“Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?” This Shakespearean question has been asked and propagated throughout the ages. Therefore it shouldn’t be a surprise that we are inclined to indulge in this perception – the dramatic suddenness of love, driven by irrationality and loss of control. The irony here is that Shakespeare actually dismisses this concept. His works on instantaneous love are light charades on romantic confusion. Quick caveat: We aren’t coldly suggesting that Cupid’s arrow never strikes. It’s just that, realistically, we expect a couple’s transition from acquaintance to soulmates to follow a slightly different timeline.
It is for this reason that marketers who subscribe to last-click attribution must learn to let it go. The notion that a consumer’s final pre-purchase interaction is the defining moment that triggered the conversion – is merely a simplified way to tell the story. In business, this is a tale of how a particular ad spend is superficially and wholly credited with the desired outcome. Shouldn’t we expect a more interesting and intricate history, given the range of marketing activities a company usually undertakes? Consider a consumer who, after clicking on a Jabong mobile display ad, ends up casually browsing products on Jabong’s mobile app. The ‘Printed Skater Dress’ catches her initial fancy. A few days later, after not being able to identify a better alternative at the malls, she revisits the dress through an organic search and completes the purchase.
For this individual, an investment in search engine optimisation (SEO) might have been a trigger, but it was only one channel in a series of pertinent details. According to Nielsen Médiamétrie NetRatings, users who viewed display ads made 51 per cent more organic searches for the same product. This reveals that search and display operate together just like a match made in marketing heaven. Could you imagine what might happen if Jabong’s marketing team decided to stop investing in mobile display ads?
As such, today’s marketers must respond to consumer behaviour across multiple touch points, by searching more broadly for meaningful interactions. Multi-channel attribution analysis will enable a comprehensive and sequential view of events that have led to an end result, moving us away from the snapshots in time delivered by last-click attribution. To start, web analytics platforms used to identify sources for online traffic and sales are already available. Similar analyses just need to be completed for mobile and social. For a single panel that evaluates the cumulative impact of different activities, businesses can either build their own in-house attribution platforms, or purchase technology from a vendor who specialises in this area.
The analysis mustn’t stop It is also important to note that multi-channel attribution does not provide a magic button that can be pushed once to obtain the perfect answer. Once it is in place, as a digital marketer, you’ll still be required to re-run the analysis and tweak your marketing programme regularly. Doing this will enable you to redirect your marketing spend to focus on channels that have the greatest impact on sales. Optimising your marketing mix through multi-channel attribution is indeed arduous, but essential. If this sounds complicated, so is the process of pursuing a meaningful and loving relationship. For your ad investments and engagement efforts to truly pay off, there is no better time than now for you to opt for a deeper and more complete understanding of your customers. And, as Shakespeare might add, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Yuko Saito is Managing Director - Southeast Asia at Criteo, a performance marketing technology company