“A third of our sales are coming in through the web channel – let’s move budget from direct mail into display ads!”

Whoa – display ads are in the digital channel – but is display actually driving those purchases? Would more display ads drive in more purchases?

What do you mean by channel exactly? What if I respond to a direct mail piece by calling your Inbound Sales Center, then go onto your website to make a purchase? Which channel do you attribute me to – Direct Mail, Inbound Call or Web?

The answer is that every response has two at least two types of channel attribution.

One is the marketing stimulus channel – in this example, Direct Mail. The other is the response channel – in this example, Inbound Call. In many cases, a third channel is the purchase channel – in this example, it’s Web.

Moving money from Direct Mail to Display might be the right move – or it might cut off the main pipeline into your purchase funnel. I don’t want to make your head explode – but there may be a combination of market stimuli that constitute the actual Market Channel. It’s another facet of multi-channel attribution.

So you’re not measuring all this precisely? You’re not alone – many firms, even some really big ones you’ve heard of, aren’t doing it all that well either. Getting attribution right is a commitment – time and money – and is an iterative process. It should ultimately answer the question of where to spend your marketing money, gaining more precision with time.