Piecing Together Comprehensive Marketing Attribution

Imagine trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces, it’s frustrating, and the final picture is never fully realised. Many traditional measurement systems require you to analyse different data sets side by side, often leading to an inaccurate picture of your marketing’s true impact. Discrepancies between attribution models can cause unresolved debates about channel effectiveness, leading to inertia that stunts growth and harms brand health.

Similarly, relying solely on GA4 data-driven attribution or other conventional tools that use traditional attribution models, such as linear and last touch, can leave you with an incomplete understanding of what is driving your business and makes it unclear how to invest for growth.

Smithfield AI Attribution integrates data from multiple sources, both online and offline, to provide a comprehensive view. Whether it’s a customer’s interaction with an OOH poster, their visit to a physical store, or their journey through a digital funnel, our models capture it all accounting for each channel’s impact. By connecting conversions to an impression or marketing touchpoint, we help you understand the entire marketing attribution landscape, not just isolated moments or single-channel insights.

As Sarah Coften, our Head of Innovation and Digital Strategy, explains, “Smithfield AI Attribution harmonises disparate data sets, connecting the dots that traditional models often miss. This integrated approach allows us to deliver actionable insights, providing a clear and comprehensive understanding of our clients’ marketing effectiveness.”

Optimising Media Performance with Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA)

One of the key advantages of our AI-driven attribution framework is its ability to provide both a broad and granular view of your marketing efforts. For instance, in a recent case study with our leisure brand client, we implemented a Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) strategy that revealed how each media channel contributed to overall revenue. This level of detail enabled us to optimise media spend by reallocating the budget to the most effective channels, ensuring a more efficient use of resources while still driving strong results.

By increasing spend on high-impact platforms like Meta and TikTok, and reducing investment in channels with overlapping reach and diminishing returns, we achieved a 7% increase in unique (de-duplicated) ROAS within just one month. This demonstrates how our bottom-up granularity, provided by MTA, marries perfectly with the broader strategic insights from MMM.

Integrating Smithfield MTA and MMM for Maximum Impact

Our triangulation approach combines the detailed insights of MTA with the strategic overview provided by MMM. For example, during a recent campaign for HWB, we used Marketing Mix Modelling to validate the effectiveness of Out-of-Home (OOH) media. This top-down analysis confirmed what our incremental test analysis had shown—that OOH was driving significant revenue uplift.

By leveraging the Smithfield AI Attribution framework, we could pinpoint the exact impact of each media channel, whether online or offline, and adjust our strategies accordingly. This dual approach allowed us to optimise our client’s media spend with precision, ensuring that each channel contributed effectively to overall business growth.

To truly optimise your marketing strategy, you need to look at the big picture. This is where our Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) comes into play. While Smithfield MTA provides granular, real-time insights, Smithfield MMM offers a high-level view, analysing the long-term impact of your marketing efforts across all channels.

Elton Thrussell, our Performance Director, emphasises the importance of this integrated approach: “MMM is crucial for understanding the overall impact of all marketing activities, beyond the standard tracking methods often used. When combined with our AI Attribution, it provides a holistic view that’s essential for optimising our clients’ marketing spend and strategy.”

Sean Heneghan, Digital Account Director, adds, “The data we gather from MMM allows us to see the broader impact of brand activities on performance channels, something that’s often missed by focusing solely on digital metrics. This comprehensive approach helps us identify synergies across different channels that drive better overall results.”

Putting It All Together

At Smithfield, we’re committed to helping our clients navigate the complexities of modern marketing measurement with confidence. 

As Charlee Oliver, our Digital Operations Director, points out, “It’s important for our clients to understand that while GA4 is a valuable tool, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Our AI Attribution models, combining MTA with MMM, offers a much more comprehensive solution that accounts for the full customer journey, across all media touch points, ensuring that every aspect of your marketing investment is optimised.”

Our AI Attribution framework, combining the strengths of MTA and MMM, unlocks the power of a data-driven approach and gives us the valuable insight to optimise media and marketing investment for maximum impact and growth.

Going Beyond Traditional Attribution

One of the key advantages of our AI-driven attribution model is its ability to leverage Google’s AI-based algorithms more effectively. We’re moving beyond simple ‘converter’ targeting by feeding the platform with signals based on customer lists. Instead of just focusing on users who have already converted, we delve deeper, segmenting user cohorts that matter most to our clients’ profitability.

Here’s how we’re doing it:

• Targeting High-Value Customers: By identifying user cohorts with high lifetime value (LTV), we create signals that increase visibility for users who are likely to contribute significantly to the business. This approach ensures that your marketing efforts are directed towards prospects who are not just likely to convert, but who will also provide the most long-term value. It’s about maximising ROI by prioritising the right prospects in your campaigns.
• Reducing Low-Value Conversions: Not all conversions are created equal. Some customers, such as those who frequently return products or cancel subscriptions, may end up costing your business more than they contribute. By building signals based on customer lists of these less profitable users, we refine our targeting to reduce the number of low-value customers entering your funnel. This targeted approach ensures that marketing spend is used more efficiently, focusing on attracting customers who bring genuine value.
• Adapting E-Commerce Strategies Across Industries: In e-commerce, it’s common to use scorecards to identify which products should be pushed to increase ROI. We’re adopting a similar approach across leisure, finance, and insurance industries by ranking users based on various profitability indicators. This allows us to optimise campaigns across different sectors, ensuring that each strategy is tailored to the unique characteristics of the industry.

Michael Davis, one of our senior strategists, highlights the impact: “With Smithfield AI Attribution, we’re able to implement these tactics in real-time, creating a continuous loop of improvement that goes beyond what GA4 can offer on its own. It’s about moving beyond the limitations and truly leading the way in marketing measurement.”

Ready to unlock the full potential of your marketing data? Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how Smithfield AI Attribution and can elevate your strategy and delivering clarity and providing sustainable business growth.