Forget about attribution (for now)

At-trib-ut-ion

You’re spending money on Facebook and Google and you need to know ROI. I get it. Spend x earn y.

And then you have the challenge of a wide variety of attribution. Email series that attribute revenue based on opens. Facebook Ads, similarly, claim the attribution prize with view data rather than click data. You’ve got options a plenty for attribution windows. Then… the master of all tools, Google Analytics tells you something completely different.

I get it.

And my advice to you? Don’t worry so much about measuring attribution. Seriously, you’ve got better things to do than attempting to calculate the value of a customer that saw an ad on their mobile, then received a newsletter, who then clicked a link who then visited your site from their laptop. Just focus on delivering a better shopping experience.

Attribution is all over the place. It’s immeasurable when you consider the influence of each and every touchpoint. Each and every thought that registers in your customers head.

Look at your ads. Do they sound compelling? Do they deliver relevant traffic? Can you scale? Great. Now focus on the bit you own. Your store. Your list. Your post-purchase experience. The ad is the entry point. It creates interest. The hook that you work upon to motivate the visitor to become the customer.

I see and hear far too much time wasted worrying about attribution. The whole attribution challenge can stifle growth.

Realise a multitude of journeys take a person from clicking an ad to making a purchase. Make that journey as easy as possible. Don’t complicate the whole process trying to access data that’s simply not there.

It's about Blended Attribution. Knowing that in the world of ecommerce with tighter jurisdiction over privacy settings you can't clinically measure attribution. Know your profit. That's the key to all this.

Keep it simples.