition of ROI–return on investment.
The Three Main Types Of Attribution
Tracking your ads from a sales point of view is the best way to get data that lets me see what ads are performing and which aren’t.
To do that, I need to get data on the first time a person interacted, what they did over time, and the final ad they clicked to convert.
The three types of attribution are first-touch, multi-touch, and last-touch attribution.
I don’t want to spend too much time on these attribution types as I’ve talked about them before, and you can read elsewhere about how ad tracking works, but I’ll touch on these types of models quickly.
First-touch attribution models
The first time a person interacts with your ad and engages with your content is known as first-touch attribution. First-touch lets you see the very first time your target clicked something of yours but does not follow them on their journey.
Which can be a problem if it takes your target some time to convert. With high-ticket products, it may be months before your target books a sales call. So if all you do is find out the first time they clicked, you could lose out on all the behaviors they took before converting.
And that information matters a ton. Because with high-ticket items, it takes people a while to trust the brand and to trust the product, so if all you get is the first click, you’re not going to see what videos, ads, or other content helped guide them toward building that trust and booking that sales call or opt-in or whatever.
Multi-touch attribution models
If you’re running multiple ads on various different channels, being able to track and give credit to the ads is difficult. Now, if it takes a long period of time before a person converts, that’s even more of a challenge.
Multi-touch attribution is a type of model that gives credit to all the times your target interacted with your ads, from the first click to viewing and consuming a bunch of content to the final click that led them to book a sales call with you, opt-in, subscribe, or whatever action it is you want them to perform.
The problem with multi-touch attribution is that it gives a lot of credit to the first and last touches and very little to the touches in the middle. Which, for lots of ads on multiple channels, does a disservice to those other ads.
It’s like watching a football game, and a team scores a touchdown off a long pass play. But, instead of giving credit to all the players involved in the play, you credit the center for first touching the ball and the receiver for catching it.
That doesn’t make much sense since there was a quarterback that threw the ball, blockers that gave the quarterback time, other receivers that occupied their defenders, the coaches that called the play, and so on.
In other words, there’s a lot that made the play successful, so learn how to credit everything involved.
Last-touch attribution models
Most platforms like Facebook and Google really like last-touch attribution. Look, the last touch may be what helped the target finally pull the trigger, but by no means was it acting alone.
Again, think about that football game. It’s like giving the wide receiver all the credit for scoring a touchdown without recognizing all the nuances of what had to happen for them to score.
Last-touch attribution gives too much credit to the final ad, limiting data along the way, and limiting you from seeing your target’s behaviors along their journey.
How To Give Proper Attribution
When you’re trying to run ads and give the correct type of attribution, you need to look at what ad got your target involved with your content, what actions and preferences they had along the way, and what ad converted them.
It takes the entire process to make things happen, and you want to be able to track them all to figure out what ads and content are doing well for you and which ones aren’t.
You could keep track of all that stuff by setting up a Google Analytics account or getting reports through Facebook Ad Manager. But these platforms focus on small slices of details, never really spelling it all out for you.
It’s like inviting your kid’s friends over for a pizza party. But instead of ordering a bunch of pizzas, you buy one or two slices for the kids to share. It may be funny, but it won’t achieve the goal. Your attribution models are the same.
There are problems with each one individually, so you want to track your ads better.
If you focus on your sales and give attribution to the ads that got you there, you’re better equipped to make the right decisions in scaling and optimizing your ads, increasing your ad ROI.
The Hyros Way
When tracking my ads, I focus like a laser on the ads that led to my sales calls. That way, I can double down on those performing ads and kill those that aren’t. And I can do that really well because I can track my ads from the first interaction to the last interaction with my ads.
Which is what’s so cool about Hyros.
With Hyros, the reports and attribution will follow my targets from the very first interaction, follow them through every touch point I have, and show me what led them to convert, whether it’s the first touch, last touch, or something in between.
I couldn’t do that very quickly on my own or through some of the other platforms reporting tools. What’s even cooler is that Hyros will automatically tag the ads that are working for me, so I know what to scale. In addition, it lets me see all the behaviors that my target took along the way so that I can improve my ROI for those ads.
If you’re serious about tracking your ads and giving them the right attribution to know what works for you, check out Hyros. You’ll track ads better and, through that tracking, get better data that will help you improve your ROI by 20% to 30%.
And the best part is that you won’t pay a dime if you don’t see the ROI you expect. That’s right; if you don’t get an ROI on your ads that is 20-30% better than without Hyros in a 90-day window, you don’t pay.
If you’re interested in tracking and attributing your ads better, I have good and bad news for you.
First, the bad news. I don’t do classes.
But you can subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I discuss this type of stuff every day. So there’s tons of content for you to check out.
And you can always check out our Facebook mastermind group, which has some serious heavy hitters in there. The group has over 50 million dollars of ad-buying experience, so you’re bound to learn something.
Okay, that’s it for this post. If you’re serious about ad attribution and tracking, check out Hyros and see your ad ROI improve almost immediately.
HYROS TRACKING
If you are interested in obtaining the same stats I showed in this video and even having us help you set this up, GO HERE to get more information on HYROS.
Ad Training and Tactics
While I do not sell courses, I do offer a private coaching program where I train people on the ad strategies I have used to build multiple 8 figure and 7 figures businesses. You can get more details on that HERE.
HYROS Facebook Group
It’s really simple. This group is the best media buyer Facebook group online because we make sure that every member is spending significant ad spend before joining. It’s for veteran ad buyers only and because of that the networking/information being shared is on another level. You can apply to join HERE
Here Are Our FULL Zero To Scaled Ad Courses (Free)
The Zero To SCALED Facebook Ads Course (Advanced FB Scaling)
The Zero To SCALE Youtube Ads Course (Advanced YT Scaling)
Here Are Some Other Post You Will Enjoy
Using AI + Print Tracking Is The Ultimate Scaling Edge In 2020-2021
My Top 3 Highest Converting Youtube Ads Of All Time
The Highest Converting Ad Opt In Existence