Marketing Attribution Doesn’t Define Content. It Refines It.

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Online daters have it easy. They have a clear, measurable goal: messages from prospective partners. They also have three possible forms of content and three points of contact that can lead them to that goal: their picture; their profile; and the email they send to people they like. Of those three forms of content, it’s clear that the picture is the most important contributor to a successful conversion. Without a good-looking picture, no one will read the profile and those messages won’t win a response. That’s why so many Internet daters now pay for professional dating photos and so few hire digital de Bergeracs to write their emails for them.

Attributing success correctly in online dating has led serious daters to focus their efforts on one particular aspect of what could be called their “partner journey.”

Businesses have it much harder. Customer journeys are much more complex. There are usually more than three points of contact and while a professional content marketer will be able to raise the quality and effectiveness of the most important contributor to success, the solution is rarely as simple as swapping a selfie for a professional portrait.

When Smart Insights, a data analytics company, looked at health insurance providers in Ireland, for example, the company found that a fifth of consumers chose Aviva as their preferred provider. That was a decline of 7 percent over the last six months. Only 8 percent of consumers were visiting Aviva’s website, compared with 50 percent for rivals Vhi and 34 percent for Laya Healthcare and Glo Health.

Aviva, Smart Insights concluded, was relying too much on the strength of its brand familiarity, allowing competitors to beat them with a website experience that was a more powerful contributor to conversions. That was eating into Aviva’s brand recognition, contributing further to its decline.

Esurance Cooks Up A Key Attribution

Smart Insights didn’t offer a solution to Aviva’s problem, and that solution might have been complex. More enticing advertising might have helped the company to beat competitors in search results, where the company was losing despite bidding for higher placement, but more engaging content could also have helped the company to win direct traffic outside the competition of the search engines and made those search engine ads look more inviting.

Sometimes, though, knowing which content is contributing the most to success can generate some simple enhancements.

Esurance, an American health insurance company owned by Allstate, invested in a Superbowl ad in 2015 that included the Walter White character from the television series “Breaking Bad.” The advertisement would have done much to raise brand awareness but measuring the attribution of television advertising is much harder than measuring the effectiveness of online advertising. When the company placed the ad on YouTube, it added both a large action button, complete with animated cursor, and two further links encouraging viewers to either visit the website or watch more of the company’s advertising.

Esurance knew that a Superbowl ad would contribute strongly to its success so it continued to invest in that content even after the placement had concluded, improving its ability to drive customers to a conversion point.

Singles understand that looks aren’t everything. But they also understand that when they pay more attention to their looks, everything can change.  Brands have to work harder to find and optimize their key attributor but refining it can be a good start.

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