Marketing
attribution has been a subject of discussion in recent years. It has become a
necessity for advertisers as well as agencies in order to better control their
marketing costs. Here at Mazeberry, we have worked for 4 years (when this
article was written) in this industry and have managed to identify the traps
that advertisers tend to fall into when they start an attribution project. Here
are 5 mistakes to avoid when starting a marketing attribution project.
- Number 1: Confusing attribution and
deduplication
- Number 2: Assigning the project to the
wrong person
- Number 3: Not involving all stakeholders
- Number 4: Wanting to go too fast
- Number 5: Using the wrong marketing
attribution rule
Mistake number 1:
Confusing marketing attribution and deduplication
In the marketing
industry, attribution and deduplication have two distinct roles depending on
the problems involved. Whereas attribution can be used to allocate and divide
the result of a conversion objective to the marketing channels which have had a
direct or indirect contribution (check our article about marketing attribution),
deduplication determines the remuneration of the marketing channels by
performance (CPA). Deduplication is therefore only applicable for CPA channels
where the result is correlated to the activation of a tag on the site.
Thus, depending on
the problem, you will have to choose attribution or deduplication :
- Are you primarily investing in channels
by performance (like affiliation) and want to reduce your costs? => Deduplication
- Do you want to generate dashboards
integrating the profitability (CAC, ROI) of your marketing acquisition
channels? => Attribution
Mistake number 2:
Assigning the project to the wrong person
It is often said, in
the Human Resources field, that recruiting the wrong person costs the company
twice as much. The same goes for marketing attribution. Of course, entrusting
the project to the wrong person won’t double your costs. However, if the persons
are linked to the results, they will be less objective in their decisions and
they might prefer certain channels through purely personal decisions. It is
therefore preferable that the person who initiates the project is an impartial
entity within the company. It is also possible to go through an independent
outside consultant of any advertising agency.
Mistake number 3:
Not involving all stakeholders
As seen above, the
management part of the project should be given to an impartial and expert
person. But the project should not be carried out in the dark. The teams and
stakeholders concerned must be kept informed of decisions taken, the progress
of the project and especially be given justification of decisions taken!
Without communication, the project will be constantly challenged. It may be
that this generates tensions within the team or with the providers involved.
Mistake number 4: Wanting to go too fast
Marketing
attribution turns out to be a complex subject* which you must take time to
understand step by step. You shouldn’t rush in and try to do everything
straight away. If from the beginning of the project you want to tackle
Cross-device, Offline or engagement, you’ll have a huge amount of data to
process… with a strong risk of missing the most important components in your
analyses. So we advise you to start with a simple solution to evolve into a
more complex one as you gain in maturity on the subject.
Mistake number 5: Using the wrong marketing attribution
rule
Between the
attribution window, the marketing attribution model and the consideration
of the reputation, there are millions of possibilities. So it’s a matter of
properly preparing and testing your attribution project! If your configuration
does not seem to suit you, change it! At Mazeberry, we recommend
de-prioritising traffic sources related to the advertiser’s reputation in order
not to under-estimate traffic acquisition. But do not remove all their
priorities at risk of over-estimating the e-marketing channels. We also
recommend to measure the error margin associated with an attribution, meaning
comparing it with other attribution models to see if there is a marked
difference in conversions.
Marketing
attribution is therefore a project that is prepared, practised and improved.
Done well, the analyses help you reduce your e-marketing expenses and get a
good return on your investments.
