On Wednesday May 26, BOSCO™ hosted an online panel discussion on attribution modelling.
Joining our CEO John Readman on the panel was brand and marketing consultant, formerly of Belstaff, Reiss and M&S, Alex Kelly. We were also joined by Cormac Folan, a digital director formerly of T.M. Lewin and Paddy Power and Modo25’s performance marketing manager, Tom Pickard.
It was an interesting debate with the expert panel delving into topics such as where to start with attribution modelling, why last click attribution is problematic and measuring the effect of both online and offline media. You can watch the full webinar below but here’s a couple of the opening questions in more detail.
If you don’t have a multi-channel attribution or multi-channel model in place, where should you start?
Cormac was the first to answer, he said “Start with your data. Are you tracking your data effectively? Data needs be maintained, it needs to be set up. What will inform and attribution model is click data and impression data.
You need to understand where you are tracking it on, how you are tracking it and to what level it’s been tracked at. So, are different channels being tracked effectively? Are there any gaps in your tracking? Are there incomplete data sets? How are you bringing that data against your own data? I guess a starting point is to do a review or an audit to understand your data when it’s been broken down across all your marketing channels.”
Alex then picked up the question with; “I’ll agree first up because most of the problems I’ve seen is when the data just doesn’t make any sense or people don’t challenge it. So, there is a bit around just good housekeeping. So, how you are tracking? How are you monitoring it?
And then looking at that data because stuff falls off sometimes, then you think you are looking at whatever that version of the truth is. Whether it is last click, first click and any of the other versions. You have just got to have confident in what you are looking at firstly. From that point you can sort of move forward.”
When we talk about data, what data do we mean?
Cormac answered swiftly, “It’s a really good question. Data is such a broad term. I specifically mean, if GA (Google Analytics) is what you’re using to track your marketing activity and build an attribution model off – it’s that data, it’s your UTM parameters, it’s your linking of your campaign data, your AdWords through to GA. It is your single point of truth.”
Tom clarified, “I would say – going back to your first question to begin with, as maybe getting your data in the right place but also what you’re trying to achieve is a question I’d ask very early on in this process. There’s no point saying, ‘I need an attribution model’ when you don’t know why you need an attribution model”.
You can watch the full webinar and more clips from the session on our YouTube channel.
Once your campaigns are set up and running, measuring its performance alongside other paid media campaigns can be challenging. BOSCO™ Connect provides a streamlined analytics platform, with all your metrics in one easy to understand dashboard. For more information on connecting your data, book a demo.
