If you clicked on this blog post because you're a fan of digital marketing attribution and fantasy football, we should connect—you seem cool. If you're here for either fantasy football or attribution, we should still connect because you seem cool. And if you don’t care about either, you might be a bit lost, but feel free to keep reading.
Now, let's dive into how digital marketing attribution resembles drafting your fantasy football team. Imagine you're setting up your fantasy draft for the upcoming season and can keep two players from your championship team last year. You have three key players: your star quarterback (QB), a standout wide receiver (WR), and a top tight end (TE). You want to allocate your fantasy budget wisely to build the best team.
Here’s a simplified way to approach it: you look at the stats—let's say your QB threw 25 touchdowns, with 15 caught by the WR and 10 by the TE. An easy method would be to assign value based on these numbers and who was holding the ball when we scored: if a receiver catches a touchdown, he gets all the credit for it, and the same for the TE. You might allocate your budget based on these percentages.
This approach is straightforward, but it overlooks the full picture. It ignores the QB’s role in making the pass and the TE’s contribution by blocking and giving the QB time to throw. If you only focus on the WR and TE, you might end up with a fantastic WR and TE but a mediocre QB, leaving your team at a disadvantage.
Alternatively, you could give all the credit to the QB, which would boost his value but might leave you with less budget for a top WR or TE. You could also assign some credit to both the QB and the WR, but this still doesn’t account for the TE’s critical role in blocking and enabling the play to succeed.
Just like in fantasy football, digital marketing attribution involves balancing multiple factors. Does a sale happen without the initial paid ad that brought awareness? Would the sale have occurred without the remarketing ad or email that reminded the customer? There’s no simple answer, just like there’s no perfect fantasy draft. The key is to find the best way to distribute value, not necessarily the right way.
There isn’t a single “best” attribution method—just as there’s no perfect fantasy team lineup. The most effective approach often involves combining different methods to get a fuller picture. This means considering various perspectives and continuously optimizing your strategy based on performance and changing circumstances. In marketing, as in fantasy football, you need to test, adjust, and adapt to stay ahead.
If you have any questions about how to approach attribution for your organization, or if you just want to talk fantasy football strategies, feel free to reach out here.
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