There’s a wonderful scene in the David Mamet film State and Main where one of the characters (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) asks another “What’s an associate producer credit?” The character replies – ‘It’s what you give to your secretary instead of a raise.”
The controversy over credits (especially Producer credits) in Hollywood is legendary. Did it really take 14 producers to manage the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen movie? Okay, I might buy that given that it’s a big blockbuster special effects movie. But how about the last Twilight movie? Nine producers? Really?
And, if you can imagine – this is better than it was. In 2000 the Producer’s Guild actually started a crack-down on “Producer” credits – putting out a list of “duties” that a Producer actually had to fulfill in order to get a guild credit on a movie.
You can understand the desire really. A producer credit on a movie can get you more money, prestige – and it’s the currency that Hollywood operates under.
And the same is true with marketing. Our passion for measuring, has generated the next logical step…
The Marketing Credit Crisis
I’ve been working with a couple of clients lately where responsibilities for various aspects of marketing are outsourced to different agencies. Everyone is working on the same “production” of course – but each is really responsible for their own little world. For one client in particular, there is a print agency – handling the creative and placement. There is a Web agency that handles the Web site and the social media strategy. There is a SEM Firm that handles PPC and SEO strategy. And, there’s a media/creative agency handling the regional television and radio that the company does.
All in all it works relatively well – and the in-house marketing team manages the agencies effectively.
But there’s an issue.
A Sale By Any Other Name Is Still Mine!
The problem of multi-attribution in marketing is simple to explain – but solving it is like trying to decipher particle physics. With that company I just mentioned, I had a unique opportunity to actually witness multi-attribution challenges for real over the last two months. Here’s what happened:
This particular company decided to stop (cold) their television and radio buy for exactly one month. They were re-tooling their brand and creative and basically stopped buying the advertising. They were also doing PPC buys – but continued those during this one month period.
The PPC buys were in what I call “management mode” where the initial optimization has happened – and you’re spending your time in champion/challenger mode getting the conversion rates to inch up a percent or two.
Here’s the thing – when the TV and Radio buys went dark – the PPC fell as well. And not just a little bit – but a lot. The branded keywords fell through the floor and the others fell off by about 20%. So, did the PPC agency just get 20% worse at converting traffic? Should the Media Agency get a 20% bump in credit from this point forward?
No, of course not - although let me tell you it makes for an interesting conference call.
Anyway, you’re already ahead of me I’m sure (and inherently know) that multiple impressions (engagements, hits etc..) are quite common in order to drive conversions. But here’s where we are running the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot.
Which Producer is Producing?
Multi-attribution strategies for marketing have been covered extensively. If you want to really get yourself just numbed out on numbers, models and frameworks check out:
Microsoft’s Atlas Institute’s Framework on Multi-Attribution
Forrester’s Multicampaign Attribution Measurement Framework
ClearSaleing’s Understanding Attribution Series
Now, don’t get me wrong – there’s some serious thinking going on here. The Microsoft guys have an especially thorough approach. But really all of them have interesting solutions to creating a matrixed framework of conversion events, assigning values to engagement, and other values to metrics such as time-on-site, pages viewed, tracking through the funnel the percentage of credit that each tactic should get – and aaaaaah my head just exploded.
See, the problem I have with all of these approaches is that the solutions seem to be the same. I read a good number of them and they all seem to suggest some form of the below:
- Get an analytics system that supports multi-attribution thinking (read expensive and complex).
- Assign a statistician to figure out how the framework should be constructed for your particular funnel (yes this is really suggested).
- Integrate all of your advertising platforms and offline efforts so that you can track each individual engagementAnd my absolute favorite…..
- Expect a good amount of data integrity problems and data loss…. (so your guess is as good as mine?)
Why Not Engage?
There’s a wonderful scene in an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is trying to duplicate the MovieFone guy. At a certain point, he gets so frustrated trying to be a “computer” and understand the beeps and tones of the phone that he just blurts out “why don’t you just *tell* me the movie you’d like to see”.
I’m absolutely sure that there are real marketers, driving real value by spending real effort to algorithmically figure out how to give credit to each individual tactic in a multi-attribute methodology. And, I’m just as sure that there are many more organizations that just won’t (or shouldn’t) ever have that capability.
And attribution is definitely a real challenge. In the examples I gave, and in many other organizations the “last click” credit can be a dangerous road. If one agency really blows up a television campaign, or budgets are cut – this can have a real effect on other team’s work. We need to be aware that even though we are sometimes measuring in silos – that consumer engagement rarely is. One team or another may be getting too much – or (quite frankly) not enough credit.
For those, that aren’t going to get the luxury of a data warehouse, or their own cuddly statistician, I’d like to humbly suggest three ideas that have helped me sort it out:
- Explore your users in the design of your marketing programs
As you put together your marketing mechanisms – you’ll start to see patterns emerge. These patterns will be abundantly clearer the more you understand your target personas. How are they likely to engage for the product or service you are selling. Where are the touchpoints –and how do you believe they will work in concert with one another. This is truly the art of marketing. Yes, the ability to measure is important – and starting to at least understand the “initial” engagement AND the last click – is an important step in discerning the patterns. In other words, if you can just figure out where you first met, and where you got married – you’ll be well on your way to understanding the relationship. - Experiment, Watch and Learn
I’ve found that the best way to make adjustments is to just continually make them and improve over time. By being observant and noticing that PPC dropped substantially when the TV and Radio was removed gave me a piece of insight. It’s something that I can use in the future. Sometimes you have to purposely shake up one thing or another – to watch how it affects the other things. - Just Ask
Perhaps the easiest and most forgotten ways these days is to just simply ask. Why not develop a program with customers and simply ask them how they came to make their buying decision. What was their process? This may be the most valuable “multi-attribution” project you’ll ever do.
In closing, I want to reiterate, that I do recognize the value that these multi-attribution frameworks and approaches are creating. There are many organizations (especially in high-transaction e-commerce or large scale consumer products) where near real-time optimization of the buying funnel is critical.
But just like the little independent movie would choke on 13 Associate Producers – so too does the mid-sized marketing organization choke on trying to solve a problem with a matrix that may be better solved with a little bit of human touch.
