Every customer journey is different. No matter how carefully you plot your marketing campaign, everybody will interact with different touchpoints at different times. This can make it tricky to understand which specific activity triggered that all-important purchase, especially if what began as online research turns into an offline conversion.
What is revenue attribution? It involves matching revenue from customers to specific marketing activities within an attribution model. Accurate revenue attribution is the secret ingredient in developing marketing campaigns that have real impact on your bottom line.
Which brings us to our next question, what is a revenue attribution model? There are several common attribution models that can support accurate revenue attribution, including single-source models that focus on first click or last click, to sophisticated multi-source models that can factor in multiple channels.
So, why is it important to track revenue? We’ve pulled together a list of 9 reasons why your company needs to implement accurate revenue attribution:
1. It can inform your campaign targeting
With knowledge comes power. If you can identify which of your marketing campaigns and channels are most effective, you can unearth insights that will refine your audience targeting. You can also adjust audiences you know aren’t working to reach the right people.
For example, if you notice that Facebook advertising is more likely to deliver high-value customers that are more likely to convert, you can build lookalike audiences that will help you attract more of those specific leads. You can also build engagement audiences of people that may have clicked or called but failed to convert.
2. It can improve your PPC performance
If your revenue attribution tools are able to highlight words and phrases that persuaded the customer to convert - be that in your digital ads or on a phone call - you can adapt your PPC campaigns accordingly to create campaigns that resonate. Being able to pinpoint the keywords that are driving the most conversions means you’re only spending on the ones you know are driving revenue for your business.
For example, Cheekytrip wanted to gain clarity on what was driving calls. Using [call tracking]((https://www.infinity.co/uk/call-tracking), they were able to identify which individual keywords were clicked, how long was spent on their webpages, and the specific page which triggered the final purchase. Using this data, they were able to drive a 161% increase in leads.
3. It can help optimise lead conversion
You’ve got their attention, but how do you convert them into a customer? Intel from real customers, acquired via call tracking or Conversation Analytics, that is fed into your revenue attribution model can be used to optimise lead conversion and boost your sales.
This was an effective strategy for BoostOnline, a digital agency with a roster of SME clients. It was crucial that they were able show clients where calls were coming from and demonstrate revenue. Using Infinity, they were better able to justify spend and deliver results, with one client achieving an incredible 2,400% ROI from PPC spending.
“Call tracking is an essential service for us. Infinity gives us all the tools we need to keep our customers happy, and help deliver exceptional results to them. They were highly proactive in listening to what we needed and our retention rates shoot up when we have call tracking in place for our clients. ” – Lee Parnell | Director, BoostOnline
4. It pinpoints the moment of purchase
We can find our audiences. We can tailor our messaging. We can optimise for conversion. But most importantly with revenue attribution, we can see precisely where they came from. Not only can accurate revenue attribution identify your most impactful marketing channels, but it’s also primed to help you pinpoint the moment of conversion. You can understand which channels, keywords, social ads or websites led to your customer making a purchase.
This is revolutionary for your marketing budget. If you’re able to understand which specific activity persuaded them to convert, you can boost your ROI by concentrating your efforts on the activities that really work. For Scott Dunn, a luxury tour operator, the goal was to understand where their highest value leads were originating. Using call tracking, they were able to connect their digital marketing efforts with their highest value calls, leading to a 48% increase in global conversion rate and an 80% increase of tracked call volumes year-on-year.
5. It enables you to focus on high-value leads (and generate more)
Whether you’re a retailer or an eCommerce site, there are many reasons why your customers might prefer to call before purchasing. Getting your customers on the phone provides a perfect opportunity to upsell products. You also use this knowledge of where leads are coming from to filter out the channels that lead to low value calls and deflect them effectively.
For example, Internet Gardener may be an award-winning online retailer, but 35% of their orders are placed via phone. These are their highest value orders, where a personal level of service is needed to discuss the details of big-ticket items, such as sheds, furniture, and log cabins. Internet Gardener used Infinity to track and record every call that came into their business, showing them what source led to the call and recording revenue per call. They were able to increase their average order value by over 30%!
6. It can connect online journeys with offline sales
You’ve invested time and energy into picking the right channels and keywords for your campaigns. But when the customer picks up the phone and takes the conversation offline, you lose sight of which specific touchpoint drove that action. That’s where call tracking comes in.
Call tracking can assist with covering potential blind spots in your customer journey, by collecting data that can connect your touchpoints with the calls that led to a purchase. It allows you to connect in-depth marketing data such as keywords and marketing channels to those winning calls.
7. It streamlines how you collect and analyse data
Accurate revenue attribution pulls in multiple data sources to provide a holistic overview of the customer journey. It streamlines the process of gathering data across your core marketing channels and improves your ability to analyse it by bringing it all into one central dashboard, whatever that might look like for your company.
By feeding in the data from all your marketing channels, including display advertising, search advertising, organic social, email campaigns, affiliate marketing and website visits across devices increases the scale of your analysis. This empowers your marketing team to unearth insights faster, without needing a data science degree.
8. It tracks the customer journey effectively
Accurate revenue attribution is important because it acknowledges that customers are exposed to multiple touchpoints and divides credit for conversion accordingly. This gives you a more holistic overview of the customer journey, regardless of how fragmented.
This is incredibly valuable as demonstrated by Halfords, who wanted to create a comprehensive end-to-end view of the customer journey. Using Infinity’s integrations with Google Suite, they were able to create a direct link between digital spend and phone conversions and optimise their campaigns to increase conversion.
9. It enables you to make truly data-driven decisions
Last but most certainly not least, accurate revenue attribution enables your marketing and sales team to work in tandem, rather than in silos. It also aligns your wider business strategy, as marketing are better able to prove how activity is supporting the bottom-line and clearly communicate learnings.
Being able to understand how lead generation converts into customers means your teams can set joint goals and metrics that are likely to attract and retain customers. It also helps align your wider strategy by sharing insight into the most impactful marketing campaigns and prevent under-valuing or over-valuing specific channels using data-driven insight.
Every conversation matters. Start one with us to discover how Call Tracking can help you optimise your most valuable customer conversations.
