How to find truth in web traffic attribution
I have previously talked about how having multiple ‘leaders’ in your data is a recipe for disaster. But even when you have one system, there is another group of people trying to dictate your dance: the advertising platforms.
If you have ever looked at your monthly reports and felt like the sums just don’t work, you are not alone. Every platform, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn is designed to make itself look like the hero of your story. They all want the credit for your sales, even if they only played a tiny part.
I call this ‘attribution fiction’, and it can be one of the biggest drains on a company’s bank account. I recently worked with a client with this exact headache and the numbers they were seeing were literally impossible.
They would run an ad campaign and generate about 100 total sales. When they tallied up the performance reports, Google claimed to have sent them more than 100 clients and Facebook claimed the same. Essentially, every platform they used was taking credit for the same customers.
This is a critical issue. If you can’t trust the data on where your leads are coming from, how can you know which efforts to scale and which to cut? Without an accurate picture, you’re making major budget decisions blind.
This is where true, unfiltered tracking becomes invaluable. We built StoreConnect to solve this by ensuring we track every inbound code, such as a UTM and attach it directly to the actual customer order inside Salesforce.
Imagine a customer’s journey: they click a Google ad, then a Facebook ad, see an ad on their phone and finally click your newsletter. With typical tracking, you would only see the last click. Or worse, every platform would claim the sale for themselves. With the StoreConnect approach, you see all four touchpoints listed on that single order record.
This complete visibility was revolutionary for our client. They realized that while Google was bringing in the initial traffic, they often needed to hit the customer three times across different channels before the purchase happened. This truth allowed them to stop guessing and start investing where it actually worked.
Understanding the full journey, from the first click to the final sale, is the only way to ensure you are pulling the right levers to grow your business. Stop letting platforms argue over credit and start getting the truthful data you need.
Marketing should be an investment, not a gamble. When your commerce system lives inside your CRM, the ‘truth’ is right there on the customer record.
Ready to gain crystal clear clarity on your ad spend? See how StoreConnect ensures your sales numbers always add up.
