Multi-touch attribution (MTA) is a method of measuring the effectiveness of marketing channels by assigning credit to each touchpoint in a customer’s journey toward making a purchase. That seems easy for digital marketing assets, such as Google ads, web banners, and website CTAs where clicks, website visits, and other digital markers can be measured (although sometimes with bias from the likes of Google).

However, offline marketing channels, such as TV ads or print media, can be difficult to track due to their analog nature; but there are several ways that multi-touch attribution can measure their impact. And it’s really not as hard as it sounds.

One approach is to use unique tracking URLs or phone numbers in offline advertising campaigns. This allows marketers to track when someone visits a website or calls a phone number after seeing an ad in a magazine or on a billboard. By using this information to identify which touchpoints led to a sale, multi-touch attribution can give credit to offline marketing channels.

Another approach is to use surveys or customer feedback to understand which touchpoints influenced a purchase. After a sale, marketers can ask customers how they heard about the product or what led them to make the purchase. By using this information to identify which touchpoints were most influential, multi-touch attribution can give credit to offline marketing channels.

Furniture Retailer Measures Every Marketing Channel

A Memphis, Tennessee, family-owned furniture retailer uses MTA insights to measure ALL of its marketing channels, including offline events such as broadcast TV ads, which it does a lot of to keep its brand at the forefront of furniture and mattress shoppers in the region.

“For me, the thing that was an ah-ha! was the signature curve with TV,” the company’s e-commerce manager said in a blog post. “I could see between all the stations, and the signature curve was almost the same. There’s a consistent pattern that occurs when something airs, and I can isolate it down to this section, this spot, this creative, and use that as a means of comparison.”

The 18-year-old company continues to use marketing analytics to impartially measure all of its marketing campaigns. Every channel, every device, every TV and radio campaign – down to each spot timing and creative – is measured equally, without bias. If it works, they’ll do more; if it doesn’t, they adjust spend away from what’s not working.

Finally, some MTA models use machine learning algorithms to analyze large datasets and identify patterns in customer behavior. By analyzing the data from both online and offline touchpoints, these models can give credit to offline marketing channels based on their contribution to the overall customer journey.

The LeadsRx marketing attribution platform uses a combination of digital and offline marketing data to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. To measure the impact of offline marketing, LeadsRx uses a technique called “attribution modeling,” which involves assigning credit to various marketing channels based on their contribution to the customer’s journey.

One way to measure offline marketing effectiveness is through the use of unique tracking phone numbers. These phone numbers are assigned to specific offline marketing campaigns, such as print ads, radio ads, or direct mail. When a customer calls the tracking phone number, the call is recorded and tracked in LeadsRx’s system, allowing marketers to measure the effectiveness of their offline campaigns and attribute leads and sales to specific channels.

Manufacturer/Marketer Uses MTA to Focus Efforts

Direct-response audio agency Hybrid Media Services used attribution to identify which broadcast radio stations, dayparts, and spots worked to optimize ZQuiet’s ad spend. The company makes and markets mouthpieces that help snorers, well, stop snoring. While simple TV ads with an 800 number used to be the sole way to measure marketing effectiveness – if the phones rang after ads ran, it was pretty easy to tell what ads were working – today’s marketing landscape is a bit more complicated.

TV ads with phone number CTAs are still effective, but they are part of a larger ad/marketing mix that includes digital channels. Smart marketers don’t measure in a vacuum. They measure every channel that is contributing to marketing success, or failure. Download the complete case study to see how multi-touch marketing attribution worked for the agency and the manufacturer.

Another way to measure offline marketing effectiveness is through the use of custom landing pages. These landing pages are designed specifically for offline campaigns and include unique URLs that are only used for that campaign. When a customer visits the landing page, their behavior is tracked, allowing marketers to measure the effectiveness of their offline campaigns and attribute leads and sales to specific channels.

See this fall 2022 blog post that looks at how to effectively measure TV and radio advertising – including common methodologies – as well as it’s importance to measure more than just the “web lift” that occurs from broadcast media ads.

An excerpt:

“Marketing attribution in television and radio requires a holistic approach: In order to get the most accurate and useful insights from marketing attribution in television and radio, it is important to take a holistic approach that considers all of the various factors that can influence the effectiveness of a campaign. This can involve analyzing data from multiple sources, including rating data, customer feedback, and digital analytics, and using various tools and techniques to measure and track the performance of a campaign.

If the point isn’t driven home hard enough already, it’s vital to correlate TV and radio advertising and marketing with online results. By doing so, a marketer can measure the value of her investment. Maybe that TV ad is working in tandem with a digital ad; MTA can show that.”

Multi-touch attribution can be a powerful tool for measuring the effectiveness of offline marketing channels, as well as online channels, by identifying their contribution to the customer journey influencing making a purchase.

To learn more about MTA, schedule a brief demo today.