Here's how you can ace discussing marketing attribution models in a marketing operations interview.

In a glimpse, attributing a sale to a specific touchpoint of customer's journey is not so easy, especially when there are multiple touchpoints that the customer passed through in the process. To define a model that accurately attributes needs a detailed understanding of customer's journey and the touchpoints that nurture the journey. This understanding helps in building strategies that actually work while attributing rightly.

- Know the core models (first-touch, last-touch, linear, etc.) - Attribution models help determine which marketing touchpoints contribute most to conversions - Understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Digital marketers and companies are always looking for solutions to understand the return on investment and marketing outcomes in their campaigns and to discover the channels and devices that drive the largest percentage of sales or conversions. In fact, what they're looking for is on their hands directly for free, which is the attribution model .

"Attribution" in Marketing isn’t just about tracking conversions and raising awareness; it’s about understanding the customer journey and with every touchpoint you get more data on that. By mapping out every touchpoint, we can refine our strategies and better allocate resources, turning data into actionable insights.

- Highlighting models like First Touch and Last Touch can show your understanding of how they credit conversions. - For instance, First Touch attributes all credit to the initial interaction, while Last Touch focuses on the final one before a conversion. - Google Analytics can be used to explore this model.

As the name suggests, this single-source model gives all the attention to consumers' first point of contact with your brand. This may be the first time they visit your website, are attracted to the content you display, or otherwise interact with your brand. In social media marketing, for example, this type of digital marketing affiliation model will give all the attention to the point where consumers first saw a brand. This is a great option because it is easy to understand and easy to execute, but it does not provide the possibility to recognize contact points in the lower stages of the track. The first point affiliation model is best used when focusing on order creation and potential customer forms

Single-touch models can simplify reporting, but they often miss the nuance of complex customer journeys. It's better than not tracking anything at all, but the reality is that no user journey will ever start and end with a "single touchpoint". For omni-channel strategies, a broader approach is necessary according to my opinion. So I would recommend you to really draw some of the potential journey you believe people run through when interaction in your funnel. From awareness to excitement, what touchpoints are there in your strategy?

It is important to consider a multi-channel affiliation strategy when going through this process. This strategy allows you to see the impact of marketing channels on the customer's journey online and offline. It takes into account multiple channels at the same time to evaluate the entire customer experience.

Multi-touch models provide a comprehensive perspective on the customer journey. However, it's crucial to choose the model that aligns with your specific goals. For high-consideration purchases, Time Decay often yields the most valuable insights, whereas Linear models are effective for tracking overall engagement.

Unlike the single-source models we have just discussed, multi-point affiliation models - such as custom attribution - take into account all contributing channels throughout the client's journey. For the traditional affiliation model specifically, each point of communication is given equal weight or attention. This model is especially great because it gives you the full picture of customer interactions. However, not all interactions are created equally - so the downside is that the priorities for attracting attention in this analysis are not taken into account. custom model is best used when communication points are relatively equally important in relation to your overall goal

- Show your familiarity with attribution tools like Google Analytics - Highlight your experience in setting up and analyzing attribution reports. - Sharing a story about how integrating these tools improved the attribution accuracy can highlight your practical knowledge.

One golden rule when it comes to technology: Put your people first. Technology is never the bottleneck, but your capability to explain "what's in it for your colleagues" when they use a CRM. And spare them with the overarching buzzword KPIs - tell them why THEY benefit from using the CRM.

You can point to the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a revolution in attribution modeling by predicting the most effective contact points and customer pathways. Explain the importance of these predictive models historical data to identify patterns and predict future results, allowing marketers to allocate resources more effectively. AI-driven models can constantly learn and adapt, providing increasingly accurate and dynamic attribution insights.

I believe a trend that becomes important in marketing is the trend from "storage" to "process". A few years ago, smart people had access to a memory full of information and experience. Today, everyone has that on the internet, 24/7. In the future, the ones who are capable to prioritize information and leverage the impactful insights will succeed. So priotization is more important than ever before.