Best-in-class marketers are 56% more likely to use data and analytics platforms. Here are five ways to maximize the insights and the results from your marketing analytics.

Data is key to optimal decision-making and you know it. Your analytics enable you to increase lead generation, optimize your campaigns, and secure more revenue.

According to Forbes, leading marketers are 56% more likely to use data and analytics platforms.

However, as people interact with your brand across multiple channels, it can be tough to identify which channel is responsible for success. You might be wondering, “Do other marketers have this problem, too?”

(Spoiler alert: Yes they do).

Good news –– attribution is the answer to your data fluster. It’s what frees up the insights stored within data.

What is attribution?

Attribution is the process of identifying which user actions have contributed to the desired outcome.

Assigning a value to specific touchpoints helps you to quantify which channels are most valuable. This allows you to identify what’s working, and what isn’t.

Here are five ways to unlock the potential of your analytics and drive results with data-driven attribution.

1. Examine Attribution by Channel

Are you generating leads from your inbound marketing emails? Social media? Pay-per-click (PPC) ads? Tracking lead volume by channel will help you to better allocate your resources for future campaigns.

For example, say you want to determine whether to invest your budget in email marketing or social media. To establish a baseline, open your analytics page to see how each channel is performing. This means looking at the total number of leads generated, not just website visits.

For SharpSpring customers, you can pull a campaign attribution report to see which sources are converting the greatest number of leads.

In the example below, we see that Facebook Display ads drove all results for this campaign. The total cost per channel is also displayed to contextualize the lead volume against the total ad spend.

If you don’t have Sharpspring, look to your website analytics to pull similar data. Then export it to Excel for manipulation and analysis.

2. Examine Attribution by Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Have you ever spent your budget and resources chasing leads, only to discover they weren’t part of your target market? It’s a frustrating waste of time.

Finding the attributions behind your marketing qualified leads (MQLs) will enable you to target and acquire your best leads more effectively.

To assess how many leads you have in a particular channel, open your CRM. How many leads converted from social media? Via email marketing? PPC?

Cross-reference the number of MQLs with the total volume of leads generated by channel. This will help you develop a sense of lead quality.

With lead quality by channel assessed, you can invest only in the channels which provide the greatest return in qualified leads (not just lead volume).

Sharpspring customers can find this information by opening an attribution report. As seen below, the customer profile shows you when the prospect became a qualified lead or made a purchase.

You’ll also see which sources led the prospect to become a qualified lead. Now you can dig deep into the engagement history to better understand how your marketing funnel moved them towards a conversion.

3. Examine Attribution by Page Conversions

Identifying which landing pages are most effective allows you to direct more calls-to-action to the most successful elements. Once you’ve discovered the top-performer, examine why that page is converting more than the rest.

Try these tactics to optimize for conversions:

• Write blogs that resemble your highest performing content and link to landing pages
• Optimize your landing page offers by keyword, value proposition, or call to action
• Redesign your landing pages to streamline the user experience and encourage action

The data you gather throughout this process will help you optimize and rework any lagging pages.

BONUS: You can find out where your traffic to your landing pages is coming from by checking out your traffic sources. Then you can optimize your messaging to customers in that channel, given what you’ve previously learned about your MQLs. Pretty nifty, right?

4. Examine Attribution by Segment

How does each customer segment respond to your marketing efforts? Answering this question can indicate the best way to allocate your resources for future campaigns.

For example, say you decide to focus on local leads. This customer journey may require completely different tactics and channels to successfully convert. Pulling the attribution data of an existing customer segment will illuminate how best to reach that specific audience.

You can use your handy-dandy attribution report to segment your audience. Segment by the conversion touchpoint or by the traffic source, depending on whether you want to see just the interaction or the trajectory that delivered the lead.

5. Assess Attributions by Blog Post

We know content is king. But data is the queen, and she’s helping you attribute the success of your content. The number of site visits or leads generated by a blog post can reveal how to best allocate time and resources for your next campaign.

To assess the effectiveness of your blogs, look at the pages a prospect visited before converting. Surveying these interactions will give you a sense of which content is generating leads.

This will help you invest in more resonant material and most favored types of content. For example, you might discover that your audience prefers visual posts to list posts, or they are attracted to particular topics.

Sharpspring customers can find these attributions by examining the user engagement history. This will show all interactions with blog posts. You can then filter by blog URL to find which posts are performing best.

Marketing Automation, Analytics, and Attribution

One of the greatest benefits of marketing automation is absolute data clarity. These insights are available in your marketing analytics. To unlock the influence of information, you simply need to know where to look.  When you identify which initiatives are getting results, you can redouble your investment to drive significant growth.