Marketing Attribution for the Real World – RUSSELL McATHY | DMR #216

Today I'm joined by a man who following 10 years working for brand, agency and consultancy data-led positions is now building a marketing attribution platform, helping brands to truly understand how customers interact with their business - online and offline. Welcome to DMR, Russell McAthy. [You can find Russell over at Cubed.ai.] On this episode of Digital Marketing Radio we discuss marketing attribution, with topics including: I first heard of marketing attribution about 5 years ago - and it really seemed like something that would radicalise insight. But it doesn't really seem to have had a massive impact to-date. Is that fair or am I missing something? How would you define marketing attribution? How important is it? What are the challenges that have stopped its rapid rise in popularity? Should every business be building a bespoke model or are their off-the-shelf models that can be really effective? Dropping back to data in general, what are the fundamentals that most businesses should have in place to get the most out of their existing data that’s easily available? Is it reasonable to expect a general digital marketer to be analysing data or is this more of a specialist job? And what about the future? What are some data sources that most businesses aren’t using at the moment, but will need to be incorporating into their insight in the future? [Tweet ""Move away from top & bottom of funnel to middle of the funnel" @therustybear #MarketingFunnel"] Software I couldn't live without What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact your marketing success? Todoist [To-do lists] What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future? Evernote [Digital note-taking] My number 1 takeaway What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses? How do brands get into the attribution mindset? I wrote about the middle of the funnel. I genuinely think that if we move away from focusing on the bottom of the funnel and the top of the funnel - the 2 things that brands do. They do the bottom of the funnel to convert and the top of the funnel to drive brand awareness. With a psychological shift in the business to say 'who is not going to convert in the business today but will convert in the next month' - that's the middle of funnel. If businesses can start to understand that by using micro-conversions on their website, setting up their analytics better so they can understand what people are doing when they come to the website and don't convert - brands will be able to move their investment to those types of people. And because of the shape of the funnel there is a lot of people there. If you start to invest in that area there is going to be a massive increase in incremental value over a long period of time, but it is that change in the psychology of the organisation to say that they are willing to take a risk on those people that will convert in weeks to come.