Multi-touch Attribution Guide in Google Analytics 4

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In this article, you'll learn what multi-touch attribution is, how to implement it in Google Analytics 4, and how it can help you improve your marketing results.
Have you heard of multi-touch attribution? Do you know what you need to consider before performing its analysis and, above all, what it looks like in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and why you should devote your time to it? Let's explain everything together in this article.

What is multi-touch attribution?

Multi-touch attribution analysis (MTA) is used by marketers to determine how different marketing channels and interactions contribute to a customer’s conversion journey. Specific touchpoints are measured along this journey. Typically, this is either the first touchpoint that brought the customer in (first-touch attribution model) or the last touchpoint that led to the customer converting (last-touch attribution model). Each interaction along the customer journey is called a touchpoint.

MTA evaluates each specific point and its impact on customer conversion. In addition, each point involved in the customer journey is assigned an appropriate weight. By understanding multi-touch attribution, marketers can understand which path led to a purchase and identify additional opportunities to optimize conversion paths.

What should you consider before performing multi-touch attribution analysis?
Define your goal

As with any activity, it is important to define your goal before you begin your analysis. What do you want to achieve with multi-touch attribution? Is your goal to evaluate the return on investment of a particular marke paraguay mobile database ting tool, understand the customer journey to the final purchase, or identify critical pages on your website for A/B testing?

Each goal requires a different approach to attribution analysis. Don't skip the goal-setting step and get results faster.

Define conversion

What conversion or desired action do you expect from customers? What should they do on your website? In e-commerce, this is most often the completion of a purchase, including payment for the order. Other industries require different conversion goals. For example, it could be registering on the website, filling out a form, making a phone call, or entering an email address for a subscription.

If you would like to measure multi-touch attribution on multiple conversion goals, we recommend that you divide your conversions into multiple analyses to avoid unnecessary errors during analysis.

Define touchpoints

The touchpoints you define can take many forms. They can be any interaction between your brand and your customers.

If you are performing MTA analysis for the first time, we recommend defining a touchpoint as a visit to your website from a specific marketing channel. This attribution is quite common and can give you a good overview of what steps a customer took before achieving the desired conversion for you.

If your goal is to understand how your customers interact with your website, then we recommend that you define touchpoints based on page views on your website. If you are interested in including interactions that happen outside of your website, such as email opens, social media interactions, or mobile app installs, and you can measure these data, then you can include these events in your touchpoint definition. The more detailed you define your touchpoints, the more detailed your customer journey analysis will be.