Unlocking the Secrets of Success: Navigating the Choices of Marketing Attribution Models

If we’re honest — marketing is a critical, complex, and challenging endeavor. It’s why I applaud marketers everywhere because it’s not as glamorous or simple as it sounds.

With so many channels available to connect with your target audience, it can be difficult to determine what is driving the most impact for your particular strategies. Marketing attribution models are here to save the day — by providing a framework to understand the impact of marketing tactics on sales and revenue, so you have clarity when allocating your marketing budget.

Attributing success to the right marketing tactics is like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together – it reveals the bigger picture and helps you optimize your strategy.

In this article, I’ll provide an overview of each type model, highlight the pros and cons, and factors to consider when choosing the right model for your business. It’s important to remember that all attribution efforts are backward looking, evaluating what’s already happened. This is why we’ll always support you to prioritize the customer experience and test your marketing efforts as you pursue marketing attribution/MMM.

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Model	Description	Pros	Cons
First Touch	100% credited to the first tracked marketing interaction.	Recognizes the role of top-of-funnel activities: This model places importance on the first touchpoint, which is often a top-of-funnel activity like awareness or brand consideration. This can help allocate budget and resources to these important early stages of the customer journey. Focuses on customer acquisition: By giving credit to the first touch, this model can help identify which marketing channels are most effective in acquiring new customers. Simplicity: A first touch attribution model is straightforward and easy to understand, making it a good option for businesses new to marketing attribution.	Does not account for later touchpoints: This model only credits the first touch, ignoring the role of later touchpoints in the customer journey. This can lead to an incomplete understanding of the customer journey and misallocation of resources. Can overlook the importance of retargeting: Retargeting is often a crucial part of the customer journey, and this model does not give credit to touchpoints that occur later in the process. May undervalue long-term customer relationships : A first touch model does not account for the ongoing interactions and nurturing that are necessary to build long-term customer relationships.
Last Touch	100% credited to the most recently tracked marketing interaction.	Simple and straightforward: This model is easy to understand and implement, making it a good option for businesses new to marketing attribution. Focuses on conversion : By giving credit to the last touch, this model can help identify which marketing channels are most effective in driving conversions. Provides visibility to sales teams : A last touch model can help sales teams understand which marketing channels are driving the most conversions, allowing them to focus supporting efforts on those channels.	Ignores earlier touchpoints: This model ignores the role of earlier touchpoints in the customer journey. This can lead to an incomplete understanding of the customer journey and misallocation of resources. Can overlook the importance of top-of-funnel activities: A last touch model does not give credit to top-of-funnel activities like awareness or brand consideration, which are crucial to building a strong customer relationship. May undervalue long-term customer relationships : A last touch model does not account for the ongoing interactions and nurturing that are necessary to build long-term customer relationships.
Linear	Credit spread out equally across all tracked marketing interactions.	Considers the role of all touchpoints: This model gives equal credit to all touchpoints in the customer journey, allowing for a more complete understanding of the customer journey. Recognizes the importance of all stages of the funnel : By giving credit to both top-of-funnel activities and conversion-focused activities, this model can help allocate budget and resources to all stages of the funnel. Reflects the customer journey: A linear model acknowledges that a customer's journey to purchase is not linear and often involves multiple touchpoints over time.	Can be complicated: Allocating equal credit to all touchpoints can make the model more complex and difficult to understand, particularly for businesses new to marketing attribution. Can lead to overvaluing unimportant touchpoints : By giving equal credit to all touchpoints, a linear model can overvalue touchpoints that did not play a significant role in the conversion process. May not reflect the true value of each touchpoint: The linear model does not account for the varying impact of different touchpoints, making it difficult to accurately allocate budget and resources.
Time Decay	Credited based on the proximity of each tracked marketing touchpoint to the end conversion event.	Reflects the customer journey: This model acknowledges that the closer a touchpoint is to the conversion event, the more impactful it is likely to have been. Prioritizes conversion-focused activities: By giving more credit to touchpoints close to the conversion, this model can help businesses prioritize the marketing channels that drive conversions. Provides clarity from a sales POV: This model can help sales teams understand which marketing channels are driving the most conversions, allowing them to focus their efforts on the most effective channels.	Can overlook the importance of top-of-funnel activities : A time decay model does not give as much credit to top-of-funnel activities, such as brand awareness or consideration, that are crucial to building a strong customer relationship. May not reflect the customer journey: A time decay model assumes that the customer journey is linear, whereas in reality it can be more complex and involve multiple touchpoints over time. Can be difficult to set up: Setting up a time decay model requires a clear understanding of the customer journey and the timing of each touchpoint, which can be challenging for businesses new to marketing attribution.
Marketing Mix Modeling	Credit distributed in accordance with the custom data model	Most comprehensive: can use internal (company generated) + external (i.e. weather, economic indicators, etc.) data, plus forecasting techniques May require less data : Can traditionally be set up with fewer inputs such as spend, conversions, geo, and channel. Focused on risk-reduction in making investment decisions and marketing spend allocation changes Scaled insights: Ability to explain which variables are contributing to spikes or dips in performance Can be multi-purpose: modeling optimal ad spend, testing decisions for marketing activities, and determining best campaigns or channels Not powered by user-level data: useful in looking at aggregate trends in a post-PII world	Can be complex and time-consuming in nature , requiring significant investment in data engineering and science Requires outstanding data quality and quantity historically and as an ongoing practice Can diminish the perceived value knowledge : colleagues’ business experience, market knowledge, and practical experience can be overlooked by a singular reliance on the model outputs Campaign level data preferred: whilst this is rare, it's best use pursue MMM at the campaign level to truly understand which efforts are driving results

I frequently get asked to help my clients select the right marketing model. When we speak, there’s usually some surprise when I share that there’s actually no “right” answer — each one is geared toward evaluating particular marketing strategies, time to insight, budget, and resources. What we end up landing on is that a few can be combined to evaluate the particular strategies at different times. I’m conscious I just gave the “it depends” answer of a consultant, but it’s true and I’ll never be the one to tell a white lie so you feel good and want to work with me. If you’re awesome, you’ll know what to do ;)

And before we wrap - let’s all acknowledge that MMM is obviously the most enticing! It’s great to work toward, but it may not be the right timing or an accessible for all (many) companies. Let’s use the case of Tom Brady; we might want to be the pre-2022 version of him, but until we get to that level of career + athleticism, it probably doesn’t make sense to invest in personal trainers, specialty chefs + foods, sports psychologists, and everything else it takes to get to and maintain that level of performance. What you can do in preparation for that level of ambition is to ensure your data collection and quality are maintained in the highest quality — it’ll make everything that much easier when you’re ready to pursue MMM, and benefit all other data-driven decisions.

Until then, here’s a very generalized way to think about each model based on your marketing strategy:

1. Acquisition —> First Touch

2. Engagement, Loyalty —> Linear, Time Decay

3. Activation, Conversion, Loyalty —> Time Decay, Last Touch

4. Rules based and MMM can apply to all

When all is said and done, there’s unfortunately no silver bullet answer to this. But if someone is asking you for one, you can share that “____ is the right attribution model for our <acquisition / engagement / conversion / loyalty> priority. The ___ + ___ models will help us further optimize and understand our customer journey as we grow and develop XYZ strategies”

Let’s talk MMM + Attribution

Point is, don’t hang your career on only using one of these — each of them have value and corresponding costs. And remember that both data and science are imperfect; use your business experience and strongly listen to your customers as you pursue marketing attribution/MMM. Knowing that whole story is where all the pieces come together.

When you’re done playing marketing pin the tail on the donkey or need to answer leadership’s call to solve this challenge — let's get serious and complete the attribution puzzle together.