Did you know that 45% of digital touchpoints aren’t visible via traditional marketing attribution tools? The advanced capabilities of Google Analytics and Facebook Attribution offer a workaround. In this article, we discuss:
- 3 things to remember when using Google Analytics for marketing attribution
- How to set up Facebook’s Attribution platform
- Which of the two belongs in your martech stack
Do you know what drives your customers to convert? In the current digital landscape, it can be difficult to cut through the noise and track the exact cause of conversion. That’s where marketing attribution comes in.
Marketing attribution creates an end-to-end map of your customer’s journey, with every touchpoint and their role in conversion. This helps you choose marketing investments, platform selection, and campaign delivery.
Popular marketing platforms, including Google and Facebook, offer myriad ways to track attribution. In addition to a basic attribution feature in Facebook ads, the company also launched a robust standalone app last year. Let’s look at how to get started with marketing attribution with Google and Facebook.
Learn More: What We’ve Learned From Building Attribution Models for the Top Multichannel Retailers
3 Things to Remember When Using Google Analytics to Map Customer Journeys
The first question to ask is: What is conversion? Depending on the nature of your business and your campaign objectives, conversions can comprise an actual purchase, a website click, a specific level of engagement, or any other type of interaction that you’re looking for. Google Analytics lets you create multi-channel funnel reports that show exactly how different channels come together to create a conversion.
Here are three tips to get you started with multi-channel funnel reports on Google Analytics.
1. Select your report type intelligently
There are five types of reports available on Google Analytics, and each with its own unique functionality. Apart from accessing a basic Overview and Path Length analysis, you can also view:
- Assisted Conversions – each channel assigned a value that it adds to the customer experience
- Top Conversion Path – the unique channels in use and the value of each
- Time Lag Report – how many days it took for the customer to convert
2. Deep dive into the conversion path
A customer may be led to purchase your product by a combination of channels. For example, a display ad may lead to social media, where they interact with a paid ad and are finally prompted to conduct an organic search which ends in a purchase. This entire journey is made visible by Google Analytics.
Google Analytics also offers 17 different dimensions to help you analyze conversion paths, such as keyword-based analysis, ad word analysis, display URL analysis, and so on. Use this feature to zero in on how your targeted campaign or marketing activity is performing in terms of conversion rates.
3. Customize your Channel Labels
The touchpoints on the conversion path are called Channels. Google Analytics offers seven default channels for marketing attribution, including popular parameters such as organic search, display, and referrals. But you can also define your own Channel Label, depending on which criteria you are looking to analyze. For example, specific keywords can be set as a parameter to track attribution, which will help optimize your SEO campaigns.
This is only scratching the surface of the Google Analytics platform for marketing attribution. The tool is intuitive and easy-to-use, and with a little time and effort, you can easily familiarize yourself with its plethora of features.
Learn More: 4 Must-Have Data Points for Successful Marketing Attribution
Setting Up Your Facebook Attribution Platform for Marketing Success
From the very beginning, it is possible to track ad performance on Facebook and link specific assets to conversion. However, given the closed nature of the platform, this was limited primarily to last-click attribution. In other words, you couldn’t gain visibility into the entire customer journey, inside and outside of Facebook.
With the new Facebook Attribution tool, you can track attribution with specific Facebook ads, across Facebook-owned channels such as Instagram or Messenger as well as external publishers. Here’s how to set it up:
Step 1. Login to your Facebook Business Manager account or create one.
Step 2. Select Facebook Attribution from the menu of options.
Step 3. Create a Line of Business (you can choose from a single business to separate brands, regions, or an agency).
Step 4. You will then be instructed to set up different ad accounts, integrating multiple data sources. This step is vital — as you aggregate more and more data sources, your marketing attribution will reach new levels of accuracy and focus.
The Facebook Attribution tool is surprisingly easy-to-use. It offers six different types of models: Last Touch, Positional, Even Credit, Time Decay, Data-Driven, and Last Click. Once you are familiar with each functionality, you can even download customized reports to help you detect correlations, variances from expectations, and dominant behavior patterns. For example, you can customize marketing attribution reports to understand what share of conversions are happening on the desktop and how many on mobile.
Learn More: Marketing Attribution Systems: A Quick Look at the Options
Facebook, Google or Both?
With Facebook’s 2018 update, Google Analytics risks losing some ground among marketers. Both now allow multi-channel attribution, covering a wide selection of channels and touchpoints. However, there are a few key differences.
If your business is heavily dependent on Facebook Ads to reach customers, it’s new attribution tool will be very helpful. It offers another way to assess and evaluate customer sentiment, directly linked to top-line performance.
On the other hand, Google Analytics is a priority for most marketers. With a basic understanding of its attribution capabilities, you can perfectly realign your digital assets for the highest possible conversion rates. We recommend that you look at Google’s free features and definitely subscribe to Facebook Attribution, which is both insightful and easy on the eye!
How do you approach marketing attribution for your brand? Tell us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.