The Flaw of Last Click Attribution
TweetThe Flaw of Same Session / Last Click Attribution Think of a traditional retail purchase at a store without eCommerce…heck; let’s imagine the Internet doesn’t even exist for this scenario. The potential customer is watching TV and sees an ad from a new store in the area, for a product she needs for the house. The next day she heads out for a shopping trip to her usual stores, but happens to see a billboard for that new store. She knows the general location of the store but cannot find it until she spots a WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN in the parking lot of the new store. She walks in and browses the merchandise, but doesn’t purchase anything until a nice young store clerk shows her to the product she saw on the TV commercial. She walks out a happy customer. The story above isn’t unimaginable; it could very well happen 1000’s of times per day. Multiple marketing mediums touched the customer before she made the purchase. So what channel gets the credit? Did the TV ad cause her to buy from the store? Was the billboard the real winner in the marketing mix that reminded her that she wanted to shop at the new store? How about the WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN? He practically ushered her into the parking lot! Or, was it the young store clerk taking her directly to the product that made the sale? Ask 10 different people that question and you will get many different answers. The clerk would say it’s all because of his product knowledge and Brut cologne he was wearing that day. The Arm-Flailing Emporium owner would say it was the high-quality arm flailers that made the sale. Mr. John Billboard would argue that his billboard location and design really drove the sale. And the producer would say it was the amazing TV spot that was responsible for the sale. The problem, of deciding which channel to credit the sale to, is extremely difficult to solve. If you take one channel out of the mix, the sale may not have occurred at all. So, in order to produce more sales, which channel should get more funding? Which channel drives the most sales and how do you measure that? It is a very real problem that companies deal with every day. And many companies simply make...
Read MoreYour Link is Worthless Without Tracking
Attention small business owners, enterprise marketing directors, and social media mavens: the following two words can help you stay in business, get a raise, or bring campaign enlightenment to your efforts. TRACK EVERYTHING. NOT easier said than done. This is Legos and hopscotch…what I’m saying is that a kid can do it. (Please deal with my use of caps lock and bold during this adventure, I’m PASSIONATE about analytics.) Would you blindly hand $100,000 to a search engine? How about $5,000 to an email marketing company? $1,000 on a social media campaign? $500 to print a QR code on your flyers? Then why would you launch ANY SINGLE campaign without analytics tracking attached? There are plenty of people that are still just sending traffic to a website, hoping that the traffic will do what they want, and the overall website results will be good enough for them to keep their job. This is dumb. We do not live on a single lane street; there are dozens and hundreds of traffic sources sending legitimate traffic to your website. And when you are paying for that traffic, with time or money, you NEED to be tracking it all the way through. Enough evangelization; I could go all night on how people are not tracking their campaigns properly. By appending a small snippet of tracking code to the end of your link / url you will be justifying most of your spend on advertising, social, or whatever other campaigns you use to drive traffic to your website. Sorry big guys with WebTrends, Omniture or Coremetrics. I’m speaking to Google Analytics specifically from here on out. GA makes it insanely easy to tag a URL in a matter of seconds. The same theory applies to ALL analytics suites. Simply go here to build your custom tracking URL: Google URL Builder Or use some examples below to get started. Email Tracking Examples: Source = MailChimp (I like to put the email provider, but this could just be Email) Medium = Email (interchangeable with Source many times) Content = Hero Banner (could be footer link, product link, etc) Campaign = Self Promotion Campaign (name of the campaign) https://jordonmeyer.com/about?utm_source=MailChimp &utm_medium=Email&utm_content=HeroBanner &utm_campaign=SelfPromotionCampaign Facebook Example: Source = Facebook Medium = Social Content = Brand Awareness Banner ad Campaign = Brand Awareness August 2011 https://jordonmeyer.com/about?utm_source=Facebook &utm_medium=Social&utm_content=BrandAwarenessBanner &utm_campaign=BrandAwarenessAug2011 Twitter Example: Source = Twitter Medium = Social Content = Brand Awareness...
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