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[miniMBA_10] Digital Marketing

Attribution Modeling

Attribution modeling is an analysis tool to identify and assign conversion credit to different channels that influence consumer behavior. Return on Investment (ROI) from ad platforms is the most important metric in attribution modeling. Most ad platforms only offer ways to analyze data within their platforms which may lead to ROI calculations that are inaccurate or inflated.

Attribution Models

There are many types of attribution models an organization can use to give appropriate credit and determine Return on Investment (ROI) from various ad platforms.

  1. Last Interaction Attribution - The last click prior to the conversion receives all of the credit
  2. First Interaction Attribution - The first click is assigned all credit for the conversion
  3. Last Non-Direct Click - The last click that is NOT direct traffic receives all of the credit for the conversion
  4. Linear Attribution - Each interaction leading to the conversion receives equal credit
  5. Time Decay Attribution - The closer the interaction is to the conversion, the more credit it receives
  6. Position Based Attribution - 40% of credit goes to the first and last interactions each; the remaining 20% is divided evenly among all of the middle interactions
  7. Custom Attribution Models - Each interaction is assigned a custom percentage of the conversion value
Choosing the Right Model

There is no one-size-fits all attribution model. Instead, deciding which model to use is a matter of context. Below, six of the attribution models are ranked from most conservative to most growth-oriented in strategy:

Content Strategy

Many people are familiar with content marketing, but before creating any marketing materials, it is important to define your content strategy so you don’t end up developing content you don’t need.

Content strategy is driven by three questions:

  1. What content will we produce?
  2. What is the criteria for producing it?
  3. Where and when will we deliver it?

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Challenges to Developing a Content Strategy
  1. Focus on tactics instead of strategy - Don’t get caught up in day-to-day key performance indicators like page views, and likes and shares; instead, focus on the big picture assessment of whether the content is actually serving consumer needs or achieving business objectives
  2. Multiple teams, competing objectives - Make sure your content strategy isn’t so narrow that it is serving the success of metrics for only one part of your organization, but also make sure it’s not so broad that it lacks focus, ownership and measurability
  3. Lack of executive leadership - Leaders must make sure that content development and marketing teams are not pulled every which way by the many demands of different stakeholders in the organization; it is their job to ensure that a content strategy is implemented and followed
  4. Disparate audience data - Make sure you have the resources and expertise to manage and make sense of information from separate tools used to gather and store insights for all of your data

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Steps for Developing a Content Strategy

  1. Start with the customer and the journey - get to know your customer’s biggest pain points as well as their behaviors and preferences

  2. Engage with stakeholders and audit your content - interview stakeholders to understand what they think content can do for them, then look for areas where the content needs of your various stakeholders align; conduct an audit to understand what content your organization already has or is working on

  3. Choose a content archetype - a content archetype is simply a description of how a brand can best serve its customers and its business through content development (see image below for examples)

  4. Identify criteria - identify criteria that will determine whether a piece of content should be produced or not

  5. Map content needs along the customer journey - put yourself in your customer’s shoes and chart out what you would do if you were looking for more information or for a solution to a problem

  6. Share your content strategy plan - share your plan with the rest of the organization so that they can think about ways their team can create content to support customers at each stage of the content journey

  7. Measure the success of your content strategy - how you measure success should be determined by the goal of the content archetype that has been chosen

  8. Create a content vision - distill what you want to achieve with your content in one memorable sentence

        • Example framework: I will help (the customer) achieve (solution to their problem) by doing (content archetype).

Gamification

In business, gamification is the process of incorporating game elements into an organization’s website, services, community, or marketing campaign in order to increase participation and drive engagement.

Game Elements

Game mechanics engage people by fulfilling human desires for reward, status, achievement, and more. The most common game elements and the primary human desires they fulfill include:

The Octalysis Framework

Just using game elements such as points or challenges is not enough to create an engaging experience. The Octalysis framework proposes 8 core drivers of good gamification.

  1. Epic Meaning & Calling - helping players feel that they are doing something greater than themselves
  2. Development & Accomplishment - helping users feel that they are making progress, developing skills, and overcoming challenges
  3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback - giving users the opportunity to use their creativity to solve a problem and providing feedback to help them move forward
  4. Ownership & Possession - letting people collect virtual items or customize their profile to personalize their experience
  5. Social Influence & Relatedness - making it clear where users stand in relation to others in gamification in order to create feelings of mentorship, acceptance, companionship, competition and envy
  6. Scarcity & Impatience - encouraging users to participate with messages like “act now before it’s too late”
  7. Unpredictability & Curiosity - making users wonder what will happen next
  8. Loss & Avoidance - tapping into the user’s motivation to avoid something negative from occurring

The left side of the Octalysis Framework represents left brain strategies, which tap into intrinsic motivation, while the right side of the framework represents right brain strategies, which rely on extrinsic motivation.

The top half of the Octalysis Framework represents ‘white hat’ gamification drives, which tend to be more positive motivators, while the bottom half of the framework represents ‘black hat’ gamification drives, which tend to engage more negative motivations. While black hat drives seem more negative, both can be used to encourage positive user behaviors.

Writing Usability Testing Scripts

Usability testing is important for making sure your website is user friendly and communicates what you want communicated. There are 4 key elements to include in your scripts, as reviewed below.

Key Script Elements
  1. Introduction - purpose is to put people at ease and demonstrate the think-aloud protocol participants will follow
      • Think-aloud protocol - in user testing, participants must speak their thoughts aloud as they experience the site (e.g. what they are looking at, thinking, doing, and feeling)
  3. Initial Homepage Impressions - purpose is to gather first impressions and can be done through 2 methods:
      1. Capture impressions as they occur - ask the user questions as they are looking at the home page
      2. Capture impressions that are remembered - show the user the homepage for a short time, then minimize it and ask the same questions as in the first method
  5. Task Scenarios - purpose is to indirectly expose flaws in the interface by having participants complete tasks that would lead them to encounter those flaws; when writing scenarios, make sure:
      • Scenarios are realistic with motivations to perform
      • Tasks are sequenced in order
      • Include multiple steps for users to complete
  7. Post-Session Questions - purpose is to give users a chance to share feedback they haven’t had the opportunity to express; some good questions include:
      1. What is your overall impression of the site?
      2. What do you like best about the site? What do you like least?
      3. What is the first thing you would do to improve the site if you were the web designer?
      4. Is there anything you feel is missing in terms of content or site features?
      5. If you were to describe the site to a colleague in a sentence or two, what would you say?
      6. Do you have any other final comments or questions?