Customer acquisition is often the primary focus of any marketing campaign. Knowing the journey that your customers take on their way to buying is objectively valuable information for the companies that serve them. The precise ads, content, and emails that your prospects engage with are the keys to better tailoring your marketing strategies, making more data-driven decisions, and having a measurable impact on your ROI.

But marketing attribution isn’t just a great thing for companies, it’s also a huge benefit to your customers as well.

That might sound a bit confusing at first. It’s easy to see how a company would benefit from marketing attribution software. They are able to maximize the return on their ad spend by eliminating advertising that isn’t working efficiently. They get more sales from highly qualified customers that are more likely to become loyal long-term brand advocates.

Marketing attribution delivers benefits to customers as well. They may not be able to pinpoint “attribution” as the driving force behind those benefits, but they do feel its impact in their experience and trust they developed with your brand.

In this article, we’ll dive into some of the reasons why consumers care about marketing attribution along with companies using attribution technologies.

Let’s get started.

Customers Appreciate Shorter Paths

Customers appreciate a simple yet effective buying experience. Proper attribution helps companies to pinpoint the ads and content that resonate with customers. Through multi-channel attribution, they can give customers more of the content that they actually want to engage with and less of the content that they find less compelling. 

What does this mean for customers? Less of everything. Fewer pages to read. Fewer ads to view. Fewer clicks to make. Fewer friction in getting what they want. 90% of consumers are willing to share more behavioral data if it means they will be provided with a cheaper or easier shopping experience. 

When you are able to effectively simplify the buying process and connect consumers directly to the content that answers their biggest questions, you improve their experience. You show them that you understand them and are able to effectively connect them with the information that is most relevant to their buying decision. 

A shorter path to purchase is critical to success. According to a checkout usability survey by Baymard, too long and complicated of a checkout process was the third most cited reason for cart abandonment during checkout. Customers expect buying from you to be easy and that extends to every step in the buying process — including the awareness, interest, desire, and buying stages.

Further — marketing attribution allows companies to hone in on the conversion paths that specific buyer personas take. You may find that certain buyer profiles are more likely to engage through a certain channel, with specific types of content, or through specific platforms. This allows companies to declutter their information delivery process and give customers more of the information they need to be connected with, through the channel that makes the most sense.

Post-Conversion Ad Clicks

Have you ever purchased something from a company, only to find that the company continues to deliver advertisements for the item afterward? This can be a bit annoying to consumers. It shows that the company is not fully tracking their interactions with the brand, and modern consumers fully expect a personalized experience. 71% of consumers feel frustrated when their shopping experience is impersonal. 

It’s easy to see how it would be hard to feel satisfied with your purchase when it seems as if the company is unaware that the purchase was made. Even worse, a common mistake that companies make is to deliver discount codes and other incentives to customers that have already purchased a product. That would truly be infuriating for a customer. They may feel like they were shortchanged and in the end, it affects how they perceive your brand. 

This idea isn’t limited to purchasing conversions, either. If a customer clicked on an ad to a blog post on social media and then later receive an email that tries to push them to that same blog post, the customer is unlikely to feel like the company has a true grasp on their engagements with the brand. 

The main point here is that proper attribution allows marketing teams to tighten up their strategies. They’ll have a better idea of what their customers need to see and when they need to see it. This improves the customer’s experience and reduces experiences where the brand might seem out of touch with the reality of each customer’s unique experience. 

Every Ad is a Salesperson

The old adage that “every ad is a salesperson” is one that more companies could benefit from considering. Too often companies are focused on getting their brand in front of prospective customers, instead of ensuring that every interaction with them is impactful. 

If every ad is a salesperson — do you want your customers to feel like you are aggressively pursuing them? Do they want to have a salesperson shoved in front of them in every article they read, every website they visit, and every social platform they interact on? Probably not. 

Ad fatigue is a real concern. 

Source: Social Media Examiner

Attribution allows companies to combat ad fatigue by identifying the ads that have the most impact on consumers at different points in the buying process. Instead of making sure that you get your products in front of your customers as often as possible, attribution allows you to focus on showing them the right ads or content at the most effective times. 

No one wants a salesperson in their face 24/7. They also don’t want to see your retargeted advertisements on every website that they visit. They’ll feel pressured. They’ll see your company as one that is using aggressive tactics. They’ll feel as if your company’s marketing is out of touch with their individual needs as a consumer and that’s never a position that companies want to be in. 

With attribution, you can truly embrace a “less is more” approach and foster better relationships with your customers. 

A Consistent Experience

Embracing a full multi-touch attribution strategy aids companies in their ability to provide a consistent experience to customers across platforms. When a customer takes an action on your website, they want to see that action reflected in the ads and marketing materials that they are exposed to through social media ads, email, and retargeted ads on third-party websites.

To provide a consistent experience that walks the customer through the buying process across several different channels is to convey professionalism and an understanding of your customers. Without attribution, you can’t properly identify the steps that any given prospect has taken on their path to purchase and therefore can’t identify the next step that you need to get in front of them.

According to a survey by Econsultancy and Adobe in their annual Digital Trends report, B2B companies identified customer experience as the single most exciting business opportunity for their company.  

Source: SuperOffice

Customer opinions of a brand are shaped by their experience. How easy it is to learn about their product, how helpful their content is, and how their interactions with customer service agents go all play a critical role in the average customer’s decision-making process. A consistent experience that takes all engagements into accounts and builds on them across channels puts customers in a position for success. 

Why Customers Care About Marketing Attribution

They may not be able to cite it by name, but there is no doubt that customers care about attribution. 

They care that brands are able to take their previous interactions into account when engaging with new content and sales reps. They care that brands aren’t showing them irrelevant advertisements for products they have already purchased or content they have already engaged with. They care that brands are able to predict and deliver information at the times when they need it most as they evaluate products. They care that their experience is simple and consistent across all channels that they interact with a brand. 

This is the true magic of marketing attribution — it provides a better overall experience for customers. It gives brands the ability to better understand their prospects and customers and better anticipate their needs. Without attribution, companies are left throwing darts against a board in the dark, hoping for an unlikely bullseye. Even when they do find that lucky bullseye, they are unable to truly understand why they were successful and tie it to other successful cases.

Marketing attribution is often seen as a revenue-boosting tool, and it is. But the effects go much deeper than straight-forward campaign optimization, it changes the way prospects and customers perceive your brand.

If you would like to learn more about how LeadsRx can help you with customer acquisition using attribution, sign up for a demonstration of our attribution software.