Just kidding! My sincerest apologies if I just gave you a mini-marketing panic attack . 
Marketing attribution is incredibly important and all marketers need to understand it and flex the attribution muscle where we can. After all, we need to be equipped to show returns on our investments and defend the value of our efforts. That’s not likely to change any time soon.
(CFO of every company ^^ (and rightly so)
BUT……
On one hand (the one I just mentioned), we should definitely measure what we can and make decisions that are informed by data. On the other hand, I don’t think we should only do things we can directly and discretely measure.
Why? It’s limiting and it boxes us into a somewhat standard set of tactics. That certainly doesn’t mean we can’t be creative and drive ROI through the channels we can clearly measure. But, there’s a bigger picture we should keep in mind. I need to remind myself of it, just like others should.
A quick story to illustrate….
My team uses a SaaS chat platform called ‘Drift’. Or if you’re fancy, a ‘conversational marketing platform’ called Drift 😉 Anyhow, we signed with them about a year ago and spend a decent bit of $$ on their service. Rightly so given the results we see. We’re a pretty happy customer (feature requests pending).
Rewind two years before signing up. The first I heard of Drift was on their podcast, ‘Seeking Wisdom’. The podcast wasn’t at all about their service. It was just about interesting stuff they were learning about business, productivity, books, marketing, etc. I listened to it because the content was relevant and interesting. (I wish it was still going)
At some point I started poking around on drift.com to learn more about what they did and how it might be different than the chat service we were using at the time. Then I started mentioning it to my team and suggested they dive deeper into the discovery and buying process.
Fast forward to the point we signed on the dotted line for Drift. You bet your ass they measure all sorts of marketing metrics, but do you think they knew or were able to measure that our contract, MRR, or LTV originated from me listening to their podcast? If I were a betting man, I’d say no. I’d actually say hell no! (If someone from Drift’s marketing team reads this and disagrees, I’d love to hear it).
Now, was the podcast the REASON we became a customer? Nope. Did it influence our decision? Yep, it sure did. There were plenty of other touch points after my initial exposure, and they all had a compounding affect on our decision two years later.
Here’s the point… If we, as marketers, only do things we can measure, we’re likely missing opportunities to build longer term pipeline that will support our growth a year from now, or longer. Someone a lot smarter than me believes this is also true. It’s captured in this quote (I’m paraphrasing):
“We had a great quarter because of all the work we did three years ago, not because of what we did this year, or this quarter.” ~Jeff Bezos
I say all this like it’s easy and we should think like this all the time. I believe it’s good advice, but I also know different businesses have different priorities and expectations of their marketing departments. In other words, the answer is likely ‘it depends’.
If you take anything from this post at all, think about your marketing mix and question the things you’re not doing just because you can’t easily or clearly measure them. The ask if that’s a good idea. I’ll be doing the same.
p.s. I have no affiliation with Drift other than being a customer. They just happened to be the story that helps illustrate the idea.
