Introduction:

When a business is in its fledgling stages, it’s mission critical that no marketing spend is wasted and each dollar assists in driving customers. But to ensure their marketing efforts are actually moving the needle, startups need the right tools to understand the customer journey from start to finish. Enter: attribution reporting.

The data yielded by lead attribution can drive new marketing strategies, inform current campaigns, and ensure that underperforming channels aren’t languishing.

So when it comes time to launch an effective marketing strategy that builds a strong customer base for first-time businesses, here are three things you need to know:

What exactly is attribution reporting?

As buyers prefer an increasing number of channels through which to interact with businesses, attribution reporting is one of the simplest ways for marketers to understand today’s increasingly complex customer journeys. With lead intelligence software, startup teams can get a combined view of lead sources at each stage in the sales funnel and automatically collect conversation data at each touchpoint, whether a prospect is calling, texting, filling out a website form, or live chatting.

For example, if a law firm is running ads for legal services on both Facebook and Google, but the ads on Google have driven a significantly higher number of inquiry phone calls, that firm can confidently invest more marketing dollars or reallocate current Facebook spend to their paid advertising on Google.  Attribution reporting tools not only indicate which channels and campaigns garner the most interest, but help marketers connect with those leads more effectively.

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What kind of data can startups gain from attribution reporting?

If you don’t know which ads, search terms, and campaigns make your phone ring (or your texts ping), you likely don’t know your real ROI. But with call attribution, startups can learn exactly why each lead is calling before they even pick up the phone — whether they’re responding to an offer in a listing, online ad, or a flier.

There are two types of call tracking that startups can utilize, source tracking and visitor tracking, and they offer different data points. Source tracking assigns a unique number to campaigns or promotions — like an ad, mailer, or social media — so marketers can tell which channels are working and which aren’t. It works for both online and offline tactics, and forwards each call to the primary business phone number. Visitor tracking assigns a unique phone number to each individual who visits a website after an online search. This phone number follows them click by click, from page to page and visit to visit. If a lead decides to call, a business will know who they are, which search terms they used, and which pages they saw.

By combining the two, startups can develop a comprehensive multichannel lead strategy, which provides visibility into the entire buyer journey and pinpoints the exact moment a lead becomes a customer. This level of knowledge powers data-backed marketing decisions. Marketers gain insight into exactly what channels a lead visits before converting – thus proving which are worth the investment.

How does attribution reporting drive leads?

Customers interact with a business across a wide breadth of channels, ranging from Facebook ads to print ads or even a billboard. With so many channels, startups need to make data-driven decisions about where to invest their marketing dollars.

Equipped with the technology to see which sources deliver the best quality leads, startups have clear visibility into which marketing efforts are driving the highest ROI. For example, if a lead filled out a form and then called the business, the attribution for the form submission and call would be captured under the same lead and given credit at the correct part of the sales funnel. This granular level of reporting provides businesses with a holistic view of how the overall marketing strategy is performing and shows which channels are driving leads to their business.

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Conclusion: With an increasingly complex customer journey, it is more important than ever to ensure that startups are armed with the necessary data to successfully achieve the highest return on investment possible.

In order to do so, marketers must have a full understanding of their customer journey, from start to finish, so that they can accurately understand which strategies resonate with leads. From there, they can make informed decisions and invest further into the most successful marketing channels. By understanding their customer’s journey, startups will better meet the unique needs and desires of their customers as they launch their business.