Solving the Marketing ROI and Attribution Crisis
In case you haven’t noticed, today’s consumer is different.
The path from initial awareness to purchase has never been more convoluted. And as marketing leaders, we've all experienced the frustration of knowing our campaigns are driving value while struggling to prove it with traditional metrics.
The days of simple attribution models are long gone—still many agencies and brands are stuck in outdated measurement platforms that fail to capture the full impact of your marketing investments.
The Attribution Crisis
The traditional last-click attribution model, once the industry standard, has become more and more irrelevant in a world where consumers might interact with your brand across five or more channels before converting.
According to a recent McKinsey study, the average consumer journey now involves 20-500 touchpoints, depending on the product and the purchase process. But many marketers still attribute 100% of the conversion credit to the final interaction.
This approach creates some dangerous blind spots. Channels that build awareness and consideration—often the most critical parts of the funnel—get dramatically undervalued, while conversion-focused tactics receive disproportionate credit and investment.
The result? Skewed budget allocations that optimize for short-term metrics at the expense of sustainable growth.
Moving Beyond Single-Touch Attribution for Accurate ROI
The solution isn't rushing to multi-touch attribution models, though that's certainly a step in the right direction. The challenge is more involved: we need to expand our definition of what constitutes marketing ROI in the first place.
True campaign ROI involves a lot more than immediate conversions. It includes:
Brand equity building that yields returns over multiple purchase cycles
Customer lifetime value impacts that may only materialize months or years later
Operational efficiencies created by better-qualified leads
Reduced price sensitivity among customers with strong brand affinity
A 2023 analysis by the Marketing Science Institute found that brands overinvesting in performance marketing while underinvesting in brand building experienced an average 18% decline in customer acquisition over a three-year period. Short-term gains masked longer-term erosion of marketing effectiveness.
Incremental Testing: Measuring True Marketing ROI
Maybe the most powerful way to understanding true ROI is incremental testing—measuring the actual lift created by your campaigns compared to what would have happened naturally.
"...the average consumer journey now involves 20-500 touchpoints."
As you're probably familiar, this means setting up controlled experiments where some segments of your audience get marketing exposure while matched control groups don't. The difference in outcomes shows your true impact. Although it’s a bit more complex to implement than traditional attribution, incremental testing provides a much clearer picture of actual marketing contribution.
And if you want to do a little digging, you can find some good tools on Meta and Google to help with this. But the most sophisticated marketers are building their own testing frameworks that work across channels. This gives them far more accurate cross-channel comparison and optimization.
Building a Comprehensive Attribution and ROI Measurement Framework
So how do we build a comprehensive measurement framework that helps us with today's complex customer journeys?
Here's a practical approach:
Implement a data warehouse strategy. Consolidate data from all marketing platforms, your CRM, website analytics, and sales systems into a central repository that provides a single source of information.
Develop custom attribution models. While no attribution model is perfect, custom models that reflect your specific business realities are vastly superior to out-of-the-box solutions. These should incorporate time decay, position-based weighting, and algorithmic elements.
Layer in incremental testing. Use controlled experiments to validate your attribution models and understand the true incremental impact of each channel and campaign.
Incorporate leading indicators. Don't wait for final conversions to judge campaign performance. Identify predictive metrics earlier in the funnel that correlate with eventual conversion.
Account for offline impacts. Use techniques like post-purchase surveys, unique phone numbers, and location data to connect digital marketing to real-world behaviors.
Measure brand equity impacts. Regular brand tracking studies can help quantify the long-term value creation that performance metrics might miss.
The ROI Horizon Problem
Arguably the most challenging part of true ROI measurement is accounting for the time lag. Different marketing activities adhere to different time tables—some deliver immediate returns while others take months or years.
Research from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising suggests that the optimal balance is roughly 60% brand building (long-term ROI) and 40% activation (short-term ROI). Yet most organizations struggle to maintain this balance because short-term metrics are more visible and create more immediate feedback loops.
The solution is to create a measurement framework for different time horizons:
Short-term metrics (0-30 days): Click-through rates, immediate conversions, cost per acquisition
Mid-term metrics (1-6 months): New customer rate, average order value, repeat purchase rate
Long-term metrics (6+ months): Customer lifetime value, brand equity measures, price premium
By having these three-time horizons in your reporting, you can make more balanced investment decisions. And clearly, that will help optimize for both immediate results and long-term value creation.
"The agencies and brands that thrive will be those that develop sophisticated, multi-dimensional approaches to measuring marketing ROI."
Putting it All Into Action
The marketing landscape will continue to grow in complexity. The agencies and brands that thrive will be those that develop sophisticated, multi-dimensional approaches to measuring marketing ROI.
This doesn't mean tossing traditional metrics—clicks, conversions, and ROAS out the window. But it does mean putting them into a broader framework that accounts for the full customer journey both across channels and over time.
The payoff for getting this right is huge: more efficient budget allocation, better alignment between marketing activities and business outcomes, and ultimately, stronger, more sustainable growth for your organization.
Need Help Getting Started?
If you need help measuring the ROI on your next campaign — or any other direct marketing effort, let us know. J&C can help you use our proven techniques and tactics to help increase the performance of programs you’re already running or kick off a new one.
J&C has over 40 years of direct marketing experience and would be happy to learn more about your company and your goals. Contact J&C today. That way we can give you an honest assessment of how we can work with you to achieve better results.
