Google Attribution Will Benefit SMBs the Most

Google AttributionIn May 2017 at the Google Marketing Next conference, Google announced the launch of a new product: Google Attribution. This product was built to more accurately attribute marketing initiatives as sources of revenue. After the conference, it was clear that SMBs stood to gain a lot from this product.

Google also announced at the conference that they have access to data on over 70% of credit card transactions in the U.S. They also have data on over 5 billion store visits across 17 countries in the past 30 months.

Google Attribution is a big move for Google towards better marketing attribution, but these statistics suggest it’s just the tip of the iceberg, and more advanced techniques will be available in the near future that merge online and offline purchases.

How SMBs Stand to Benefit

SMBs stand to benefit the most from Google’s focus on attribution – increasingly so as attribution capabilities improve. This is mainly because SMBs have smaller budgets and fewer resources, and achieving marketing ROI is a necessity. Of course, to find ROI in marketing you have to be able to track it. In other words, you need to be able to attribute sources of revenue generation.

With highly detailed attribution, every digital marketing tactic can be attributed with exactly the credit it deserves based on whatever major or minor role it played in a buyer’s path to conversion or purchase. In addition to this, data can be used to assign each lead a ‘likelihood of conversion’ score based on previous interactions with digital touchpoints.

In this way, digital marketing tactics can be tied directly to revenue based on their role in an individual purchase. When the effectiveness of digital marketing can be quantified this way, finding reliable ROI becomes a much more realistic goal for SMBs.

Detailed attribution models provide unprecedented insight into what’s working and what’s not in terms of revenue. Marketing spend can be directed accordingly, boosting the methods that are providing the best returns.

When ROI is more easily realized, so is scalability. The two are closely related, especially for SMBs. Even a small digital marketing presence, when paired with proper attribution modeling for informed decision making to achieve regular ROI, can start to scale quickly.

This is how SMBs stand to benefit so much from deeper and deeper levels of attribution. When marketing ROI is within reach, it opens the door to whole new opportunities that would have been unavailable before.

New Opportunities for SMBs

google attributionSMBs can more confidently invest in marketing tactics previously beyond their reach when these tactics can be accurately tied to revenue. For example, organic social media marketing can be difficult at times to tie to revenue. There must be a value placed on engagement, and without data on revenue generation, this value is often only vaguely defined.

But with more accurate attribution information, a company may find that building engagement on social media is actually encouraging people to reach out to them and ultimately become customers. This information could justify a heavier investment of time into social media marketing.

You can see how this same example could apply across the entire spectrum of digital marketing tactics. The uncertainty of marketing ROI is one of the biggest barriers for SMBs to fully leverage the digital opportunities available to them. Better attribution helps overcome this barrier and unlock new tools for growth.

Google Attribution is an exciting product that will improve digital marketing efforts for a lot of people. It’s a big step forward for Google’s efforts to improve attribution capabilities in digital marketing. SMBs stand to gain a lot from Google Attribution and will continue to reap the benefits as attribution improves.