Hello again! It’s Friday and over at Convertus that means it’s time to get out our pens and paper and get learning with Education Friday.
This week we covered attribution modelling to help understand the different types we can use to help your dealership generate more leads for the same marketing budget. From this post, you’ll learn some useful jargon to use when you want to impress your friends with your Paid Social savviness. Let’s dive in!
Attribution Model? What’s That?
While the term does sound like a human model with… attributes… it’s actually slightly more complicated and much less literal. We were a little disappointed too. Essentially, an attribution model is a method that determines how credit for conversions is assigned to touch-points in conversion path. These models provide perspective when determining who gets credit for any conversions and the relative contributions of various marketing sources.
There are quite a few types of attribution models out there, so let’s break them down to get a better idea of what they are, shall we?
First Click
This refers to the first touch point credited, regardless of what someone did thereafter or which campaign directly influenced the sale. It’s useful when discovering new strategies to drive the most new customers into the online shopping cycle. Whichever channels are most successful could stand to receive more budget in an effort to generate more new opportunities within the online buying journey to conversion with your dealership.
Last Click
Last Click is the bottom of the funnel transition, where potential buyers are taking actions on the ad or platform by submitting a form to contact your dealership or calling you directly. Historically, this is the most common attribution model used in automotive digital marketing and means that the final action prior to conversion gets full credit. Naturally, we know that car shoppers navigate a whole host of different platforms (i.e: OEM websites, YouTube, Google, Facebook, dealership websites) and are exposed to many marketing ad types and mediums (i.e: search, display, video, retargeting, social, etc.) so a last-click model doesn’t truly represent an accurate picture of how people shop for anything online.
Last Non-Direct Click
While Last Click gave credit to the place people clicked last, Last Non-Direct Click credits the last source that wasn’t direct traffic, for example, an ad. This is the last marketing trigger behind the traffic. This type is useful when you want to measure the success of your strategy without accounting for direct traffic. This separates the people who already know your brand from those who are new conversions influenced by a campaign.
Linear
Linear Attribution gives equal credit to all channels the buyer visited or clicked before converting, so the credit isn’t only being allocated to a single channel. Realistically, many channels can contribute to a single conversion and Linear Attribution gives a more holistic perspective on which channels are contributing on the customer journey on the path to conversion.
Position Based
Position Based attribution models place the emphasis on the first and last click. These will get the most credit (40%) for the conversion as what is being emphasized is where the customer was acquired and again where they were converted. The remaining 20% is attributed equally across all touch points between this first and final.
Time Decay
Time Decay gives increasing credit to each channel that drives a customer closer to the actual conversion. As a result, your last touch point will receive the most credit while the first gets the least. From this model, you can get insights on which channels drive the actual conversion and which are the top funnel, bringing potential customers into your conversion funnel.
Data Driven
Unlike standard or rule-based attribution models, Data Driven models use real data from your specific analytics account. Custom models can be generated to assign weighted conversion credit to marketing touch-points. Data Driven models use special algorithms from Coalition Game Theory to help predict payouts to conversions in a variety of scenarios.
Thanks for joining us once more for Education Friday. Be sure to tune in next week for more useful tidbits from the land of SEO! In the meantime, if you’d like more information on Attribution Models and how they can help you, be sure to check out this post we wrote on it or reach out to us, we’d be happy to chat with you!