Understanding the customer journey is crucial for making informed decisions around marketing and sales tactics. One of the most common attribution models used by marketers is the Last-Touch Attribution model. The Last-Touch Attribution model sheds light on what marketing channels new customer last engaged with. In other words, which channel drove them to become paying customers. While this model has its benefits, it’s not my go-to. In this post, I’ll cover why it’s essential to be aware of the limitations of Last-Touch Attribution modeling and why you should explore alternative approaches to gain a comprehensive understanding of your marketing efforts and customer behavior.

What is Last-Touch Attribution?

Last-Touch Attribution is an attribution model that gives credit for a conversion or sale to the last marketing touchpoint a customer interacted with before taking the desired action. It’s simple to implement and understand, which is why it’s widely used by many businesses. However, it has its drawbacks, which can lead to an incomplete understanding of the customer journey.

Analyzing the Last-Touch Attribution Model

To effectively analyze the Last-Touch Attribution model, marketers need to recognize its strengths and weaknesses. While it provides insights into the final touchpoint that led to a conversion, it fails to account for the complete customer journey. Marketers might focus solely on the end of the sales cycle, missing out on crucial data about how customers discovered the business and what kept them engaged throughout their journey.

Running an Analysis to Determine Top-Converting Channels

To identify the marketing channels that convert the most prospects into paying customers, a more comprehensive approach is required. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to run an analysis:

1. Data Collection: Gather data from all your marketing channels, including social media, email campaigns, PPC, SEO, referrals, and any other relevant sources.
2. Customer Journey Mapping: Create a customer journey map that traces each touchpoint a customer interacts with, from initial discovery to the final conversion.
3. Attribution Comparison: Compare the Last-Touch model with other attribution models like First-Touch, Multi-Touch (Linear), and Time Decay to understand the differences in results. By incorporating Multi-Touch Attribution model analysis, which distributes credit across multiple touchpoints in the customer journey, you can get a more holistic view into the full customer journey. Check out the blog posts linked below to learn how to leverage these models.

Using Last-Touch for B2B vs. B2C Ecommerce

In the realm of ecommerce, the difference between B2B and B2C marketing strategies is significant. B2B marketing typically involves longer sales cycles and multiple decision-makers, making it essential to understand every touchpoint in the customer journey. On the other hand, B2C ecommerce transactions often have shorter sales cycles and fewer decision-makers, making Last-Touch Attribution more tempting due to its simplicity. For this reason, Last-Touch is a much more powerful tool for B2C Ecommerce businesses than it is for B2B organizations or businesses with a longer sales cycle. A long sales cycle means that your prospective customers are fluctuating between moments of engagement and moments when they are not connected to your brand. Understanding what is happening between these moments unlocks unlimited potential for improving your sales cycle and converting more customers. For that reason, Last-Touch Attribution model analysis hardly scratches the surface for businesses with longer sales cycles.

Why Last-Touch Shouldn’t Be Your Go-To

While Last-Touch is prevalent, it’s not the most effective attribution model for gaining deep insights into customer behavior. As marketers and sales teams are already closely engaged with the final stages of the sales cycle, Last-Touch provides limited value in understanding the complete customer journey. What can really have an impact on your marketing and sales strategy is understanding what got customers in the door and what kept them around. With insight into the beginning and middle of the customer journey, your team is now empowered to discover opportunities to attract more customers, accelerate the sales cycle, optimize campaign ROI and to implement many more money-saving and revenue-generating tactics.

The Importance of Analyzing Untapped Channels

Often, businesses focus on their existing marketing channels without exploring untapped opportunities. By analyzing the channels that have not been utilized, businesses can identify potential new avenues for customer acquisition and engagement.

As your marketing function and the market landscape evolve, it’s important to explore opportunities to introduce new channels to your marketing strategy. By staying adaptable and regularly reassessing how your key channels contribute to marketing-driven sales, you are empowering your marketers to stay ahead of the competition and be the first to market to customers wherever they are. Once you’ve launched a new channel, take the time to analyze how it has affected customer behavior and adjust your strategy accordingly to maximize your marketing efforts’ impact. In other words, attribution modeling is not a one-time thing. It’s a powerful tool to leverage regularly to identify growth, optimization, and even white-space opportunities.

While Last-Touch Attribution is simple and widely used, it offers only a partial view of the customer journey. To gain a deeper understanding of your marketing efforts and customer behavior, exploring alternative attribution models like Multi-Touch is essential. Remember to consider the specificities of your B2B or B2C ecommerce strategy and keep an open mind about untapped channels. By continuously analyzing shifts in your attribution model, you can stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of marketing.