July 23 2010

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Marketing Attribution

Originally published July 24, 2010

Marketing attribution and user behavior analysis are key elements in today’s online marketing industry. Visitors often conduct research through multiple visits and marketing channels prior to taking a “desired action”, which is also referred to as a “conversion”. Therefore, it is important to identify and evaluate activities that lead up to a conversion, which can be a form fill, online purchase, file download, phone call or other pre-defined action.

Marketing attribution involves assigning conversion credit to individual marketing channels. User behavior analysis complements this by focusing on items such as navigation paths and search behavior. Both provide additional online marketing intelligence, which can be used to evaluate marketing channels and identify behavioral patterns.

TopSpot utilizes multiple tracking solutions, which help monitor both online and offline traffic. This analytics data provides additional insight, which can be difficult to acquire through a single tracking solution. TopSpot spends a considerable amount of time analyzing data in order to gain a better understanding. This allows us to provide valuable recommendations, which help improve ROI.

There are a number of examples, which highlight the importance of both online marketing attribution and user behavior analysis. The examples below are based on research data that TopSpot has collected. Each example will help explain why TopSpot is so excited about both of these areas.

The first example shows the importance of evaluating data from multiple tracking solutions. Here we have a visitor who accesses a website through a paid search listing. The visitor finds useful information and decides to pick up the phone and call. After the call, the visitor closes their browser without viewing any other pages. In this scenario, one tracking solution would show that a visitor accessed the website through a paid search listing, viewed one page and then left the site. However, a secondary tracking solution would show that the visitor accessed the website through the same paid search listing and placed a phone call. This example shows how it is not always possible to get a “complete report” from a single tracking solution.

The second example takes a closer look at search behavior. Here we have a visitor that accesses a particular website three times during one month. The first visit came through a “product keyword” and the second through the “company name”. The third visit, which resulted in a conversion, came through a combination of the “company name and product name”. If one were to look at the last keyword, they would say that the customer was already familiar with the company’s name and products. However, the visitor’s search behavior shows that this is not the case.

TopSpot recognizes the value in looking past surface level metrics, which include items such as visits, page views, bounce rate and more. This is why we invest the additional time required to study both marketing attribution and user behavior. Please feel free to contact us at 713.933.0449 or sales@topspotims.com if you would like to learn more about our services.