Looking for new ways to optimize your customer journey? Exceeded all of your other resources, and stuck with no results?
Well, you’re in the right place. The Facebook Attribution Tool might be the solution for you, but that’s for you to decide.
In this article, we will cover what it is, and how it can be used to optimize the customer journey.
Keep reading to learn more.
What Is the Facebook Attribution Tool?
In the realm of marketing, traditional attribution tools rely on cookies and last-click attributions, hence they do not provide a great picture of how your advertising really drives a business outcome.
Facebook Attribution is an advertising measurement tool, which has been developed to provide you with a fuller picture of the customer journey, so that you can execute smarter, better decisions for your business.
Facebook Attribution allows you to measure the impact of ads across the entire family of Facebook services, and across all publishers. For instance, with the data-driven attribution model, you can examine how ads perform on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network, and their consequent contribution to your incremental business results.
And in order to gain a better understanding of the digital journey, you can make use of cross-device reporting to discover how a device changes that way your customers engage with your ads, and how differently they have converted.
So what else does it do?
Ads Drive Action — Understand Which Do
In the attribution tool, you can assign conversion credits to touchpoints upon the customer journey, off, and on Facebook. This allows you to understand what really drives your business results.
Measure Entirely
As mentioned earlier, performance outcomes can be analyzed via Pixel, Offline Conversions, App Events, etc. You can also analyze view-based conversions via Custom Audiences, and much more.
Credit Assignment Based On Value Production
Attribution has been validated in a variety of experiments, and it can allow us to measure the approximated incremental value of your marketing efforts across all of the Facebook services with a data-driven attribution model, which is not employed elsewhere.
Channels, Publishers, Devices Measured
With the attribution tool, you can track conversion paths, which occur on various devices and channels, paid or organic. You can also take a look at the publisher to see what’s driving conversion.
Now let’s get to actually optimizing the customer journey.
1. Setup Properly
In the Settings tab, a status bar will reflect the progress you have made upon the set-up. There are three stages: Line of Business, which you have most likely already completed; Clicks, Impressions & Visits; Waiting for Conversions.
There should be an active status under the Clicks, Impressions & Visits segment, and this data can take about an hour to populate. Once that is done, you have to make sure that you can receive data.
From the dashboard, navigate to the Settings tab. Confirmation should be shown that says “Data Is Being Received.” If not, troubleshoot with the FAQ.
Below it, you should have a display of the numbers for that specific day. You can configure and optimize the settings to your liking, and adapt your dashboard to your own workflow.
2. Examine Data
After the set-up, move on to data analysis. From the main dash, you can see in detail the numbers of each channel, including the Sources, Visits, Conversions.
You can click on each to see the individual performance, like paid versus organic. Or which campaigns have gotten the best conversion volume.
Further down, you can see the Top Sources, which will show you conversions and their origin. This is helpful for deciding how to scale marketing efforts.
In order to review the conversion data for various devices, click the cross-device tab at the top.
In that section, you can see if conversions occurred over a single device or across multiple. For example, a user could have started their engagement on their PC, but then switched over to their phone to finish it off.
From this section, you can determine if conversions occurred via a single device, such as a smartphone or across multiple devices. For instance, if a user began engagement on a desktop but converted when later using a tablet.
Real-Time/Initial Data
Those are just the basics. You can also analyze how conversions are happening in real-time, and you can adjust the attribution model to fit your business.
A B2B business can have conversions in idle for weeks. Whereas, a B2C can have conversions happen in the spur of the moment. So make sure you adjust the attribution window to accommodate for your industry and business.
Most Facebook reports are built on initial clicks and views, not the actual conversions. For instance, if a user clicks on your add on October 1st, but doesn’t purchase until October 13. On a Facebook report, the conversion occurred on the 1st.
Another instance might look like this: On October 1st, the user clicks on your ad. On October 15, the user clicks the ad again. The on October 22, the user views the ad. Then on October 27, the clicks the ad for a final time. Three days later, they view the ad and purchase the product.
In this fragment, it’s less clear what is happening because of the multiple views and clicks. But Facebook would attribute the conversion to the most recent click, which was on the 27th.
3. Scale to Optimize
After analyzing your data and the initial set-up of the Attribution tool, you can finally optimize the customer journey using their habits and behavior, which will ensure your will scale your marketing initiatives to generate more customers.
When looking at reports to figure out if you should scale down or up, or to eliminate efforts altogether, you have to look for patterns.
For instance, you can examine attribution data to identify the approach for three separate ads:
- Ad One: Lots of engagement, slim to none conversions.
- Ad Two: Occasional engagement, no conversions.
- Ad Three: Occasional engagement, high conversions.
When taking a look at each, some actionable ideas come to mind:
Ad One
Let it run for a while. If the pattern does not change, integrate some resources to adjust the ad for wider reach, and to help the mediate the high engagement into high conversion.
To monitor engagement, you can use a tool designed specifically for that, like Agorapulse.
Ad Two
Deplete the ad. Change the audience or the ad completely, shift resources into better production efforts.
Ad Three
Apply extra resource to the ad and place under a wider audience. No change to the ad is necessary until the broad target audience has had time to interact with it.
Need Help? We’ve Got Your Back!
If you’re interested in delegating your marketing efforts, especially that of your Facebook attribution tool, and driving new customers via precisely-crafted ads.
Get in touch with us and we will happily accommodate your needs.
