Revenue Attribution: The Secret Weapon You Aren’t Using

What is Revenue Attribution?

Revenue attribution is the act of determining the marketing efforts that have led to sales.

With digital marketing, you want to know that the money you invest in Google Ads, Geo-Ads, SEO, SMS, and Social Media are resulting in sales as well as how many of the sales can be attributed to each of your channels.

That way, you can continue to invest in the strategies that bring you more sales or those which have the highest ROI.

Here’s the thing: revenue attribution isn’t anything new. Marketers have used various models for years to show the impact of their different advertising campaigns. However, according to Hubspot research, 43% of marketing teams say that proving ROI is their biggest challenge. So if revenue attribution sounds so intuitive, why is it so hard?

Part of this is just not knowing that it exists. The other part is not being able to get the information necessary.

In order to track the effectiveness of your marketing channels, you need to have an ecommerce platform that allows you to access your sales data. Unfortunately, not every platform provides the same level of reporting, so be sure to check on what yours can do. And if it isn’t up to snuff, don’t hesitate to switch to more a transparent option that has more functionality—it will save you money in the long run.

How to Track & Implement Revenue Attribution

In addition to using an ecommerce platform that provides you access to your sales data, you should also install Google Analytics and their Ecommerce Tracking so you can start creating a picture of where your sales are coming from.

Enabling e-commerce tracking lets you monitor how many new and returning customers are visiting your site, how they’re finding your site, how many are purchasing from you, and how much their spending on your site. These metrics are vital for determining which marketing channels yield the highest ROI.

Did a customer engage with your Google Ad and then click through to your special landing page? Did they see your ad on ESPN’s website?

Did they search for a dispensary near them and end up on your site? All of this information helps you determine how you’re getting your sales so that you can then increase your spend on those channels.

If your ecommerce provider doesn’t allow for integration with Google Analytics, you should ask them to add that integration or look for a provider that does provide integration. Otherwise, you’re only getting half of the picture, and you won’t be able to accurately track your digital marketing or sales.

What You Need to Track

In order to implement revenue attribution, you need to track two things: the conversion and the sale.

A conversion is a desired action. In digital marketing, this is generally a click, like clicking on a link to your menu.

From the conversion side, we need to know what propelled a person to make a purchase. Basically, what is the touchpoint that made them convert into a sale?

Sometimes there isn’t one touchpoint, there are several. Maybe the client searched on google, clicked your link, and dug around on your website but left. Then another day, they saw your Google Ad, clicked, and made a purchase.

From the sale side, we need to know how much they spent on their purchase.

This information will all go into your revenue attribution model.

When you sync Google’s Tracking with your e-commerce, you can see the source of your web traffic, their conversion rate, and the number of transactions from that source. You can also see the total revenue that can be attributed to a specific source, as well as the average customer spend. And as long as you have the right platforms in place, this is easy for us to set up for you.

Imagine being able to show your C-suite that your investment in SEO has led to an ROI of 9300%! Sound crazy? That’s a real stat from one of our clients.

Are You Ready to Implement Revenue Attribution?

Take back control of your marketing efforts and start tracking.

With the right e-commerce platform and digital marketing tools, you can learn more about the effectiveness of your efforts and reinvest in the strategies that are more likely to score you higher returns.

Without revenue attribution, you can guess what may work, but you won’t know. And chances are, you’ll be surprised at what’s working best.

By failing to gather revenue attribution, you could be wasting thousands of dollars on marketing that isn’t getting you any sales—and you wouldn’t even know it. In our current economy, that’s a mistake we can’t afford to make.

At MediaJel, we believe all of our clients deserve to know how their digital marketing is working for them. We strive to provide revenue attribution for our services so that our clients can make informed choices about their marketing budgets and focus on strategies that directly impact their bottom line. Want to learn more? Contact us to schedule a call.