Last touch attribution models are slowly, but steadily fading out of the market. It is time for the marketers to embrace multi-touch attribution (MTA) models for their existing campaigns. Most start-ups and small businesses are struggling with setting up new attribution models and upgrading their existing ones to new forms. Nonetheless, almost every company understands the importance of cross-channel measurement for their ongoing marketing campaigns. The modern customer's journey is nuanced and whimsical, and it takes more than a simple last attribution model to analyze a brand's efforts.

The current media campaigns of any brand with a social media presence experiences several points of data crossovers. Their campaign data do not reside in silos and the platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter share the stats of promotions and posts. When the social marketing experts boost a post or a paid campaign on a given medium, the visibility of the brand on the number of interlinked social media platforms can increase. Additionally, it can contribute to more frequent store visits from the brick-and-mortar shoppers. There are enough reasons to show why click-through rates (CTRs) are not direct contributors to increasing sales rates of a business or product. Finally, the entrepreneurs are accepting this fact and replacing their old attribution models with newer multi-touch ones.

Does your business require a new attribution model?

There are several hurdles your company must overcome to be able to meet the requirements for setting up an MTA. Is your business ready to face these challenges? Are you prepared to brave the change that is about to come? These questions bring us face to face with another problem – do you need MTA?

Marketing attribution models are compulsory for any company that wants to survive today’s ratrace. The multi-touch models enable the marketers to reconsider their resource distribution across multiple advertising and marketing channels including Google, Facebook, and Bing. However, in the case of the majority of the companies, brand owners find that their revenue model and data collection is ready for last interaction models. These are older attribution models that offer the entire credit to the final touchpoints in the journey of a customer. That would be the last medium or the last platform the user was on before he or she converted.

Do you know where your company stands on the online marketing front? The new startups and small businesses usually rely upon social media engines for sponsored advertisements. They do not have dedicated ad servers. Hiring third-party vendors for ad placement and sponsorships make it difficult for a company to track their impressions. In all probability, your new company falls in this category, and you are looking to move away from your post-click or last interaction attribution model. In that case, choose dedicated marketing attribution software that can help you track all impressions from all channels you use. Even the most basic of all ad servers will allow you to check the impact of your advertisement after a boost.

What are the different types of multi-touch attribution models?

It is about finding out exactly how much impression your advertisement investment is generating. With the help of an MTA, you should be able to determine how to allocate the currently available resources to the available channels and each impression. The presence of multi-touch enables marketers, and research analysts determine which touch points in the user journey including social search, paid search, and organic search contribute to the conversion rates of the brand. It supports the exploration of the complete path definition or the lookback window for the distribution of credit between the campaigns.

Today, marketers have come up with several multi-touch attribution model types. There are six different categories of such models, and they include the following –

1. Linear
2. Time decay
3. W-shaped
4. U-shaped
5. Custom
6. Full path

Each of these models is more complex and time-consuming than single touch or last interaction models. That might make you wonder if taking the hassle of adopting any one of these MTA models is worth it. The question might be more prominent for those entrepreneurs, who have robust linear single point models in place. However, research shows that the single touch point models misinterpret data for different funnel stages. The resulting analytics are often wrong. There is no end to optimizing attribution models for business since new methods of consumer interactions emerge almost every day. With new wearable devices and smart technology, it has become imperative for enterprises to open their gates to newer attribution models that can account for the data these new points of interaction contribute.

How does a multitouch attribution model track the marketing touch points?

Since this attribution model type needs to consider almost every kind of interaction that the person goes through during a shopping experience, the data tracking options are somewhat complicated. Several instruments help the MTA models to track the marketing touch points –

1. They use JS tracking code

The MTA models use JavaScript for monitoring the movement of the users on the website as they move between pages. It is beneficial for the tracking mix since the brand website acts as the nexus for all marketing activities.

2. Tracking with cookies and UTM parameters

It is also possible for an enterprise to follow its users and potential buyers through the use of UTM parameters. These are similar to JS tracking. Marketing experts can use these while constructing social media campaigns and paid ads. Cookies help in tracking as well, and they actively help with anonymous first-touch monitoring.

3. Tracking with API integrations

API integrations help with monitoring how two software applications interact with each other. Live chat, advertisement platforms, automation programs and optimization applications use API integrations to determine the relationship between the multiple touchpoints along the user journey.

4. Integration of CRM

CRM integration is mandatory for the development of multi-touch attribution models. It provides meaning to data by giving it an actionable form. The presence of interaction within the different elements of the CRM helps in aligning the sales and marketing strategies.

Multiple touch attribution is new, and there are subtle differences between each type of attribution model that qualifies as MTA. Apart from creating insightful data, it reduces the inaccuracy of ROI measurement and data management in the current linear single-touch models.