How to Make Marketing Attribution Work for You

How do you know you’ve identified the right audience for your marketing efforts — an audience open to your messages about the benefits and joy of a new construction home? How can you measure which of your efforts are working and which ones aren’t?

It all comes down to marketing attribution — the act of determining which of your marketing channels are driving results.

How to think about marketing attribution

Many builders use a wide variety of marketing channels, while others focus on only a few, but their goals are the same: Attract home shoppers, guide them through the buying process and sell them a new construction home.

Whatever your current approach, correct attribution and reporting will help you choose the right mix of channels over time, then document and explain those choices to your decision-makers. Data-driven decisions are the easiest to justify — provided you have the right data and easy, reliable access to it.

Take a three-step approach

This three-step approach — strategy, implementation, analysis — will help you evaluate whether a specific channel makes sense for your business.

Strategy

Ask yourself these questions to refine your marketing efforts. To shape an intentional strategy, keep buyer types in mind as you answer.

1. What are the important key performance indicators (KPIs) for my business today? In one year? In three to five years?
2. What is our most successful or most common conversion funnel?
3. What channels do we actively spend effort on today?
4. What is the goal or purpose of each channel?
5. At what point do we consider that channel successful?
6. How do we currently report on success?
7. Regardless of current efforts, how do customers currently hear about us?

Remember that even though you might have a successful strategy in place today, you should be open to adjusting it to reflect changes in the marketplace. Continue to ask customers how they found you, and keep an eye on other channels — what you discover might lead you to a more effective solution.

Implementation

Once you determine your strategy, it’s time to take action! The steps you take will vary by channel, but the data you collect from each must always be consistent and reliable. How do you ensure that?

Reliable means that the data you collect is accurate with minimal mistakes or redundancies.

For example:

• Document the same walk-in buyer — “John Robert” and “Jon Roberts” — only once.
• Count cookie-based users only once, even though they might enter through two or more separate domains.
• Combine a married couple as a single contact in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, even if they independently contact your sales team.
• Ensure your code correctly fires a form submission only once and not on failed submissions.
• Confirm the correct settings for configurations on a third-party platform.
• Make sure that multiple data collectors (e.g., front desk staff, sales reps, call centers) complete all important and required fields in your CRM.

Consistent means your data collectors use the same methods companywide, every time.

For example:

• Ensure your code is implemented on all pages (e.g., tagging all forms throughout your website).
• Confirm the same naming conventions for configurations on a third-party platform (e.g., using the same UTM parameters for everyone involved in a campaign).
• Make sure that multiple data collectors (e.g., front desk, salespeople, call centers) use the same input values for each customer.

Analysis

The third and final step is to determine how your channels performed and what changes you’ll make to ensure an efficient and optimized marketing spend.

Align results and goals

If your initial strategy wasn’t comprehensive enough to make sense of your analysis, can you gain any insights from your marketing efforts? If not, take what you learned, and update your strategy. Draft a hypothesis of how each channel will perform; the next time you analyze the data, you can streamline your channel strategy.

Simplify and share your findings

Help your decision-makers understand the data and make an informed decision: Create an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint presentation, a Tableau graph or a Data Studio report to make your findings clear and actionable.

Consider your options

No one expects a single channel to do all the heavy lifting to attract and engage home shoppers, so a multichannel strategy might be ideal for your business. Each channel can play a role along the buying journey. With enough data, you can choose a model that makes sense for you.

Keep checking your data

Analysis is not a one-time thing; you must do it on a regular basis to generate your best results and achieve maximum efficiency. Jot a note on your calendar to complete an analysis before a budget review and at the end of each campaign. Bookmark your dashboards and make it a habit to regularly check them. You should also do an ad hoc analysis to make sure that any marketplace changes haven’t affected your results.

Marketing channels to consider

This list of potential marketing channels isn’t comprehensive, but it’ll get you started with some options for boosting your marketing.

Website

Your website serves as the central hub for online marketing, providing a starting point for people seeking your brand. Optimize your site for the best chance of converting contacts to customers — more than half of new construction buyers (52 percent) use their smartphones to access builder websites.

Print media

For many builders, direct mail pieces are a marketing staple that allows very specific targeting by geography, income and other factors without relying on digital engagement. Nearly 1 in 5 new construction buyers use direct mail to find their home.

Paid search (SEM)

In addition to the normal organic results a search engine produces by indexing websites, search engines also sell paid advertisements that are shown alongside those results. Most builders use search engine marketing (SEM) to some degree.

External partnerships

Builders will often partner with other websites to expand their reach and tap into new audiences. Depending on the partnership — like one with Zillow Group — you might find additional advertising and promotional opportunities. Of new construction buyers who used online resources to find a home, 62 percent use a Zillow Group site.

Facebook ads

Facebook has become a significant player in targeted marketing, allowing builders to focus their ads around specific geographic locations, demographics and even interests. Among new construction buyers who used online resources to find a home, more than one-quarter (28 percent) use a Zillow Group site.

Online display ads

Some builders show display banners on other websites, particularly those with a local focus. Other builders use AdWords to access the Google Display Network or other networks and products to get advertising in front of potential customers in a programmatic fashion.

Email marketing

Email can help you market to interested contacts or reconnect with those who stall out during the consideration process. You can also email third-party lists of prospects.

Additional channels to consider

• Radio
• Geofencing
• Streaming media (e.g., YouTube)
• Other paid social (e.g., Instagram, Twitter)

Identifying your best-performing marketing channels is vital to your business. The more you know about what works and what doesn’t, the better you’ll spend your marketing money.

Ready to dive into marketing attribution? Click the green arrow to download a brainstorming worksheet.

Continue reading our marketing attribution series

• How to Use UTM Codes
• Why You Should Adopt a Multi-Touch Marketing Model