The announcement of Google Attribution at Google Marketing Next is good news for every marketer who wants to understand where their customers have come from. But not every marketer is equal, and neither are their needs.
Your product, company, and industry will dictate the depths of attribution required, meaning that it's a conversation every marketing and sales team needs to be having. Following our look at what Google Attribution is, we thought we'd ask some of the questions needed to help you decide whether it's enough for you or not.
To begin, let's look at the strengths and drawbacks that Google Attribution offers:
By storing most of your data in one place, it's easier to drive efficiency and start to understand your data. This will help to avoid siloed pools of data that are tough to join-up. It places greater importance on choosing analytics and data tracking technologies that are also partners with Google
Google's free offering is a big incentive for brands who wish to dip their toe in the waters of attribution with minimal risk. But brands wishing to make a serious commitment to understanding their sales pipeline will eventually need to invest in more advanced software that aligns with their objectives.
As a result of Infinity's multiple partnerships and integrations with Google, all call data gathered by Infinity (such as the touchpoints they made before the call, call length, call quality and your own custom dimensions) will be easily imported into the platform. This increases the accuracy and quality of your customer attribution efforts, ensuring you're making informed decisions based on what's driving meaningful touchpoints and revenue.
In order to use the attribution model supplied by Google's new offering, accounts must have at least 15,000 clicks, and a conversion action with at least 600 conversions within 30 days. This is undoubtedly going to be detrimental to smaller businesses that want to see the benefits of data-driven attribution, or even ones with a lot of local hubs or smaller brands. There may be other limitations on using the software for other channels too, and ways of making up for any allowance shortfalls will need to be explored. For example, Infinity has no limits on number of calls for our call intelligence software to provide you with the attribution data you need for calls.
With Google Attribution you are unable to include printed media, billboards, and many other physical touchpoints into your attribution mix. For example, you may be one of the 50% of companies using direct mail in their marketing efforts, accounting for an average of 9% of the marketing budget. You should aim to apply attribution standards as stringently to these channels as others. This isn't possible with Google Attribution, so another option is needed to marry these offline channels up with your online efforts, to ensure you're not pulling money from effective channels or overspending on ones that aren't your best.
With Google amalgamating more data from other channels into its services, it's able to position search and display (major Google services) favourably against the other channels where it competes for your marketing spend. It could be argued that this service has the potential to also constitute highly advanced content marketing on Google's part. You would need to pay close attention to how the model gauges performance to ensure you're not being nudged towards a spend that's beneficial to Google without solid, contextual data to back it up.
"Google are providing a platform that allows businesses to learn more about what's working in their marketing strategy, and contributes to a full view of the customer journey. If you're thinking about improving your marketing attribution, this move highlights that it can't be put off any longer. The data-driven model will make attribution far easier for marketers, including those without much experience of data science." Paul Walsh | CEO, Infinity
Data has never been so important for both marketers and the wider business as a whole. Optimisation of it will lead to incremental gains, while intelligent analysis of it carves a path towards transformative insight. This includes call tracking for any channel online or offline, mobile or desktop, where a phone call is the CTA.
While using this data for attribution is of peak importance, the customer journey does not end at the till. A bad onboarding or customer experience issue will leave customers itching to jump to a competitor at the first opportunity. If your attribution strategy isn't used to understand these touchpoints in the customer lifecycle, heaps of revenue will be lost.
Some marketers may only need the basic level of attribution, others will require a more advanced solution to harmonise the vision of their channels. If you're in the latter group, you must look to find out what more you need, and who is able to provide the answers to your unique set of challenges.
If phone calls make up a substantial part of your sales or support strategy, then you need a comprehensive, cross-channel call-intelligence solution to ensure your attribution model leaves no stone unturned.
See how Infinity would ensure your revenue is maximised and get in touch with us today.