• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 28, 2015

Marketers want to find an attribution model that considers all of the channels they use to gain the highest return for advertising dollars spent. It may seem easy, but it's not. Here's why.

Each channel has a position in the funnel from which it can produce the highest return on investment. To determine their place, NetElixir analyzed 89,000 conversion paths that ranged from single-step paths to paths with more than 300 steps and found 61% of the $58 million in conversions resulted from those with more than one step, as well as 59% of all transactions.

The study also found that not one of the eight industry sectors mapped out for the study had more than 50% of their conversions come from any one-step conversion path. The average number of site visits per conversion was 4.5. The range by sector goes from a low 2.4 for B2B sites to a high of 7.3 for fashion.

The study identified that organic traffic is 4.35-times more likely to become the top of funnel, compared with the bottom.

The study shows that branded paid search is 1.8-times more likely to become the top of funnel vs. anywhere else. Considering the outcome, retailers should think twice about cutting back on trademark search campaigns. 

Bob Daberkow, director of marketing at Kansas City Steaks, admits the company now sees 25% in paid search growth year over year, up from 11% in 2011. In 2014, Kansas City Steaks grew paid search campaigns from 30% to 34%, as a percentage of their site revenue. The results earned the brand a spot in the sixth annual Google Economic Impact Report for May 2015.

Although Kansas City Steaks' non-brand ads required a 27% higher spend, they generated 32% higher revenue. Non-brand ads assisted conversions to rise by 108%, with bidding on keywords like "filet minion," and "rib eye," he said. The family-run company moved more than 50% of its business online around the early 1990s.

In the Apparel and Fashion sectors, Google Shopping campaigns are significantly better avenues for bringing customers into the conversion funnel than non-branded terms and branded terms on Bing.

Display's impact is small and influences mostly the middle of the funnel. CSEs, another small contributor and perhaps a dying channel, garnered most of that contribution through first click interactions. These channels are a good way to fill the top of your conversion funnel. Affiliates are 3.5-times more likely to become the last click vs. the first click, an example of the impact of coupon sites. This channel outperformed non-trademark or non-brand campaigns combined in Google and Bing.