If it weren’t for last click attribution, search marketing today would be half the price.
That’s probably going a little to far, but over the years I think the ROI of PPC (and therefore the amount Google et al can charge for it) has been inflated dramatically by what started as a technical constraint and is now a mixture of a lack of effort and a certain inertia on the part of marketers.
In the early days, we were content to track clicks within one channel. The level of data it gave, instantly and relatively easily, blew traditional offline marketing out of the water. Person searches on Google, clicks on my ad, buys my product. Cause and effect right? Search has brought me sale.
It didn’t take long for us to realise this wasn’t what was happening and that, really, search was often just one step in a multi-channel journey. With branded searches making up the majority of traffic to a website, it’s pretty clear that something else has sowed the seed of that brand name in the consumer’s mind.
I think everyone pretty much accepts this now, so why are so few companies taking the plunge and putting together a real attribution model?
Even within Google, there’s the AdWords Search Funnel that, in the words of Google, “by showing which ads your customers clicked on before ultimately converting, Search Funnels give a more complete picture of the value of your keywords, ad groups and campaigns.”
(I’m not going to mention here that Search Funnel is pretty good at justifying spend with Google on expensive generics, that would be cynical.)
This only works within the AdWords universe, but you can do the same with numerous other third party tracking solutions. DoubleClick released their “Exposure to Conversion” report way back in 2007 which lets you see both impressions and clicks. This allows you to see the interplay between all your DC-tagged media.
From this point on, it’s simply a case of deciding how you want to work it in your business. Take your revenue figure by channel and split it out across the journey, for example.
First exposure, quite important, but only an “exposure”, no interaction. That can take 5% of the credit.
First click. That’s a biggy, right? First time you get the user onto your website. Give that 30% of the credit.
Next exposure to a display banner. Hmmm, probably came about from re-targeting, if they didn’t act on it, maybe not such a big deal, give it 2%
A few more exposures, with no click, they’ll all add up to 8%.
Last click on a branded product search. Your user now associates you with the product – success! You’ve being considered. 25% credit I think.
And here it comes, the last click. I’m feeling generous so let’s give it 30%.
That’s a pretty throw-away response to how to build an attribution model, but my point is you should try. Maybe then we’ll break the tyranny of PPC.
