Best way to do nation wide marketing?

What is the best way of crediting SEO in attribution marketing?

• In order for a company of any size to make informed decisions, they must be able to determine the true value of their online efforts. Online shoppers will interact with a website in a number of different ways over the course of a few days or even weeks before making a purchase.Examples of channels that online shoppers use to find websites include: organic search, paid advertising, referring websites, direct visits, emails, banner ads and social networks. Marketing attribution is  a way to assign value to each channel that played a role in influencing the consumer to make a purchase. For example, if a user first visits your website through an organic search, returns later through a social network and then buys something after clicking on an advertisement, who should get the credit? In marketing attribution, a percentage of the purchase order is assigned to each marketing channel based on how far away that channel was from an order, instead of attributing 100 percent of credit to the last click.  I'd like to know the best way of crediting organic search.

• Answer:

  Marketing attribution is pretty complex and potentially mind-wrecking. Nonetheless it is crucial as it enables you to justify your marketing budget, allocate it across different channels optimally, and calculate cost-per-acquisition (CPA) more accurately. As written in Google’s http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/attribution_playbook.pdf describing the process of marketing: It’s a complex process of planting the seed, nurturing it, and finally harvesting the fruits of your marketing efforts. As such, it is of paramount importance for any business’ marketing strategy to take care of each stage of the process and therefore to credit the respective channel or personnel accordingly. In marketing attribution, a percentage of the purchase order is assigned to each marketing channel based on how far away that channel was from an order, instead of attributing 100 percent of credit to the last click. The method you described is considered the “Time-Decay method”, which assigns more credit nearer to conversion and fewer credits further away. Let us explore several other models of attribution for consideration. All diagrams and graphics are taken from Google's Attribution Playbook. First interaction This attribution credits everything to the “Top Funnel” marketing channel as the first interaction is usually brand discovery. First-Touch attribution is most useful for determining which channels best lead users to brand discovery. This is important if your brand is young and generating brand awareness is crucial. Last Interaction  Last-Interaction attribution is useful for determining which channels best lead users to the final conversion, or buying decision. This is commonly used by marketers for its simplicity. However, a recent eConsultancy survey reveals that 13% of respondents judged Last-Interaction as a ‘Very ineffective’ attribution model. This method also discredits all the contributions of other channels which most likely had some, if not a significant part to play in the conversion. Linear This model might be used if your campaigns are designed to maintain contact and awareness with the customer throughout the entire sales cycle. In this case, each touchpoint is equally important during the consideration process. Time Decay This method is usually employed to evaluate campaigns with short-lived offers or aimed at quick sales. Since these campaigns need marketing channels that ‘close the deal’ as quickly as possible, the value should be progressively weighted higher for channels nearest to the last touch. Positioned-Based The Position Based model allows you to assign credit based on position in the customer journey. Another popular version of the Position-Based model uses a Pareto distribution (the 80/20 rule), which credits 80% of the conversion value to the first and last touch points while the remaining 20% is distributed across all the nurturing touch points in the middle of the customer journey. Customised A Customized model allows you to more accurately reflect your marketing programs. Crediting SEO/Organic search At this point we need to differentiate between organic search and SEO, the two terms you used analogously in the question. Organic search can be divided into branded organic search and non-branded organic search. An example of a branded organic search is “Swatch watches” or “Onitsuka Tiger shoes”, while an example of a non-branded organic search could be “designer chairs” or “wireless routers”. SEO usually only helps in non-branded organic search when you have to compete with similar product vendors. Hence, before we decide how much credit we should give non-branded organic search, and therefore SEO, we have to answer a few questions. Is your brand already established? Is it well known? If yes, customers usually arrive by searching your brand name (branded organic search). If not, chances are that many potential customers arrive at your site using non-branded or generic keywords. Therefore you should place more credit on non-branded organic Search/SEO especially when your brand is less known and generating awareness is crucial. Interestingly a http://connect.slingshotseo.com/valuing-digital-marketing-channels-with-attribution-models done by Slingshot SEO showed that organic searches are potentially undervalued by 20%. It is worthy of note that under multi-touch attribution (linear, position based, or time decay) modelling, organic search (branded and non-branded) should have been worth as much as 77.25% more than previously thought, and non-branded organic search should have been worth as much as 81.59% more. The answer to which model to use even differs from product to product. For example, a more expensive product will have a longer research period and hence more credit should be given to channels along the way. But there's no point in having some complex econometric model if people only generally visit your website once before they decide to buy or not. In the words of statistician George Box, “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” There is no best or sure fire way of attribution, but some methods are better than others so you can consider trying out some of them and pick the most suitable one for your business campaigns. Besides, there are tools such as Google Analytics, which is tremendously useful and highly customisable, to help make the task less daunting and confusing. Slingshot SEO developed a comprehensive matrix which uses your requirements to help you determine which method you should employ (link below). You might want to check out this informative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-3Y__L5F0w by Google Analytics on Marketing Attribution Insights, or the http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/attribution_playbook.pdf by Google as well. Slingshot SEO did a very detailed study on this and it can be found http://connect.slingshotseo.com/valuing-digital-marketing-channels-with-attribution-models. If you’re really interested to go really deep into this issue, http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~lzhen001/activities/KDD2011Program/docs/p258.pdf is an academic paper to start you off.