Understanding Marketing Attribution: A Step-by-Step Guide

Closing a sale isn’t just a win for the sales team. Marketing plays a crucial role in converting an interested consumer into an actual customer. And in the digital era, there are so many different ways to capture a potential buyer’s attention.  

So how do you know whether the social media marketing team deserves props for an especially engaging post, or whether the content marketers in your company should get the credit for creating the perfect product comparison chart that drives consumers into the customer funnel? With marketing attribution models, you can dole out credit where credit is due, generating marketing insights that ensure you’re investing in the tactics that work.  

Improve your marketing decision-making by learning how to use marketing attribution in Domo.

What is marketing attribution? 

Simply put, marketing attribution is a method of assigning credit to the different marketing tactics that a customer may encounter before they make a purchase.  

Marketers are pros at customer journey mapping, and they continue to develop new sophisticated methods of reaching potential buyers. That customer journey may look pretty straightforward in that you have an advertisement directing a prospect to a landing page where they can make a direct purchase. Or they can be more complicated with various marketing tactics like emails, text messages, social media content, website content, and events all working in an interconnected web to convert people into customers.     

Good marketers need to closely monitor and understand a customer’s path to purchase, even if that path isn’t a straight line.   

Why is marketing attribution important? 

Businesses want to see a return on investment for every marketing tactic that they use. Effective marketing teams aim to lower customer acquisition cost by eliminating wasteful spending on marketing tactics that aren’t capturing the attention of the consumer or moving them through the customer funnel. Marketing attribution can help teams understand how different channels stack up against each other or determine whether certain campaigns resonate well with consumers.  

Marketing attribution also allows teams to account for what’s particularly important to them. Is every touchpoint equally essential to the customer journey, or is your team especially interested in understanding which tactics are successful at re-engaging customers who might have fallen off? Perhaps the tactics that close deals are most important to you.  

Marketing attribution doesn’t have to be applied equally to every channel or tactic a consumer interacts with along the way; you can decide what to prioritize based on your company’s needs.   

How does marketing attribution work? 

It really depends on the marketing attribution models that you choose to use. So let’s review a few of them:  

First-touch attribution: This model assigns all of the credit to the first marketing touchpoint that a customer interacts with. It’s a simple model that allows you to understand which tactics may initially bring a consumer into the customer funnel or attract new buyers.  

Last-touch attribution: This type of attribution assigns all of the credit to the final touchpoint that a potential consumer interacts with before they convert or make a purchase. This model can help you learn what strategies are most effective at sourcing leads.  

Multi-touch attribution: In contrast to the more simple models like first- and last-touch attribution, these models recognize the importance of a variety of different tactics that may be involved in the customer journey.  

• Even-touch attribution: A simplified type of multi-touch attribution, this model provides equal credit to each of the marketing touchpoints.  

• Time-decay attribution: Another type of multi-touch attribution, this attribution model uses half-life calculations from chemistry to give more credit to recent interactions.  

• Weighted multi-touch attribution: These types of models assign custom weighting for key touchpoints. For example, the u-shaped model provides greater weight to the first and last touchpoints in the funnel, whereas the w-shaped model gives extra weight to middle funnel interactions.  

Best practices for using marketing attribution 

Now that you understand what marketing attribution is and why it’s important, you’ll need to understand how to actually use it. Some of these steps can get a bit technical, so remember if you ever have a question, the Domo team is always around to help.  

Step 1: Get your data in order 

The first step in your attribution journey isn’t flashy—but it’s critical. Great analytics start with great data operations. And clean data operations unlock everything else.  

Start the process by implementing UTM tracking for all marketing ads and campaigns. UTM codes allow you to track the source and campaign that generate traffic to your webpages and lead to conversions. And you will need to standardize and centralize all of that marketing data that you collect.  

Step 2: Define “what” counts  

In order to create attribution logic, you need to define “what” counts as a marketing interaction. Unfortunately, not all marketing interactions are created equal.  

With inquiries (INQs), you know exactly who engaged. These interactions can include filling out a form or scanning a QR code at an event booth. Engagements on the other hand primarily rely on tracking the person using cookies. Clicks and pageviews are common types of engagements.  

Impressions, such as ad views, are the most mysterious type of interaction. You don’t know the person who saw the ad, but sometimes you can tie data to an account. 

If marketing attribution is new to you, it’s best to start simple. Begin with only known interactions, like inquiries, which give you the cleanest, most actionable data. 

Step 3: Define “when” to consider  

Did a booth scan from a decade ago influence a deal today—probably not. But, could it have played a role in the journey? Maybe. So you’re going to have to make some decisions about how far back to actually look when measuring sourcing or influence.  

There are a couple key timing factors to consider.   

Do you care about acquisition or acceleration? Acquisition focuses on interactions before an opportunity is created, helping measure new business impact. Acceleration helps measure marketing’s role in closing deals by focusing on all of the Interactions during the deal cycle  

Again, novices may want to start with acquisition touches. This is where marketing’s impact on driving new business is most clear. 

The second timing factor to account for is the look-back window. How far back can you consider interactions for attribution? 

The best practice is to quantify your current deal cycle and count any marketing interaction that may have occurred in the past two deal cycles. So, if it usually takes you 3 months to close a deal, look 6 months back. If your deal cycle is six months, look 12 months back. This method balances accuracy and defensibility—giving credit where it’s due without over-attributing ancient interactions. 

Step 4: Define “who” actually influenced a deal 

In a typical enterprise sales cycle, there are hundreds of marketing interactions across dozens of individuals—but did Jimothy from HR really help close that six-figure deal in sales?  

There are three different ways to define “who” to include in your attribution model: 

• Lead level: Just the contact tied to the lead (basic last-touch attribution) 

• Buying committee level: All contacts directly tied to the opportunity 

• Account level: Every contact associated with the account 

While some marketers start with lead level, you’re probably going to miss most of the buying journey. It may make more sense to use account level for corporate accounts, and buying committee level for enterprise accounts. This ensures organization size and real influence are factored in accurately. 

Step 5: Start modeling 

Attribution is just a time-ordered series of interactions for every opportunity with weightings applied. A few basic window functions are all you need to get your models running. 

At Domo, we have 16 different marketing attribution models running in production. You can start with the more simple models like first- and last-touch or even-touch attribution. And as you build familiarity, you can move on to more advanced modeling with time-decay models. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to determine which model makes the most sense for your business.  

Embrace data-driven marketing with Domo 

Customers are being bombarded with marketing, so you need to understand what actually compels them to click “Add to Cart” or “Get a Demo.” Marketing attribution models are valuable tools for preventing wasteful spending on mediocre tactics and investing in the channels and campaigns that actually drive business.  

Learn more about how Domo marketing can help you track the metrics you need to make smart marketing decisions.