The Hardest Question You Can Ask a Marketer

Tough Question
"What would you do if I gave you another dollar?"

That's the hardest question you can ask a marketing professional. The answer varies for every business and it's difficult to figure out. Invest in a better customer call center? More ads on Google? A new direct mail piece? An ad in a trade magazine?

The question is so difficult because most marketers don't know the value each dollar across their different marketing channels (that's called return on investment). An entire industry within marketing called attribution modeling seeks to solve this problem. Yet, far too few marketers have attempted to tackle this problem.

Solving it starts with gathering consumer data. At a minimum, it requires excellent website analytics and a flexible customer database. The best companies are able to gather consumer data across channels and build models to know how to spend that extra marketing dollar.

The One Dollar Challenge 
It would be fun to gather stories of where marketers have figured out attribution of their marketing dollars. So, if you tell me how far a dollar goes across your different marketing channels, I'll donate the next dollar to your marketing budget.

Add This To Your To-Do List 
The best way to start down the path of attribution modeling is to create a basic customer database. Begin with information that you already know about your customers — name, address, past order amounts, products bought, date of purchase, etc. Then, install Google Analytics on your website. It's free and very easy to use. I have used it on every website I've worked on. After that, give me a call and we'll chat.

There's never a lack of ideas.

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