More than 700,000 people in the US experience a heart attack each year.
Trying to diagnose the cause of the heart attack isn’t easy for any cardiologist. Determining what actually caused the heart attack is like searching for a needle in haystack:
Did the person have a genetic predisposition for heart problems?
Were they smokers?
Were they overweight?
Were they taking any medication?
Were they under extreme work related stress like tech entrepreneurs Blake Krikorian or Zhang Rui.
A straightforward physician will tell you that it doesn’t matter which one caused the heart attack. The heart attack can be attributed to the presence of all those unhealthy variables.
You can use the heart attack analogy to describe the world digital marketing attribution. But rather than a negative experience like a heart attack, marketers focus on sales. And the goal is to eliminate unhealthy marketing campaigns you’re wasting budget on.
But just like the heart attack, identifying the contributing factors to a sale can be difficult.
Did that press release you put out 6 months ago contribute to a new sale?
How about social media? Did that funny meme you posted on Linkedin initiate a set of events that lead a new customer to seek out a salesperson?
Referral Saasquatch wanted to know the answer to these questions. So they invited me and few other entrepreneurs to reveal how we deal with the complexities of marketing attribution.
Below is a sample of how we deal with the “attribution conundrum” at Metadata:
Some of the other folks on this article give great advice as well. Take a look.
Got an attribution quandary? Feel free to send me an email with any of your attribution questions: gil@metadata.io.
