Gold Standard of Attribution

This data was originally featured in the June 26th, 2024 newsletter found here: INBOX INSIGHTS, JUNE 26, 2024: KEEPING PROJECTS ON THE RAILS, GOLD STANDARD OF ATTRIBUTION

In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s talk attribution. Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive posted a really interesting, thoughtful article about measuring SEO and search in the age of AI, pointing out that the KPIs and metrics we’ve used to measure SEO in the last decade are no longer applicable. Wil points out things like AI-powered and AI-assisted search provide absolutely no data to marketers, and the best you can do is estimate some things.

There is one metric, one KPI that he omitted that has stood the test of time for almost 30 years in SEO now. It worked in the 90s, it worked in 2004, 2014, and 2024. Here it is:

This venerable field should be on your contact forms, on your acquisition points, in your call center scripts, wherever you take in prospects, leads, and opportunities. A simple, open-ended field that asks people how they heard about you.

Today, that open-ended question is more valuable than ever, as people find you through more channels than ever – Telegram, Discord, ChatGPT, conferences, you name it. And what used to be a complex, challenging problem – parsing all that open-ended data – is no longer, thanks to generative AI. With today’s modern models, you can either have them do the categorization directly, or write the necessary code to use older forms of classifying open-ended content.

Either way, this venerable gold standard of attribution (and yes, it’s not perfect – it has limitations like selective memory, recency bias, etc.) is the enduring measure of attribution. It’s the one data gathering mechanism that is immune to privacy regulations because the customer volunteers it. It’s timeless. It’s flexible, adapting with the times. And with the power of AI now, it’s just as easily processed and analyzed as any other marketing data.

This is the corollary of what Katie often says, which is that new technologies don’t solve old problems. In this case, an old solution solves new problems.

If you’re not collecting this vital data point, you should make that change today.