Marketing Attribution: Which of Your Channels Is Actually Driving Revenue?

Why attribution matters for marketing spend#

If your attribution model tells you 80% of sales come from Google Search (last click), you might cut your Facebook budget — not realising Facebook introduced 60% of those search-converting customers to your brand in the first place. Incorrect attribution produces incorrect budget decisions, systematically underinvesting in upper-funnel awareness channels and overspending on lower-funnel conversion channels. The compound effect is brand-building channels starved of budget and growth slowing even as ROAS on paid search looks strong.

Last-click attribution: the default and its problems#

Last-click attribution gives 100% of the credit for a sale to the final marketing touchpoint before conversion. It is the default in Google Analytics, most eCommerce platforms, and most ad networks. Its fundamental problem: it ignores every touchpoint in the customer journey except the final one. A customer who saw a Facebook ad, read your email newsletter, clicked a Google Shopping ad, and then made a purchase on a direct visit has the sale attributed to direct — ignoring the three earlier touchpoints entirely.

Multi-touch attribution: closer to the truth#

Multi-touch attribution distributes credit across multiple touchpoints. Linear: equal credit to every touchpoint. Time decay: more credit to touchpoints closer to conversion. Position-based (U-shaped): 40% to first touchpoint, 40% to last, 20% distributed among middle touchpoints — recognising the dual importance of introduction and conversion. Data-driven: uses statistical modelling to assign credit based on actual incremental contribution from patterns across thousands of customer journeys. Data-driven attribution is the most accurate but requires large data volumes to be reliable.

Practical attribution for small businesses#

Most small businesses do not have data volumes to make data-driven attribution reliable. A practical approach: use GA4's multi-touch attribution models as a better default than last-click, run channel hold-out tests (pause a channel for a period and measure whether overall revenue declines), track UTM parameters meticulously to understand the full customer journey, and survey new customers about how they first heard about you. The survey approach is underrated — customers often tell you what the data cannot.

Using AskBiz to analyse marketing channel performance#

AskBiz analyses your marketing data from connected sources — Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Ads — providing channel attribution analysis at the LTV level. It shows the lifetime value of customers acquired through each channel, the CAC by channel, and revenue trend by channel over time. Ask it: which channel produces customers with the highest 90-day LTV, how has my paid social CAC changed in the last 6 months, what percentage of my revenue comes from repeat customers vs new.