What Is Lead Attribution and How Can You Get Started?

Today, there are more marketing channels than ever to reach your target audience. And as you promote your brand on more channels, it’s essential to track which channels drive the most leads for your company so you can continue to maximize your results.

That’s where lead attribution, a specific type of marketing attribution, can help. But what is lead attribution and how can you get started?

This page will cover everything you need to know about this essential marketing attribution strategy, so keep reading to learn more!

Top tip: Want more advice on effectively driving leads and conversions for your business from award-winning experts? Read our free marketing guides to get top tips and tricks to generate leads like a pro!

What is lead attribution?

So, what is lead attribution?

Lead attribution is a specific type of marketing attribution that enables you to identify which marketing channels and strategies get the credit for generating a lead. For example, you can use this technique to determine if your social media page is successfully generating leads for your company.

Why is lead attribution important?

Do you really need to attribute your leads to specific marketing strategies? Yes!

If you want to successfully drive more conversions, sales, and revenue for your company, you need to generate leads. And to generate more leads, you must understand which channels and campaigns are the most successful in helping you attract them.

By attributing your leads, you can learn which marketing strategies drive the best results for your company and which are lagging behind.

That means you spend more resources on improving the strategies that work, helping you to drive more leads and conversions while earning a higher return on investment (ROI) at the same time.

How does lead attribution work?

So, how can you pinpoint which marketing channels are responsible for generating your leads?

To successfully attribute your leads to the correct marketing channels, you’ll need to analyze your lead’s interactions with your campaigns and website before they became a lead.

When you analyze a user’s journey on their path towards becoming a lead, you can identify which marketing channels they interacted with. This analysis helps you pinpoint the strategies that successfully generate leads for your company.

Fortunately, there are plenty of marketing attribution tools, like Google Analytics, to help you easily track the sources of your leads.

You can also invest in an all-in-one digital marketing platform, like MarketingCloudFX, to easily manage your marketing campaigns. Plus, you can view the sources of your leads, phone calls, web traffic, and more.

These marketing tools for small businesses are essential for helping you easily view and analyze which channels drive the most leads for your business.

In addition, you can use lead attribution models to identify the strategies responsible for acquiring leads. We’ll discuss these in more detail in the next section!

What are lead attribution models?

Lead attribution models are responsible for determining how to credit leads to specific touchpoints on a user’s journey to becoming a lead.

Touchpoints refer to user’s interactions on your website before submitting a lead generation form or converting into a customer.

For example, a consumer might first discover your brand after seeing your ad on social media. Next, they visit your website and read some of your blog posts before deciding to fill out your contact form.

There are various types of lead attribution models that assign credit for leads to specific interactions and marketing channels. Let’s take a look at the different attribution models in more detail below:

 1. First-touch

A first-touch attribution model gives credit for your lead to the first interaction they had with your company. Using a first-touch attribution model is a great way to learn how your leads first discovered your business.

Example: A lead clicked a link on your social media ad, viewed your product pages, then filled out your contact form. Your social media ad will get credit for this lead.

2. Last-touch

In a last-touch attribution model, all the credit for your lead will go to the last interaction they had with your company.

Using a last-touch attribution model is a great way to identify which calls to action (CTAs) and campaigns are the most effective in getting users to get in touch with your company.

Example: A lead visited your website after searching on Google, read your blog posts, viewed your social media page, and then filled out a contact form. The credit for your lead will go to social media.

3. Multi-touch

A multi-touch attribution model gives credit for your lead to every interaction they had with your brand. There are a few types of multi-touch models:

• Linear: A linear model gives equal credit to every interaction.
• U-shaped: A U-shaped model gives 40% of the credit for your lead to both their last interaction and first interaction. The remaining 20% of the credit is spread evenly across the other interactions.
• Time-decay: In the time-decay model, the last interaction gets more credit for lead than the first interaction.

Multi-touch attribution models help understand the entire path your leads took before deciding to fill out your lead generation form.

How to get started with lead attribution: 4 quick tips

If you’re ready to start attributing your leads to your marketing strategies, we can help!

Here are four quick tips to help you get started with lead attribution:

1. Use lead-tracking tools
2. Choose the right lead attribution model for you
3. Analyze your results
4. Optimize your lead generation strategies

1. Use lead attribution software

The best way to track which campaigns are the most effective in generating leads is to use lead attribution software.

One of the best lead-tracking systems is MarketingCloudFX. MarketingCloudFX enables you to easily analyze the sources of your leads and the journey they make to converting into a customer or client.

With this industry-leading software, you can easily attribute your leads to the correct marketing channels to know which strategies drive the best results for your business.

2. Choose the right lead attribution model for you

If you use an attribution model to help you track your leads, choosing the best one for your business is essential.

For example, if you want to learn how your leads discovered your brand, you might opt to use a first-touch attribution model. On the other hand, if you want to see your leads’ entire path from awareness to conversion, you’ll want to opt for a multi-touch attribution model.

3. Analyze your results

Now that you’ve started tracking the sources of your leads, it’s time to analyze your results. You might discover that a majority of your leads first find your business after searching on Google.

Or you might find that most leads filled out your contact form after viewing your reviews and testimonials.

Identifying the interactions of your leads helps you understand which strategies you can improve and optimize to drive more high-quality leads for your business in the future.

4. Optimize your lead generation strategies

Now that you’ve identified which strategies are responsible for your leads, it’s time to optimize them so you can generate more interest in your products and services.

For example, if you notice that most of your leads discover your business on a search engine like Google, you’ll want to optimize your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. You could insert more keywords throughout your site or create more custom content to help you rank higher in the search results.

Suppose you notice that most users fill out your contact form after viewing your reviews. In that case, you can work on acquiring more reviews and testimonials for your business to encourage more users to get in touch with your company in the future.

37% of marketers say that generating high-quality leads was one of their biggest challenges.

We want to decrease that percentage.

WebFX can help you generate high-quality leads with a customized marketing strategy.

Learn More About Lead Generation Services

Start attributing your leads with WebFX today

Not quite sure how to attribute your leads or optimize your marketing strategies? The team at WebFX can help!

Our lead generation agency has been driving and attributing leads for businesses like yours for 28 years. Our award-winning experts have helped clients generate more than 24 million leads and drive over $10 billion in the past few years.

And if you’re ready to drive incredible results for your company, too, we’d love to help!

Chat with us today by calling 888-601-5359 or contact us online to learn more about how our lead generation services can take your business to new heights!