Episode 87: Understanding First Touch versus Last Touch attribution, Sales Priorities

Written by HubShots | 02 June 2017

Welcome to Episode 87 of HubShots!

Welcome to HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers who use HubSpot hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems.

Listen to the episode here: https://soundcloud.com/hubshots/087-understanding-first-touch-versus-last-touch-attribution

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Recorded: Wednesday 17 May 2017 | Published: Friday 02 June 2017

Shot 1: Inbound Thought of the Week

Inbound 2017 excitement is heating up…

http://www.inbound.com/

Idea: create an Inbound set of spinoff events throughout the world. Ie similar to what TEDx has done with the TED conference: https://www.ted.com/about/programs-initiatives/tedx-program

They could call it InboundX

Sales Priorities from State of Inbound 2017

For sales professionals, closing more deals occupies the majority of their focus. This was followed by improving the efficiency of the sales funnel as a priority.

Optimizing the sales process requires addressing organizational complexity and adapting to new buying habits, which require major shifts for any business. Social selling, another modern sales strategy, comes in as the third most important priority.

Tip: use the HubSpot CRM and the HubSpot App to allow the team to close more deals and improve efficiency.

Shot 2: Marketing Tip of the Week

Understanding First touch versus Last touch attribution

By default Google Analytics is mostly Last Touch - which means that revenue or leads will attribute the source to be the last channel that they came from.

HubSpot is first touch, which means it tracks the customer back to the First source they came from.

A quick example:

Google AdWords drives a person to your site and they sign up for an ebook download

Later they get an email promoting a special offer and they make a purchase.

Google analytics will attribute the sale to the last touch ie the email

HubSpot will attribute it to the first touch ie analytics

Some quick gotchas:

This is why when viewing the HubSpot sources report you’ll very rarely see Email as a source of contacts and customers
Thus always use a combination of both to get the full picture
It is also why it is very hard to get the full story all in one report

Notes:

Google analytics has some advanced reports under the Conversion section for checking assisted conversions and conversion paths
HubSpot has attribute reports but the Channel attribution report is only available in Enterprise

Shot 3: HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week

HubSpot Attribution reports (again)

This is the Google analytics top conversions path report:

This is the HubSpot Attribution report available in Pro:

Key advantage of this report is that it can show you the results of HubSpot landing pages that don’t have a form eg ‘interim pages’ that push through to the main site. It can be hard to track the effectiveness of these in the Landing Pages report, so the Attribution report is a good way to see their contribution.

This next report is only available in HubSpot Enterprise:

Shot 4: HubSpot Sales Feature of the Week

Creating Contact views in the CRM

Eg here’s a simple one for checking for contacts who haven’t been assigned an owner:

Shot 5: Opinion of the Week

The Hubris of Ignorance:

http://www.stonekettle.com/2017/04/the-hubris-of-ignorance.html

“The simpleminded demand simple causes for complex problems.

The simpleminded demand simple solutions.”

It’s easy to oversimplify - we all love the simple narrative.

As marketers it can be very easy to fall into this trap - we easily ascribe causation when it is only correlation, and we aim to oversimplify solutions for very complex audiences: ie people! People are complex, highly functioning creatures - understanding and solving for them is hard work.

Shot 6: Creative Top 10 of the Week

10 creative ideas for:

How to promote a leading bike brand local dealership

My take on this - knowing nothing about bikes - is that it is focussed on promoting local awareness of the dealership

Understand your personas - bike enthusiasts, older blokes with lots of money, etc
Find out where they hang out online - for the second persona there would be lots of FB potential
Check Facebook insights for related interests eg they work in construction, they are married, they own their own house
Check for devices eg they are predominantly mobile
They have pets eg a dog -> Co-partnering with related non-competitive companies eg pet related
Bike forums and online groups, again targeted by persona
Banner advertising on those sites
Guest posts on relevant sites - discussing country getaway ideas for your weekend on the bike
General PR - local magazines, local newspapers
Local sport sausage sizzles, dog training schools, tattoo shops, heavy tool suppliers, etc
Start with some merchandising promotion, draw in the future purchasers early eg brand shirts, gloves, caps, etc