Holistic Attribution Equals Holistic Digital Tactics

Many digital marketing campaigns consist of different tactics for different platforms, and almost none of these tie in together. Companies can see where sales are coming from, and they often tend to believe that particular leg of the customer’s journey is the only one. They may believe that a customer’s sale comes from one platform only. This is an excellent way to waste your marketing budget.

When you truly understand all the touchpoints in your customer’s journey, you can look at the bigger picture to see how each platform plays a role in eventually delivering the sale. Your campaign tactics for each platform can then support the proven customer journey by leveraging engagement on social media, tying that to Google Ad results and completing the funnel at the most successful end point you’re seeing in the data.

Incorporating Data Analytics Into Digital Marketing

There are clear and actionable steps that can be taken to successfully incorporate data analytics into your digital marketing campaign.

First, ensure that you are gathering data from all of your platforms, including social media, websites and even in-person or telephone engagements with your customers. View this data set as a whole rather than as a sum of its parts. This is the true path your customer takes to a sale.

With this data being collected, the next step is to ensure that you can track your customers through that data. Where are they starting, and where are they ending up? What are all the touchpoints in between? Can you actually trace their journey step by step?

When you start to create content for your campaigns, let the data lead creation. What types of ads and engagements have your customers responded to in the past? Do they seem to care about over-produced video reels, or are they more drawn to simple infographics? This insight should not just be gleaned from engagement numbers on social media, because, again, that’s only one part of the journey. If customers engaged with a specific type of content on one platform, did you also see a mirror engagement to that type of content on another platform? If so, great. If not, what is the difference between the customer’s mindset on those two journey points, and what do you need to give them instead?

In my experience, analyzing data is very often the stumbling block for companies. It can be time-consuming and confusing. Thankfully, AI-driven tools are being regularly enhanced to help solve this problem. With the right prompts, tools like ChatGPT can be leveraged to help analyze your data in a fraction of the time it might usually take.

To determine which tool is the right fit for your needs, ask yourself a few questions:

1. What kind of data do I need to collect and analyze? Consider the types of data that are crucial for understanding your customer journey and achieving your goals. This might include web analytics, social media data, customer feedback and more.

2. How easily can the tool integrate with my existing systems? Ensure that the attribution tool can seamlessly integrate with your current data sources.

3. What is my budget? Holistic attribution tools vary in cost, so determine your budget and find a tool that offers the features you need within that budget.

4. How user-friendly is the tool? Evaluate the tool’s ease of use, user interface and reporting capabilities.

A thoughtful assessment of these considerations can help guide you toward selecting the perfect holistic attribution tool for your specific needs and objectives.