The marketing movement by Refine Labs. Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the marketing movement with the Refine Labs crew. This is going to be a super fun one. It's actually going to be part one of a two-part series where we're talking all about self-reported attribution.
This is a hot topic at Refine Labs. It's definitely one of our favorite ones. So we have a lot to dig into, and we're really excited to break this down into two episodes. Before jumping in and really diving into everything, I want to first do introductions of everyone who's going to be talking about this topic with us today.
First and foremost, I'm Ashley Lewin. I am a director of Demi-En-Gen here at Refine Labs. And I'll kick it over to Sylvia to introduce herself. Yeah, I'm Sylvia Valentia.
I am a director of Demi-En-Gen at Refine Labs as well. Hey, Tori. Can I be Demi-En-Gen at Refine Labs? And I'm Daniel.
Thanks, Sarah. I'm a PNN at Refine Labs. Awesome. So we're so excited to talk about this topic today.
Before we get into all of the nitty-gritty of it, we first do want to talk about what self-attribution is, or self-reported attributions. If you follow along with your fine labs or anybody who works here on LinkedIn, you see us dropping this term quite a bit. So first and foremost, it's really all about asking your prospect or your customer how they heard about you. So it's really a great way to first inform us, look at the unattributable first touch attribution, which is a hot topic again with attribution models.
But where was that memorable moment where they first recognized your brand name? A lot of times, they might be somewhere in dark social or a podcast episode. So by asking your prospects and customers how they heard about you, it's a great way to get further insight into where those memorable moments are that might not be attributable in attribution software. There's definitely a little bit more into this.
I'll let Sylvia kind of bounce off of this and expand on it as well. Yeah, yeah. That's a really great, simple way to put it. I think most of us here are attribution and we're like, oh, it's this like complicated thing.
But really it takes the shape of a field in your forms where you're asking people how they heard about you, like Ashley, you mentioned. I think something important to mention is that self-reported attribution is not replacing any other attribution. So if we start off with the fact that, hey, it's just an extra source of really important qualitative data that you're getting from your best prospects, that's all you need to know about it. It's not a complicated system to set up.
Yeah, that's such a guy who would have put on it. So it is kind of simple at the root of it, but there's definitely a lot more complexities as you go into implementation, how you use the data and all those different things. So during this first episode, we're really going to be going over what it is, how to set it up in common objections that you may receive when introducing this idea. And then stay tuned for the episode two, where we'll go into uncovering insights that we're getting here at Refine Labs and our clients as well, how you can use this data, and then how you can use it for future growth as well.
So really kicking into the foundation of this, I want to talk about why it's so important. There's a reason why that keeps getting brought up. And I really want to really dig into this, to really set the scene for the future pieces of this. So Daniel, I would love to hear your thoughts on why you believe it is so important for everyone to have a great understanding of it and consider adding it to their reform fields.
Yeah, I think you guys have done a great job of already giving some of the context to it, but I think I have a little bit of a different perspective as well, since your day-to-day tends to be a little bit more in some of the client systems and I'm more in the platform side of things, so it's interesting to kind of see how those things mesh. But I think it's especially important now for companies that are growing and have kind of reached the not a limit, but a good, healthy structure on their core channels and they're looking at expanding into some other channels. Maybe some more experimental things to have this opportunity to really gauge how those channels perform. In specific, I'm thinking about things like TikTok or Reddit, where the advertising platforms Twitter a little bit too, where the advertising platforms aren't necessarily as refined in their attribution, as you're Google Analytics or LinkedIn or Facebook, that are kind of the core of what we're doing.
And then also looking at some channels where it's even harder, as you get into things like audio and video podcasts advertising, where some of those faces are still kind of like the Wild Wild West in terms of attribution. It's really, really valuable to be able to get those insights. You're listening to podcasts while you're watching dishes. You're not going to click a dropdown form when you're submitting a lead.
But if it's something that's memorable, there's a ton of value that you can get out of that. I love that. Toria, I would love to hear your perspective on this as well and why you believe it is so important. Yeah, yeah.
I think you've all done a great job outlining why it's important. One of the conversations that I'm seeing quite a bit on social media, whether it's from some of the folks that were fine labs or folks that are working at maybe some of these attribution platforms or anyone else, that's just kind of a practitioner of some of these approaches. There seems to be a little bit of an argument about whether we should be using self-reported attribution or the attribution data that comes from some of these platforms, like your first touch, your last touch. And I think the most important part of this is understanding that it is not an either or, it's an end.
This self-reported attribution data is something that should supplement some of the attribution data that you've been looking at previously. And so when you kind of think about, to me, the ideal view on just attribution as a whole would be understanding first touch, last touch, as well as the self-reported attribution. And so what I mean by that is with first touch, you get a good sense of where your contact or lead is originating from. And so, of course, there's going to be value in that as a marketer, understanding where someone's journey may have started, the platform, the piece of content, you name it, whatever way they became known to you and your system and your colleagues.
You want to make note of that because that's a place that you should probably be investing more time and energy. But additionally, it can kind of give you a little bit of a sense of what the true buying cycle looks like. We're so often looking at a sales cycle in terms of when an opportunity was created versus when it closed. But we also know that there's a whole lot of work that's done way before someone becomes an opportunity way before they engage with a salesperson.
And so there's value in that first touch information. And then last touch, I think, is equally as valuable, understanding how and when and why a person converted when they came to your website or maybe when your landing pages. Of course, there's a ton of value in that, especially when you're looking at things like demand capture versus demand creation. That last touch is really giving you insights on your demand capture approaches and the efficacy of them.
And then lastly, the self-reported attribution. So I think this is almost in between that first touch and last touch. What is the most impactful, the most memorable touch point that has happened throughout that buying journey? And whether or not that's something that is going to be tracked in your attribution software, it doesn't matter because the way that you're trying to capture this data is by allowing that person to volunteer up that information.
And we'll get into some of the specifics to really make sure that they've got the right platform and the right opportunity to offer up those insights. But yeah, I think more than anything, this is something that folks out there need to understand is that this is not an either or it is an end. And all these things work best when they work together. And you're really getting a more comprehensive robust view of where these people are coming from and the most impact that you as a marketing and sales team were able to make along their journey inbound.
Tori, I'm so glad you said that because I do want to make sure that it's not either or it's an end. And it is just another way to build upon your view of what's working and so you can keep your momentum with growth. So I'm so glad you said that. All right, cool.
So we have, we touched on why it's important. But I really want to go now into the weeds of it and how you implement it. So you say you're bad. And you're like, yeah, I want to do this and now what you do.
So let's talk about the implementation process. Sylvia, I would love for you to walk us through what you go through when you're looking to set it up. For sure. And I'll go over step by step how you would set this up in your systems.
But keep in mind that there may be some objections that you face along the way and we'll cover those later. But just want to share how super simple it is to actually implement. So obviously if you are a marketing user in your marketing automation platform, you're likely going to have some level of permissions. So you want to make sure that you can edit fields in your marketing automation platform.
I would say the first step is go in there in your prospect object or your lead object depending on the tool that you use, whether it's HubSpot part or you know, other other tools out there, you just create a field in your prospect object that is called how did you hear about us. The field type is going to be free text. That's the first set. Like your field is created.
Then you want to make sure that that field is mapping to your CRM or your Salesforce. Usually that is some level of, you know, inside your marketing automation platform, you're going to have integrations and then you're going to see Salesforce, for example, and you're going to see field mapping options. And then it's as easy as just adding a field that is mapping to that same field name in Salesforce or in your CRM. You want to make sure that you are doing this in your lead object for sure in Salesforce.
If that's what you use or if you use your contact as well. And then of course, if you have, you know, buy in and the opportunity to do so, it would also be good to have these insights at the opportunity level. So carry that out throughout the journey and don't stick just at the beginning. Again, the value here is not just to volume where most of these people are coming from, but also where your opportunities and your pipeline and your customers.
How did they first, you know, how do they remember hearing about you? And then of course, that's just creating the field. How do we get it live? You just go through your form handlers or your forms that step three and add the field in them.
You customize the form. You click, you know, edit or add and add that as a mandatory field. We'll go into some of that later. But you want to make sure that you're doing this across the forms on all of your high-intent pages.
If that is request a demo or contact sales, make sure that you're making this form edit across the board. You want to make sure that you keep your data integral, that you are not compromising, you know, certain channels by just asking specific people for their input. And then you want to test it. Of course, I know that sounds so much easier in theory to say create a field, put it in a form and go live.
But you want to make sure that of course the data that someone puts in when they're filling out the form is coming to your automation platform and then also moving into your CRM. But it really is super simple to implement. So just create the field, add it to your forms, make sure that you have it across all your high-intent pages and then go live. My one tip here to take this live would be to avoid overthinking it and avoid over QAing it too much.
It's a free text field that makes things much easier from a mapping perspective. You don't have to create drop-downs or anything. So it's a simple process and try to keep it simple as well so that you can get some momentum, some data and take it from there. But that's the process.
Yeah, I think the other part of that as well, Sylvia, is how we take and consolidate all of those free text insights and find ways to summarize them a little bit better. Depending on the volume of inbound that your team gets, combing through all of these insights for every single high-intent inbound lead that comes in, it might be really doable. It might be really challenging. And so one of the ways that we have seen this work well, that kind of next step of the implementation is really more so on the back end with the ease of reporting in mind.
And so one of the things that we're recommending for a lot of our clients is really to also create workflows that is going to help categorize some of these free text submissions. So that way you're able to get some high-level groupings as far as the different themes, the more popular, I guess, different channels and sources that folks are mentioning. And by the way, it doesn't need to be perfect to start. You can just kind of set up things like social media, word of mouth, events, you name it.
You all know your clients better than we could pretend to. But creating those workflows so that it is a little bit easier to extract the insights and report out on them, especially if you're able to kind of stack those things up against some of those first touch and latch touch attribution reports. So I think that's probably the other element of implementation here that's important for folks to really understand is that even though the free text information might seem a little bit daunting to really digest and you as a marketer, those folks in demand gen, you really do want those verbatim insights. But maybe some of your senior executives don't.
And they want a little bit more of a summarized view. And so finding ways that you can kind of consolidate that down just for reporting purposes is another savvy approach here to think about. But I would definitely say, as far as priorities go, all the items that Sylvia mentioned and getting those fields set up on your form and mapped to the correct objects inside your CRM without a doubt. That takes precedence.
But yeah, I think that second step is really finding ways to maybe make that data a little bit easier to digest. Absolutely. I would just add there that something that has worked for me when implementing this is take the field live for a certain amount of time, get some input in and try to create those categories as you see those specific words come in. Depending on your industry or something, people may use certain words for certain things and that will give you ideas about what categories to create.
Yeah, for sure. I can't tell you how many different variations of LinkedIn and the spelling of it. I've had to add into some of those those automation flows for some of our clients. Yeah, people really have a hard time spelling LinkedIn, which is crazy considering the amount of time that comes down on it.
But maybe that's another topic for another day. I love this. This is perfect. Thank you, Sylvia and Tori for walking us through how to do it.
One other piece I would add in, it's kind of more like a brownie points piece is if you don't have a public, like let's say, Slack channel where all of your demo requests are flowing into, I would highly recommend creating one, especially depending on the volume, of course, you don't want to be your Slack going wild all day. But it's really nice to put it in there and then have this field shown via the integration so that you can see as it's trickling in throughout the month of the day, we quarter whatever it looks like, where these are coming from. That really helps with a lot of buy-in too, especially if people keep seeing like, oh, I keep seeing LinkedIn again and again and again. Okay, I get it.
I have found that that has been a really just kind of like nice extra step to go into. Awesome. Okay, so now we know why it's so important. We know the steps to get there.
Now, let's talk into the common object objections you may get when you're introducing this idea. Maybe it's from your team, maybe it's yourself that your, you know, these questions may come up. They're very common. So we'll go around.
We'll kind of pop-quarin this topic around. But I want to first start off with probably the number one objection I see when we talk about this topic and it's adding another field will decrease the conversion rate on those high intent forms. I believe this has been, you know, a really big, you know, training that a lot of marketers have received over the years that the more form fields will lower the conversion rate. And this just isn't always true.
And I think this is something really critical to think about. I always recommend doing an AB test when introducing this because of course you don't want to break anything. It's a very high intent form. A lot of revenue depends on it.
But when you do an AB test, you can see, okay, is my hypothesis that another form field will really break it or not. You can also experiment with the layout of the form fields too. So instead of everything being, you know, like one form field per line, you can stack it and that creates a different kind of UI psychology of this doesn't feel so daunting and long. So I think that's another thing to call out.
And then you can also use that enrichment too to cut down on some of the form fields that you may not need on your high intent form fields already. This will also, again, kind of shorten that field up. And if this is a common objection that you're receiving, I know Daniel actually has a little bit more insight into this with decrease in the conversion rate in an AB test. So Daniel, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Yeah, so to give you guys a little bit more context, I work with two of our enterprise level clients. So obviously the scale and size of the leads that are coming in is super important. So and obviously for every client conversion rate is important, but you know, especially at that scale, you see those things affect change much faster. So and the irony is that these two clients were kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum, which comes to self-reporting attribution when I started working with them.
So one of our clients is one of our longest-standing clients as we're fine. And they had self-reporting attribution and they loved it. The other client was a little bit more hesitant. They had a lot of these objections actually came up in kind of the same conversations consistently.
And but they started really with a conversion rate piece. And we actually gave them a little strong hand push to try it at least first as a dropdown, not our ultimate recommendation, but at least gave kind of that first step toe in the water. And they ran it like that for about a month. And the insecticide was that there was no impact on their conversion rate by adding an extra field, which I know is a really anecdotal example.
But I think it's a good one to keep in mind. And the other thing is that it actually prompted a conversation beyond that of how can we better optimize the formula or other fields where we can maybe take these things out and move them into something where that's part of the conversation with an SDR or a VD or something like that, where they were thinking about that as, okay, we added this form field that we made a requirement, but we were worried it wasn't going to work. We saw that it worked. Now, so we kind of walked them through that process to the point where now they're using self-reported attribution with a free text field.
And they're thinking about how they can further optimize their thinking about are there other fields that are maybe a little bit more information than we need or were not necessarily giving us something that is an actionable item in the same way that the self-reported attribution is. So that was something that I think was a really interesting process to kind of go through because this was over the span of a month, a month, a month, a month, a month, a few months, whatever it was. So it was a gradual process and not everyone is going to jump on board right away for self-reported attribution. So if you're someone that's other mindset that you have to come and pick this, use my example.
And if you have any questions, we're always happy that to jump in and give more insights. But I thought it was especially interesting based on the size of the organization and how many people had all these different objections to kind of have that come up and be the end result to show them, like, look, it actually didn't impact you guys at all. Yeah, that's so good. You touched on a couple of other objections in there too that I want to make sure that we cover.
One, the next one is, again, with a conversion rate and making it a required field. This is another hot topic and objection that I see quite a bit is that it shouldn't be required. That it should be optional. If it's required, it will be a friction point for prospects and customers.
But here's the thing, is it needs to be required. And the reason why is without it being required, you won't get enough actionable data to use it. Because if it isn't required, I would skip through it. You're trying to fill out a form of success as you can.
I get it. But you need it to be required in order to get enough actionable data to go through. So just something to call out when you're implementing this and if this is an objection that you're receiving, just note that without it being required, you won't get enough actual data with it. For sure, I would also say there that in addition to it giving you enough data, you want to make sure that you're getting everyone's input, right?
The moment that you give an option to a group of people to give you their thoughts, you know, like only a segment of them, you are likely not going to get the full picture. And that's what we want here. We want to hear from all of your high intent prospects and, you know, have insights that represent accurately that pool of prospects, not a segment of them. Absolutely.
Okay, so we talked about, you know, the number of fields and it being required. I think another one that, you know, comes up as kind of those high those high objection pieces is that it should be a picklist instead of an open text field. So this is another piece that here at FindLons are very opinionated about. We always recommend that it is an open text field.
And there's a couple of reasons why here is the minute that you give a picklist option, you're already kind of deciding for your prospects and your customers. You're already like categorizing for them. And so they might not have to think through how they heard about you. Also with a picklist, you tend to pick the first thing that's on the dropdown menu.
I had a previous experience years ago where we were looking for like affiliates in a certain region, and we did a picklist with the dropdown. We were wondering why we got so many from Alaska. Like what's going on in Alaska? Well, it was the first one on the picklist and everyone was just picking it first.
Same thing applies here is typically the first will be, you know, chosen because you want to go through fast again, like we're time is money here. But another thing here is with having open text field, you're going to enrich your data so much more. It's really wild how much, you know, depth that you can receive with this field. We've seen anything from like this exact article in Forbes or this exact to add.
It's just another point, like a little bit more color onto where they heard about you or just stuck out to them as memorable and really hearing it from your customers point of view. Yeah, I'll add one more to that too, actually, is that, you know, we're talking about everything from the marketing angle, right? And of course, there's a ton of value here for us as marketers to understand, you know, how someone heard about us or that most impactful touchpoint. But I think the other way to look at these insights is when you are feeding them onto the leading contact record and the salesperson is going in to follow up on that lead.
It should be right there on the lead record for them to see along with the person's name and address and email information should be that how did you hear about a superbatum response because that context can really make a big difference in the type of outreach, the way that they're going to, you know, the angle that they're going to approach their conversation with if they do have that insight, you know, and it's not just a category level, right? Oh, they heard about you on social media, but, you know, maybe someone brings up that they heard about you from a specific social media post and that gives you, you know, some additional context to hit on when you're following up with that lead. That is super valuable. And, you know, finding a salesperson that doesn't want that additional insight when they reach out.
I think that that cannot be understated that the value of this is not just for marketers, but also for the salesperson that is passed with following up with that inbound hand racer. Thanks for accidentally running the point for me, Tori, because I actually have a perfect slam for that all of you, which is we have a customer who is running a test on Reddit. And for those of you who don't know when you advertise on Reddit, it's a run of network platform. So you can do your targeting around interests, you can do your target around specific subreddits.
And then the ads show the full run of the network. So we actually had a self-reported lead that came in because they saw one of the ads for this client on a subreddit that was dedicated to the rules of the game, like a board game or something like that. And they caught up with that in their self-reported attribution. They caught the retention because they were not expecting to see that ad placement in that position.
And I think that there's a lot of that that often gets overlooked as marketers. I think sometimes we try to get a little too cute with some of the things and not really think about the fact that, like, at the end of the day, we're all people, right? We're marketing to people and we're trying to find ways to make an impact with them. So reaching your audience where they are in a way where getting those insights is another thing that can help you guide the strategies and further.
And I know we're going to talk at length about how you can use this to really leverage your insights. But it's really the kind of thing where we were all, we talked about it in the meeting with the client and everybody was laughing about that. That's where it came from because we didn't know what it meant to first. But even just to have that example of, again, kind of a good one-time example, but to be able to say, Reddit is working because we're getting people in all of these places where they already are and be able to make an impact stronger because we're not in a super saturated platform, like dinner, Facebook, where people are used to seeing all of those ads.
So just another example of how some of the things that we're talking about have I've seen play out in my time here. For sure. Small, small, small, tangent will keep us on the course then after that. But when you start to really evaluate how you're doing your paid marketing too and you're moving away from like a typical lead gen approach, the biggest objection you're going to receive is you can't measure it.
It's not a direct response. So this also really helps tell the story of where they saw you because you're not tracking that. You're not seeing it in the attribution software, etc. So just like Daniel mentioned, you know, like Reddit, for instance, you would see that in this, you know, how did you hear about a field?
So it does give it a little bit more clarity into what is working too if you're not advertising on a direct response approach. Cool. Okay. So another objection that we receive a lot of too.
And typically, you know, when someone starts doing the self-report productation implementation, this is where I most commonly see the next step go into. And I would just recommend eliminating this stuff altogether. And it should live on the thank you page instead of the form. So I see this all the time.
And I think it's kind of like a, like a given take a bit, you know, you're taking baby steps into, you know, trying it out, you don't want to rock the boat too much. But this is a huge objection that I see and I would just recommend not or just giving this altogether. It just boils back again, again, to that conversion rate objection and not wanting to be overbearing for contacts. But most users bounce after they, you know, submit it that thank you are the form.
So you're going to miss that data. It's not going to be actionable. You're not going to get all that, you know, like juicy, really great insights versus if you had it on the form. So bottom line, you just won't get enough data and it just won't be actionable enough if you don't include it on the form and you put it on the thank you page instead.
It's the marketing equivalent of putting the survey on the receipt and when you go to like a restaurant because you know you're not going to go home and fill it out. Oh my God, I love that. Okay. Just a couple of more objections I have.
The next one is you won't get accurate data. This is another one that I see come up time and time again. It's another concern around, oh, they won't remember that first touch, you know, piece, it'll be it won't be accurate. There's a human element, you know, that someone is filling it out versus, you know, software doing it for you.
How can contact your members you though is worth it's waiting gold because that is what's memorable. It doesn't matter if it was the very first touch. It's what resonated with them. That's what marketing is as we want to make that memorable moment.
So I think that's just also something to call out as well. For sure. I think another way to make sure that you are getting accurate data is this is more like an implementation tip, I think, but you're using free text, you have it required on the forms. You're not using a pick list.
It's, you know, but you also should not use any prompt or pre-filled text in the free field form. I have seen this firsthand too where you say, you know, this first, how did you hear about us and it's pre-filled or it has helper text that says Google search, then everybody is going to write down Google search because actually, like you mentioned, as, you know, users wanting to go through a flow as efficiently as possible, we don't want to give that too much thought. So that immediately is, you know, a trigger to just write that down. So I would say to ensure that you are getting accurate data, follow these best practices and also make sure that you're not giving them any hints because that, you know, kills the purpose here.
Absolutely. All right. Any other objections that you all see when talking about this topic or implementing it? No, I think that might hurt.
All right. Cool. Okay. So those are the main pieces that we wanted to break down in this first episode of self-reported attribution.
So we went through what it is, why it's important, how to do or how to implement it and then comment objections that you may receive when doing so. If you love this episode, stay tuned for the second episode where we go beyond, you know, this is the foundation work and we're going to go into insights that we're receiving here at refined labs with ourselves and with clients how you can use this data. That's a next huge topic and then how it can fuel growth. So thank you so much for your time.
This was a blast. I was excited for the next one.