While working for my first franchise in 1986, I learned many lessons about retail sales, customer service and marketing during my seven years on the front line. Being a bit of a techie-hacker then, I helped the franchise build their first point of sale (POS) system in the early 1990’s – taking them a giant step away from four-part carbonless handwritten invoices. One mandatory field on that new POS, that every salesperson had to complete when “writing” an invoice, was “Ad Source”. That field was a list of advertising sources including local newspapers we advertised with, and options like Drive By, Word of Mouth, Repeat Customer, Yellow Pages, Billboard and so forth. And printed on a self-adhesive tape stuck to the monitor was the question our franchisee required all salespersons to ask; “What Made You Visit Us Today?“. The expectation was if we all asked that question the same way, our sales by source reports would be accurate – helping our franchisee advertise more effectively.
Another expectation was it would be just ONE ad source that magically caused customers to wake up, get into their car, drive to our store and buy our mattresses. In the following century this “one source” theory would be shattered, especially by Google’s Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) study of what really happens prior to the moment when people decide to buy. In reality, only under rare circumstances can ONE thing be attributed to a specific consumer response. The ZMOT study showed with most purchases, of all sizes including B2C and B2B, people rely on an average of 10.4 different sources of information BEFORE breaking out their credit card, submitting a form or signing on that dotted line. While consistently asking customers the same question to get one answer was a challenge for us 30 years ago – imagine if we had to collect 10 answers for each purchase!
With today’s web traffic tracking, we must evolve past the simple, 1990’s idea of “last click” attribution and realize our multi-touch reality. The good news is that methods for measuring multiple touch-points, also known as “Multi-Channel Attribution”, are already baked into your Google Analytics account! As beneficial as it might be for Google or Facebook to pretend their expensive pay-per-click visitors are the direct result of new leads or sales, we know that “victory has many fathers”. Probably more true now that at any point in our history!
Initial awareness of your brand might begin with organic search results, or a well-placed Facebook ad, but during the research process reviews might be checked on Yelp or Amazon or the Better Business Bureau. Prospects might visit your LinkedIn company page or Glassdoor profile to see how many employees you have, how happy they are/were or where your company is located. Future investors might search Twitter or blogs for reviews by influencers who have tried your product/service before and candidly reported on their experiences. Ultimately, Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF), when properly configured, will identify all sources for “assisted conversions” and clarity on all sources contributing to your conversions.
Starting in Q1 of 2018, FranFocus will shift our monthly client reporting away from this dated “Last Click” source mentality and provide greater depth with Multi-Channel traffic reporting that paints a more complete picture of what it takes to get actionable results today. Please contact us directly if you would like a complimentary copy of the 75 page Zero Moment of Truth study or assistance with configuring or accessing Multi-Channel Funnel reporting within your Google Analytics account.
Happy New Year Everyone!
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