True ROI Marketing Attribution with Google Analytics

The Question: Does Display provide Search lift?

We want to help answer one question for your marketing efforts: does Display really help Search conversions? In other words, we want to let you go to your company's CMO and let him know if he/she should continue to invest in display advertising or not.

Marketing Attribution Background Info

One of the most discussed subjects about measuring marketing ROI is the attribution factor. One of the best posts I have read about this challenge is written by Avinash Kaushik, on his Occam's Razor blog.

The Problem

Most webanalytics providers use attribute the last source before a conversion to that goal for that visitor. In other words, whatever the last source of that specific visitor before the conversion: search, email, or display will be attributed for that conversion.

Is search really heroic or does banner advertising provide lift?

However, many times the user could gained knowledge about the product or service by one source but then used another source to convert - therefore not crediting the source that did really generate the conversion.

How Google Analytics Shows Marketing Attribution

Once you set your goals in Google Analytics, you can go to your reports and identify the sources for your conversions. Here is a simple example of a sources report generating your goals:



What this report is saying that you had 15 conversions generated from search (16*93.76%) and 3 conversion from display banner ads (11*27.27%). But what if some users found about your service through your banner ad - but did not convert immediately on that visit? In other words, the user returned to your site through an organic search. This could mean that investments in display ads are actually working! Ideally, you wish you could drill-down on the 15 search conversions and understand how many of them also clicked on a banner.

How BTBuckets can help Google Analytics

We created a Custom Report within Google Analytics to understand Marketing Attribution a little better. First we create a simple report of Goals segmented by source:



This already relieves us from the percentage math we did on the default report and states the exact conversion count per source. But then we now can click on the specific source and identify the number of conversions attributed to that source that also had another source. In other words, how many of my Organic conversions also clicked on a banner.

Of my 15 Google / Organic conversions, how many of these users also clicked on a display banner?

So here's the report (with BTBuckets help) that comes up when I click on the Google / Organic Source/Medium:



This report stated that 8 of my 15 conversions attributed to Organic search were conversions of users who also clicked on my banner. When more than half of your Organic conversions also clicked on ads could imply that your display marketing is actually working. Your CMO would be very happy to know this information.

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The Secret Sauce

Below we will explain in detail how we managed to get this report in Google Analytics. But before, the disclaimer:

Actually, this is a POC (proof-of-concept). We created a measuring process that will allow you to understand the percentage of users Google Analytics attributed to Organic Search of the Google Search engine who actually clicked on a Banner before converting. This case will not tell you which banners or which keywords are generating the conversions.

Let's go to the implementation. Here's are the macro implementation steps:

1. Install Google Analytics tags and configure Conversion Goals
2. Install BTBuckets tags
3. Create Source Clusters in BTBuckets
4. Update Google Analytics tags with BTBuckets information
5. Create Google Analytics custom report

Step 1 - Install Google Analytics tags and configure Conversion Goals

Make sure your site is installed with the Google Analytics tag. Also, you have to configure your Goals so the reporting can segment the sources based on goals.

Step 2 - Install BTBuckets tags

If your site still does not have the BTBuckets tag, you should create an account (it's free) and install the BTBuckets tag on all of your site's pages. The implementation is a standard BTBuckets implementation, but the BTBuckets tag has to be placed above the Google Analytics tag on the site.

Step 3 - Create Source Clusters in BTBuckets

In this implementation, we created three clusters in BTBuckets:

• Search in this example we will be using the Google search engine - but you can add other search engines to this cluster as well please note that we are using google.com in this example, you may want to add your country's specific search engine - such as google.co.uk
  Viewed a page at least 1 time(s) coming from website google.com
  
• Display using the Google Analytics Campiagn Variables
  Viewed a page at least 1 time(s) containing utm_medium=display in the Address
• Search_Display both conditions for the previous two clusters
  
  Viewed a page at least 1 time(s) coming from website google.com
AND
Viewed a page at least 1 time(s) containing utm_medium=display in the Address

Make sure that the Search_Display cluster overwrites the other two clusters.

Step 4 - Update Google Analytics tags with BTBuckets information

We are using the USER DEFINED values for segmentation, therefore we must update the Google Analytics tag to receive the BTBuckets information. The tag has to be edited only on the conversion page (but you can also use this tag on all of the site). Below is an example of an original Google Analytics tag:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'
type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-8520037-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>


Below is the edited version of the Google Analytics tag receiving the BTBuckets information (notice the changes in red):


<script language="javascript">
var BTBbucket_name = "";
for(bucket_name in $BTB.clusters)
{ BTBbucket_name = bucket_name; }
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'
type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-8520037-1");
if (BTBbucket_name != "")
{
pageTracker._setVar(BTBbucket_name);
}
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>


Step 5 - Create Google Analytics custom report

The final step is to configure the customized reports for quick analysis. Click the Custom Reporting link on the right hand-side of your reports menu. Create a new custom report (we named our report Cross-Attribution Example).

First, drag the Goal 1 Starts (under the Goals metric list) to your first metric on the report. Then drag the Source/Medium dimension (under the Traffic Sources dimension list) as your main report dimension. Finally, drag the User Defined Value dimension (under the Visitors dimension list) as the first dimension drilldown (after "Source/Medium" drill down to...). This is how your report should look like:

Last Minute Considerations

The sales cycle for different products and services has different time frames. A start of 30 days is recommended, yet some businesses may need a 60- or 90-day time frame to correctly attribute credit to the influential source. Feel free to customize these variables according to your site's characteristics.

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Looking for a Case

If you are interested in applying this marketing attribution model and would like some help (and are willing to create a case study) - please contact us and we can help you with the implementation.