Figuring out how to get customers to not only visit your site but to ultimately buy your product, donate to your cause or sign up to take some kind of action is a bit of a science. The attribution method is a way of figuring out how a consumer ended up at your website and also what caused them to purchase a product or service.

Just like many other components of a digital marketing campaign, marketing attribution needs to be something that fits the need of your company and website. What works for you may not work for someone else so its important to find the right fit.

Last click, linear and time decay are different kinds of marketing attribution models. Last click is where the credit is given for a sale to the last click a consumer makes. This is considered to be a pretty outdated model. The linear model divides the credit for a sale equally among all of the channels that are used to get the consumer to make a purchase. Time decay is when the credit for a sale is given to the touchpoints that were used closest in time to when the sale was made.

So how does a business or company decide which model to use? When making a decision, a business needs to take several things into consideration. Examples of things they need to look at would be how many touchpoints their site has or what is the length of their sales cycle. Looking at the specific goals for you site, should help you line up the best attribution model to help you maximize sales and look back at the performance of your site. Using the right model is an important part of making a digital marketing campaign a success and can help know if there are things that need to be changed for future campaigns.