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Attribution: Do you give the last touchpoint all of the credit for a sale?

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#31
Chris Leslie said:
"Attribution models are just something marketers made up because their ideas sucked"
~ Chris K Leslie


So i guess the answer to this whole question is really that there isn't an answer?
Click to expand...

Yes & No. Attribution model's goals are to improve marketplace visibility to help all participants 'improve their game'.

Attribution models can be built top down and/or bottom up.
  • Top Down: campaign > traffic > sales (strategic thinking)
  • Bottom Up: sale > traffic > campaign (tactical thinking)

Dealers & OEMs can use both top down & bottom up.
--OEMs can create profits from top down visibility... today.
--Dealer's can use top down, but, their greatest ROI will come from bottom up visibility (i.e. use shopper's data to assist the sale AND score marketing campaigns)


BOTTOM UP PROBLEM:
In our industry, in 2016, the invisible car shopper keeps the data from being highly precise down to a user level. If you want to look past "internet = leads", then, deep thinkers have to let go of digital data, go into the wild and study the shoppers in person (i.e. qualitative research). Even then, bottom up still won't provide highly detailed visibility, so, you can't answer granular questions (i.e. which SEM content produced the highest business value).


HTH
-Uncle Joe

p.s. until shoppers want & use shopping carts to buy cars, gaps in bottom up data will always be with us.
 
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#32
I received a tweet this from a tweet from a guy who I like and respect, BUT here's what he said...
"...give me 100% measured, direct attribution data and you have our attention"
​
There is a huge desire - it's a hope really - that we can somehow make a very involved shopping process easier to measure. I understand that desire, that hope, that dream, BUT the reality is that we can't control the consumers' shopping process. What we can control is how we measure the shopping activity and how we allocate credit for moving the consumer in our direction.

I read this article just this morning, "Real Time, Multi Channel Marketing Attribution: From Myth to Reality".
I fear that the technology to accurately measure and attribute sales is passing us by -- and many marketers in automotive really don't have the desire to embrace the new technology.
 
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#33
Has anyone here tried Dealer Sourcing Solutions? About a year ago TrueCar was working with them to offer free trials to some of their dealer partners. We took a look at their service and while my marketing team was interested in the data it would provide, the length of the customer "survey" was too long and under the free trial terms it was not customizable. We decided with all of the CSI follow up calls, the OEM survey and the various tech (Sirius, BlueLink, Onstar, etc) follow up that adding yet another layer of customer inquisition did not lend itself to a great customer experience so we decided not to try this.

The benefits would have been to determine all of the online and offline marketing touch points that influenced the purchases with our dealership(s), but it still would just be a representation of a segment of our total customer base since not everyone would complete the survey. We may have been able to see which digital sources they used to get to us so we could be sure we were allocating our spend accordingly, but at the cost of overwhelming our guests with too many questions.

My sales teams only care about getting as many people through the door as possible and providing them with a great buying experience. My marketing team gets in the weeds with the data (and the vendors) to make the best determination of how to support our sales (and service) teams. At the end of the day, while we wish for 100% multi-attribution, we have to be confident in our gut to a certain degree in the decisions we make and be willing to fail and learn from mistakes rather than staying on the same path that might have worked in the past.
 
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#35
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#36
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#37
Interesting question.
"The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a prospect needs to “hear” the advertiser’s message at least 7 times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service." So although, its very very difficult to track (and sometimes justify the spend), I think TV ads and less direct / less attributable advertising efforts are still very needed.

https://www.krusecontrolinc.com/rule-of-7-how-social-media-crushes-old-school-marketing/
 
#38
Beth Escaravage said:
Interesting question.
"The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a prospect needs to “hear” the advertiser’s message at least 7 times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service." So although, its very very difficult to track (and sometimes justify the spend), I think TV ads and less direct / less attributable advertising efforts are still very needed.

https://www.krusecontrolinc.com/rule-of-7-how-social-media-crushes-old-school-marketing/
Click to expand...
You'll need the data to back that up. Plus, there are TV Attribution tools out there to help dealers. :)
 

✨ AI Highlights

The thread debates whether dealerships should assign all credit for a sale to the last advertising touchpoint, given that car shoppers typically interact with 24+ sources before purchasing. Participants argue that last-click attribution is overly simplistic and flawed, with the most influential source often being an earlier one that created the path to purchase, while acknowledging that ideal cross-platform tracking remains technically difficult at the dealer level. The key insight is that while multi-touch attribution models are preferable to last-click attribution, the automotive industry lacks the tools to properly implement them, forcing dealers to rely on customer conversations and imperfect data to understand which marketing channels truly drive conversions.

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