Attribution

If you are doing any sort of marketing at all and using the data spit out by each marketing platform - attribution is a word you MUST become familiar with. 

If you get a sale, attribution refers to which form of marketing takes credit for it. 

If a customer clicks on an ad, opens an email and sees your organic post on your Facebook feed, then makes a purchase - the ad, the email and the organic post will each take credit for that one sale. 

Unfortunately, without the use of additional paid tools, attribution is not unique, regardless of the platform. This means that Facebook has no idea if the customer saw the ad, then opened an email to make the purchase. It just knows you saw the ad and made a purchase. And likewise - Klaviyo is completely unaware of the ads you have running, so it will also take 100% credit for the sale. 

With the use of additional 3rd party paid tools, we can get a closer look into the last click the customer made before making a purchase - which is how we measure all paid ads. 

We want to make sure the paid ads that are running are taking people exactly from click to checkout, regardless of the emails and texts coming through. 

Keep in mind that doesn’t mean your other forms of marketing are not important. We definitely believe that you should have a strong multi touch marketing strategy vs just relying on one.  

The reason I bring all of this up is because oftentimes we see people (and more often than not, other agencies) relying on data being spit out by each platform, when it’s really just not accurate. 

We have a lot of clients who go HARD with their organic posts on FB/ IG, which causes Facebook ads manager to take credit for more sales than they actually generated. We call this over reporting and as much as we’d love to say your ads are producing 10x return on ad spend, it’s likely not accurate. 

Below you can see a screenshot of what the 3rd party tool reports (in black) vs what Facebook Ads manager is reporting. 

No, I don’t think everyone needs to enlist 3rd party paid tools as part of their marketing strategy to pull last click data. (They are pretty expensive and don’t make sense unless you’re spending at least $100/ day on ads) 

I do want people to be aware that because attribution is not unique they need to take the data from each platform with a grain of salt. 

Especially if you are running paid ads on your own - you need to be aware that Facebook ads manager REALLY likes to take credit for as many sales as possible (so you will spend more money). The ONLY data you can rely on from Facebook ads manager is what is displayed in the Meta purchases column.  

Again - you don’t need to get stuck in the weeds, dissecting where each sale comes from, but this is something you 100% want to keep in mind as you continue to grow your marketing efforts.