There is a sea of different marketing attribution models that may be suitable for your business. Perhaps you’ll find one, or several, that you favor and want to add to your marketing toolkit. You may even decide that the best course of action for your business is to develop your own custom attribution model. 

Custom Attribution Modeling 

Customizing your company’s marketing attribution model is necessary for businesses that desire an accurate measurement of the true impact of marketing spend. Such customized models help companies make decisions that catalyze sales so they can grow their business quickly. 

Fully customized attribution models are typically created with first party data, meaning in-house information about your own customers. Though third party data from outside sources can also be weaved in for good measure, that information is often secondary when developing a customized marketing attribution model. 

Part of the challenge of custom attribution models is ensuring the model is accurate. An accurate model ensures the company isn’t steered off course by unreliable data that ultimately wastes money and time.

The custom attribution model approach empowers brands to do more than merely move past the commonly-used last touch attribution model. Custom attribution modeling provides a more thorough understanding of how specific marketing endeavors steer customers toward the endpoint of the buyer journey, all based on a company’s unique needs. 

Above all, tailoring an attribution model to the business helps marketers gain confidence in pinpointing the channels most likely to drive conversions while minimizing spend on the channels and touchpoints that underperform.

The bottom line is an attribution model tailored to the business ensures credit is doled out where it is deserved for confident decision-making based on data most relevant to the company’s concerns. 

The Right Custom Attribution Model for Your Business

Custom models tie marketing data to additional information like transactional data, empowering marketers to better track campaign performance. Moreover, such customization also allows for the accurate tracking of value generated. Such insight empowers marketers to obtain a more comprehensive and accurate measurement of the return on marketing investment.

Custom attribution modeling primarily focuses on individual touchpoints. Each touchpoint a buyer interacts with along the customer journey represents a treasure trove of information. Such data is used as inputs in predictive modeling. Interaction frequency with specific channels, touchpoint positioning in regard to buyer journeys, and even your overarching media mix all matter a great deal. 

The length of time spent between each touchpoint and conversion itself along with the specific devices used for interaction also paint the picture of the sales process. However, tracking devices used by customers is inherently challenging as many alternate between devices as they move toward conversion.

Data Points Specific to the Business

Custom attribution modeling for your business and brand are that much more effective when using data points that relate to the manner in which the enterprise functions. As an example, a golfing business will need to account for the seasonality of the enterprise with a specific focus on the temporality of tee time reservations. 

Peak periods, holidays and more must be acknowledged when studying marketing efforts and sales. The overarching purpose is to incorporate highly relevant data into the company’s customized attribution model for accurate insight into what, exactly, drives prospects to convert from customers to buyers.

Zeroing in on Specific Touchpoints

The creation of your unique custom attribution model centers on credit provided to specific touchpoints. In the context of marketing, credit constitutes the share of attribution for sales success. 

Each individual touchpoint along the buyer journey plays a role in conversion. It is up to your internal brass to determine which touchpoint or touchpoints (plural) are most important in sales success.

Continue to refine your customized model and you’ll improve attribution for proper alignment with sales, company goals and ongoing marketing success. In most cases, businesses opt for weighted attribution in which a variety of touchpoints are provided with respective credit, meaning significance in determining ensuing sales.

An Example of the Custom Attribution Model

Instead of assigning the entirety of weight of sales to the first or last touch, it is better to assign weight to individual touchpoints that played a role in steering customers toward the point of purchase. 

As an example, product videos, blog posts, social media content and TV commercials constitute touchpoints along the buyer journey. A company’s custom attribution model might credit sales in the following way:

• TV commercial with 40% of sales attribution
• Product video content with 30% of sales attribution
• Social media with 20% of sales attribution
• The company blog with 10% of sales attribution

However, the example above is just one variation of custom attribution modeling for business. Your company might be best served with a completely different model in accordance with the behaviors of your core audience.