While we are thinking about the question of whom do we accredit the quote to, now let’s think more close to home; how to we accredit revenue to individual marketing channels?

The double edged sword of PPC measurability is the ability to measure with a great deal of accuracy how paid search is performing and yet it is still easy measure impact wrong when looking at performance rather myopically. There are many different ways to attribute ROAS, such as first click, last click and a linear attribution model. Making decisions based on an individual attribution window could introduce significant error into your decision process and affect the total ROAS of your paid search campaign.

The problem with most analytics tools is that they attempt to apply linear modeling to explain a problem solved with bounded rationality. Business-to-business purchase behaviour is not a simple linear series of events, but more of an entanglement of communication touch points where a decision can be easily swayed by a chance encounter or incalculable externality. Most revenue attribution models ignore that paid search is only one marketing channel that is interrelated to all other marketing activities; which involve both online and offline company touch points.

With B2B marketing, many purchases involve multiple interactions with the vendor from multiple touch points prior to purchase. A study of a retailers, conducted by Coremetrics, indicates that all buyers had interacted with at least 3.9 campaigns prior to purchase; in a B2B environment it can easily be many more. This does not factor in many of the elements active within the B2B purchasing BuyerSphere. Enquiro’s Brand Lift of Search research also indicates that sponsored listings increase a prospective customer’s propensity to purchase by 8% and occupying the top sponsored position increased aided brand recall by 150%. These are all facts that a simple revenue attribution model can easily de-emphasize.

The majority of companies are still solely relying of the last click attribution model, which attributes the entirety of the revenue to the last point of interaction with the site before purchase. The inherent risk with this type of attribution model is the emphasis on the conversion-oriented campaigns and gives no attribution to the campaigns that originally started the marketing conversation. By making bid management and investment decisions based on only this information, the risk of divesting into the acquisition or branding channels increases substantially; effectively reducing the overall effectiveness of the marketing efforts. This risk increases if the company has a relatively unknown brand in the marketplace. The same can be said for focusing only on the first click attribution where we are looking only at the value of the keywords at the beginning of the purchase decision cycle and can ignore the importance of the conversion keywords at the end of the purchase process.

The only answer to this analytics dilemma is to strike a balanced measure using multiple attribution windows. Coremetrics has recently released a great whitepaper on Appropriate Attribution models which is a great read for any marketer on how to better attribute revenue to your online marketing efforts. For quite some time Enquiro’s Sponsored Search Team has been using a similar model of revenue attribution within the confines of the abilities of existing analytics programs, which vary depending on the provider you are using. However, we have also found great success in determining how paid search integrates into the macro-level marketing equation by using a micro-conversion and correlation analysis.

Often Paid Search campaigns are evaluated based on the number of qualified leads they have brought in or the strict revenue they have generated, but there is a missing element of how this impacts the overall marketing efforts. Post click behavior is an important element to any revenue attribution analysis such as the subscription to an email newsletter, requesting a catalog, downloading a whitepaper or other important marketing collateral, calling the phone number listed on the site. Each of these interactions with the website is part of the marketing conversation and can be assigned a value based on historical conversion rates and average order values. These numbers can then be applied to the paid search campaign as part of the revenue attribution model to assist in determining the value of paid search.

Another important metric is to measure the correlation of paid search traffic with direct and branded site traffic. Paid search may be the gateway to starting the marketing conversation with the prospect, but may only be the initial touch point. Measuring the impact of paid search on the direct and branded traffic can indicate how paid search is acting to acquire customers and brand the company in the marketplace. A simple correlation analysis is effective in revealing whether paid search is having a positive impact on the overall traffic to the site. The user may not necessary complete the desired conversion in the same session, but may use a direct or branded search to navigate back to the site at a later time to continue the relationship building process.

Unfortunately, analysis of the marketing efforts often collides with internal politics which often complicates issues and can even impact the distribution of budgets. However, knowing how your paid search campaigns interact with other marketing channels, drive revenue, and build relationships can assist in determining the total value of the marketing channel.

The key takeaway from this is to look at the impact of your paid search campaigns as holistically as possible to determine your total ROAS. What is the direct revenue from the campaign? Does the ROAS change when using an appropriate attribution model? How does your paid search campaign initiate the marketing conversation and act as a relationship development tool?


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