This article originally appeared on ClickZ.
It’s important to know the value of all your marketing touchpoints because the data loss is far greater than you could imagine.
Marketers’ interest in better attribution of offline purchases across paid and earned media channels continues to grow, and for good reason.
According to recent data from Deloitte, mobile’s influence on brick-and-mortar sales rose to 28 percent in 2014. In fact, mobile influenced in-store sales will reach nearly $1 trillion this year. Click-to-call commerce – when a consumer calls a business directly from a smartphone search to make a reservation, appointment, or purchase – will contribute to an additional $1 trillion in consumer purchases this year. Mobile is clearly no longer a niche channel.
When digital or mobile media was relatively inexpensive, using rough estimates of conversions to store visits, or conversions to phone calls was considered acceptable, even though everyone knew that the data was far from perfect. Now, however, it’s become more important than ever to know the value of all your marketing touchpoints, both in respect to advertising and also for earned media, because the data loss is far greater than you could imagine.
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