Single-Touch vs. Multi-Touch Marketing Attribution: What Works Best

In today’s competitive marketing environment, businesses have more than one way to reach their potential customers. However, the increasing number of channels complicates matters when figuring out their role and value in your marketing efforts. For instance, if a user visited your Facebook page in the past but shopped through an email link, which marketing channel do you give credit for the sale?

As a marketer, you’d face similar questions when you use multiple channels to reach prospective customers. Inability to determine the role of different channels might lead to wasting precious marketing resources or putting your marketing budget on the wrong horse. If you are wondering how to judge the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, Marketing Attribution has all your answers.

We discussed the importance of investing in Marketing Attribution in an earlier post. Modern marketers need attribution to dig deeper into their marketing efforts. It is used to determine the effectiveness and role of marketing touchpoints that lead to a conversion. Using marketing attribution, you can quickly identify what works and what doesn’t and improve the personalization of your campaign.

However, choosing a suitable attribution model isn’t easy. Most marketers are in a dilemma when choosing between single-touch and multi-touch models. In this write-up, we shall look at both these models closely and help you choose the right one based on your business needs.

Single-Touch Attribution

It assigns 100% of the credit to a marketing touchpoint. Single-touch models are easy to implement and best used for businesses that have an uncomplicated business model. Let us look at the types of single-touch attribution models.

• First-Touch

The first-touch model assigns 100% credit to the first touchpoint or the awareness stage in the customer’s buying journey. However, this model ignores the role of all other touchpoints in the buying journey.

• Last -Touch

The exact opposite of the first-touch model assigns 100% credit to the last touchpoint. It is uncomplicated but ignores the impact of all other touchpoints leading up to the last one.

• Last Touch Non-Direct

It is slightly different from the last-touch model as it assigns 100% of the credit to the last non-direct touchpoint. For example, if a user buys a subscription from the store, the model steps back and assigns credit to the touchpoint before the user visits the store.

Multi-Touch Attribution

As the name suggests, the multi-touch attribution model looks beyond the buying journey’s first and last touch. It weighs the importance of other touchpoints and assigns credit based on their impact.

Here are the most widely used multi-touch models.

• Linear Attribution

The linear model divides the credit equally between all the touchpoints in the buyer’s journey. It is the easiest multi-touch attribution model to implement. It is a widely used model as it considers all the touchpoints the buyer has used till the final conversion. However, this model doesn’t provide insights into the impact of different touchpoints on the buyer’s journey.

• U-Shaped Attribution

This attribution model considers the first and the last touchpoints as the most important ones in the buyer’s journey. It assigns 40% credit each to these touchpoints and the remaining to other touchpoints. It best serves the interests of businesses with short sales cycles where awareness and lead conversion stages are the most important.

• W-Shaped Attribution

This model shares 30% of the credit each to the first, last, and opportunity creation touchpoints. The remaining touchpoints get 10% credit. It is the only model that stresses the importance of touchpoints in the middle stages of a customer’s journey.

• Time Decay Attribution

The time decay attribution model offers more credit to the touchpoints closer to the conversion. It helps track the impact of the marketing campaign on leads at the bottom of the funnel. However, this model works best when there are fewer touchpoints at the top of the funnel.

• Custom Attribution

All single-touch and multi-touch attribution models have cons, and none of the above models may offer you the insights you need. In such an event, you can choose custom attribution models. These mix two or more attribution models combining their best features.

What to Choose? Single-Touch vs. Multi-Touch Attribution

We have come to the most important question – whether you should opt for a single-touch or multi-touch attribution model. There are no easy answers, as both have their pros and cons. The ideal path is to choose a model that lets you measure your campaign’s impact and map your buyer’s journey. Here are a few pointers for choosing a suitable attribution model for your business.

• Short Sales Cycle

A single-touch attribution model will fit the bill perfectly if you have a short and uncomplicated sales cycle. It applies to businesses that target distinct customer groups on different channels. For example, if you run an online store, you can use the first-touch or last-touch model to track engagement with the customer. Some online stores also prefer the U-Shaped model as it helps monitor the two most essential touchpoints in the buying journey – awareness and lead conversion.

• Long Sales Cycle with Lead Gen

If a long sales cycle extends into months, multi-touch models can offer deeper insights into a customer’s mind. The Time Decay model is preferred by most businesses in the B2B industry as it tracks channels and campaigns that transform intent into a conversion.

• Recurring Revenue Business

In the case of recurring revenue businesses, the linear attribution model is a good fit. With this, you can keep track of ongoing customer engagement as it treats all engagements with the customers equally.

Wrapping Up

In summary, marketing attribution is powerful for tracking engagement and for judicious use of your marketing resources. Choose a model based on your needs that helps accurately map your marketing campaign’s impact. Be open to custom attribution models where you combine single-touch and multi-touch models.