• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 1, 2015

Without a loyalty program, it's nearly impossible for retail stores to track consumer online research or a click on a paid-search advertisement to an offline purchase. Marketo has worked with Google to integrate its Engagement Marketing Platform with Google AdWords and Google Analytics products to connect online research with offline purchases. The integration aims to support attribution and tell marketers whether their investments in paid-search advertising really work.

Marketers have been working for years to perfect attribution. Many can pretty much tell when a paid-search advertisement leads to a sale, but it's virtually impossible to tell when the paid-search ad lead to a sale in a physical store. Consumers often research products and services online only to take that knowledge gained into a physical store to buy them offline. The integration with Google AdWords solves this problem by automatically associating offline purchases with the ads that initiated them, per the company. The Marketo platform exports offline conversions tracked in the platform to see how each keyword contributes to each type of offline conversion. 

The integration also lets marketers identify relevant firmographic and profile information of visitors to the company's Web site, enabling marketers to serve more relevant remarketing ads to those visitors most interested in specific information.