Content marketing can be amazing for growing your business and building your brand, but it can be challenging to know for certain whether or not your efforts are paying off. 

This is because it can be difficult to measure *exactly* where leads and conversions come from. Imagine, for example, you’re trying to determine why a customer purchased your product. Looking at your analytics, you might be able to identify that they landed on your website from Google. But does that mean they saw your product on Google and decided to purchase? Or did they see your content on Facebook, and when they searched for that product on Google, they recognized your brand name? Or, perhaps, were they listening to your ad on a podcast that morning and then deciding to purchase later in the day?

As you can see, it can feel impossible to know what exactly led someone to purchase a product from you. But it’s important to know so that you can determine whether your content marketing efforts are successful. If they’re not, you may need to make adjustments in your strategy, brand voice, or the platforms you’re using. 

What is multichannel attribution?

This is where multichannel attribution comes in. Multichannel attribution, or multitouch attribution, is the process of figuring out which marketing channels and touchpoints led to a conversion or sale. 

With multichannel attribution, we can better understand how customers become customers, and which content marketing strategies have the best ROIs.

Why is multichannel attribution important?

Understanding where your conversions and sales are coming from is critically important for any business who wants to grow. Multichannel attribution provides insights into the customer journey — do people need to learn about your product through your blog content before they’re willing to invest? Do they need to hear about your service through multiple channels before they visit your website? Do they need a mix of online and offline touchpoints to make a purchase? Once you can identify patterns in the customer journey, you can use that knowledge to your advantage.

Multichannel attribution also helps you identify which channels provide the highest ROI. If you’re investing money in Facebook ads, but it turns out that those aren’t leading to conversions later on, then you can save money there to invest elsewhere. 

Overall, multichannel attribution provides data that can inform your marketing strategy and allows you to understand why your customers make the decisions they do. 

Models for multichannel attribution

The most common attribution models are divided into single-touch attribution models (which attribute 100% of a conversion to a single channel) and multi-touch attribution models (which offer a more accurate understanding of how multiple touchpoints work together). 

Most marketers are familiar with single-touch attribution models, but multi-touch attribution provides more clarity into the customer journey. 

Single-touch attribution models

• Last interaction: The last channel your visitor interacts with. For example, if a user interacted with a blog post before clicking “Add to cart”, this would show you that the conversion happened because of the blog post.

• First interaction: The opposite of the above example, this is the first channel your visitor interacts with. For example, if the visitor saw your blog post promoted by a tweet, it would attribute the conversion to Twitter. 

Multi-touch attribution models

• Linear: This model gives equal attribution to each interaction your customer has with your company on the way to conversion. If the visitor was sent an email that led them to follow you on Twitter, then clicked on a blog post you promoted, each of those channels (email, Twitter, and blog, respectively) would receive 33% of the credit for the conversion.

• Time decay: A model that gives additional value to the touchpoints closest to the conversion point in terms of time. 

• Position-based attribution: In this model, the first and last channels receive more credit for the conversion than subsequent channels in between.

How multichannel attribution affects content marketing

As you can imagine, depending on the model for attribution you use, you’re going to come up with some varying results. The way to make these results matter for your business is to try to find patterns that you can apply to your marketing efforts. For example, if you notice that the majority of your conversions can be attributed to users who first saw blog content on your website, then you can invest more dollars in creating that type of content. 

Overall, this data can provide valuable insights that help you make the most of your content marketing efforts. 

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