Taking the Guesswork out of Marketing Attribution

For a detailed description of how to optimize your marketing activities and improve conversion rates with DataRobot, download our executive briefing or get in contact with us today.

Email. Search engines. Social media. Print ads. Podcasts. Radio. Public relations.

This is a very short sample of a very long list of channels that companies can choose to include in their marketing strategies. Since consumers are exposed to as many as 10,000 brand messages each day, though, knowing which of your activities cut through the noise is more important than ever in distinguishing yourself from the competition – without wasting large portions of your budget.

A key part of achieving this balance is to determine the marketing attribution for each channel and using that to make budgeting decisions. In the ever-more-complex media landscape, though, pinpointing impact levels among so many channels is becoming increasingly difficult.

Imagine, for instance, that you’re a mobile telephone service provider and you have just scored a new customer. You want to know why they chose your service offering and which of your marketing efforts made the most impact on their decision. Obtaining this information, though, is much more complicated than it sounds when you consider how many marketing communications they may have been exposed to throughout their decision-making process:

1. They saw one of your commercials during an episode of “Scandal.”
2. They ran a Google search, the results of which included the Google Adwords ads from both your company and several competitors, as well as organic listings.
3. They spent hours on their laptop and mobile phone watching videos on YouTube and reading product information.
4. They moved on to perusing independent reviews on personal blogs or sites like toptenreviews.com.
5. Targeted ads and promoted posts started to appear on their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds.
6. They saw a friend post about their provider on social media and investigated your own social media presence.
7. They saw a print ad on the subway on their way to work.
8. They visited a store and talked to a customer service representative.

In reality, this slew of marketing “touch points” represents just a portion of the communications they could have been exposed to throughout the process, which probably took several weeks, if not months.

For the consumer, this level of information availability is a godsend. It helps them make an informed decision about a major purchase that will have a large effect on their life. But for marketers, this is the definition of a marketing attribution nightmare. How are you supposed to tell which of your individual marketing activities, or combination thereof, had the greatest impact on the consumer’s decision to purchase? How do you allocate your future marketing spend effectively among the smorgasbord of marketing channels available today?

As it becomes more difficult to differentiate yourself in an increasingly saturated world of products, services, and information, knowing which channels and strategies are providing the most value becomes more and more crucial. The trick is to develop a multi-channel marketing attribution model so you can see exactly where the value is coming from. That’s where DataRobot comes in.

With DataRobot’s automated machine learning platform, companies across industries are developing predictive models that offer a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of each of their marketing activities. These models allow you to understand your unique marketing mix and how it affects your customers’ purchase decisions, helping you manage your marketing budget more efficiently and effectively by teaching your organization to:

• Take advantage of both natural experiments and A/B testing different predictive solutions
• Apply what-if analysis to each touchpoint to see the impact of each part of your strategy
• Gain a myriad of insights into what could be improved and where your money is best spent

Sound interesting? To learn more, download our free Multichannel Marketing Attribution executive briefing or get in contact with us – we can’t wait to work with you.