Facebook Attribution Tool – A Complete Guide

We love living in the darkness – said NO.ONE.EVER!

How likely are you to believe us if we were to tell you that Facebook is a giant-wizardly-marketing-platform that doesn’t only predict your future but can track the history of your customers too?

Well, it wasn’t just blowing Facebook’s trumpet for no reason. We have a lot to say to validate this notion; we have many Facebook tools to talk about. But today, we’ll only speak of one magical potion; they call it the Facebook attribution tool. 

Here’s the deal:

Facebook had our back right from 2017 when they rolled out this new wizardry Fb Attribution Tool.

That’s right; we’re talking about the Facebook tools that track your conversion’s past. So, are you ready for a plethora of information simplified and structured for you?

Here’s what you’ll get to see, learn, and marvel about today:

Sounds perfect! But perfection is yet to come.

Let the drive begin:

Facebook Attribution Tool

Say you are a business running in the 21st century (or the lucky advertiser of one such business).

How are you most likely to market the business?

If you asked us the same question for the same role-play, the answer would have been:

“We’d research the business, and the audience meant to flourish it. Based on where the audience hung out the most, we’d design a strategic plan for multi-platform audiences to target them everywhere they are! “.

Now, that’s the right kind of strategy, we’d say. (And we are not alone in saying that; it’s a tried, tested & recommended approach by most of the still-somewhat-sane marketers (saying this in the context of 2020, you know)).

However, targeting the audience doesn’t always involve paid marketing. It doesn’t have to.

At times, organic results also contribute a lot to convert potentials into clients. Even if some of those channels do not directly contribute to the sales, they might indirectly do so.

How does *playing a substantial role in shaping the mind of the potentials to make the purchase* sound? That’s what all those channels do.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED!

But, what does the Fb attribution tool do?

The Role Of Facebook Attribution Tool In The Story:

All right, the story starts with you back to being the business owner (or the marketer, well!).

Running across different platforms IS a tricky job; you know it just as well as we do. Therefore, the rewards ought to be real good!

Yes, they are; like said earlier, this helps improve the conversions.

But how do you know what content, platform, ad, or effort has been the most useful? What exactly helped you in the process of a complete sale? How do you know what has been the most productive effort in your journey?

How can you really track that, if at all? And, based on the tracking, what would be a profitable future strategy for you? 

Well, that’s where Facebook’s brought a twist to the story. That’s where the platform’s wizardry comes in to play in the name of the Attribution tool. 

Facebook Attribution tool tracks all the touchpoints of a prospect on his way to becoming a client.

And that’s one of the top reasons we are a fan of Facebook Marketing.

Here’s what Facebook says about attribution:

“Facebook attribution allows us to see the full picture of cross-device measurement and make the right marketing decisions based on user behavior,” says Elina Prave, VP Marketing, airBaltic. 

Consider this example:

When a prospect first interacts with your ad – say a Facebook conversion ad – he might not necessarily buy right away (or at all). 

But why does it bother you? Why does it matter in the first place?

It matters because there still is a high chance of converting that prospect.

But how do you do that?

Remarket! Corner the prospect with your retargeting efforts.

You might want to send them some more ads; Facebook, Google, Instagram, every platform that might feel useful! When you notice some interest, you might want to use Email marketing. Throughout the whole process, you’d send some landing pages their way too.

And ultimately, you score one more!

Great. Right?

One more down, and that sounds great! But amid all your efforts running between multiple platforms, what has actually caused that sale? What media have helped the process? Which of your content have the prospects interacted with, and in what order before ultimately hitting the purchase? Which ads have actually made the mind of your prospects and converted them into your paying customer?

All of this is very important information.

Why?

Because, your future marketing strategies and efforts could use your past conversion tracking.

And that’s all that your Facebook attribution tool tells you.

But how does Facebook do it?

Well, Facebook has ‘2’ tracking methods!

Keep reading to find out what those tracking methods are!

1- Cookie-based tracking:

Using cookies to track the actions of your prospects is a standard method these days.

However, is this an appropriate method?

Yes, it is. Probably not the most appropriate one, however.

So, what’s wrong with cookie-based tracking?

You only get to track the steps that have cookies. 

But, there might have been other interactions too. Those untracked interactions might have been more decisive in the purchase process.

How about giving them their due credit too?

So, what’s the other option?

2- Multi-touch tracking:

Multi-touch tracking tracks all the actions and interactions between the first touchpoint and the converting touchpoint.

And nothing can be more valuable than that.

How or why is that important, you ask?

Because knowing the exact customer journey for every customer helps you optimize and redirect your efforts. It enables you to formulate a precise strategy that would convert for you in the future. 

And now that you know, you are dying to know how to set up the attribution tool. 

So, let us not keep you waiting and jump right into that.

Setting Up the Facebook Attribution Tool

Before heading that way, you need to have a Facebook Business Manager account ready. That, check!

Next, your Ads account in place? That, too, check!

Well done!

Let’s turn over to the set up in question:

1- Head to the *Business Manager* scroll down on the left top and click on the *Attribution* under the *Measure & Report* tab.

2- The next page gives a brief on your line of action from here. Hit *Get Started* if you are ready, or quit if you are not.

3- Based on who you are or what you do, you’ll pick an appropriate option from the next page. Hit next.

For holding personal business/es, the first two options define you. Say you are aspiring to be a marketing agency, the last option is for you.

4- Pick the right Ad account to connect the attribution to. Hit next.

5- In the next four steps, you’d repeat the same process for:

• Pixels
• People
• Time zone & Currency
• Line of business name

While the pixel and people could be changed later, you can’t change the time zone and people once you cross this stage.

Also, pick an appropriate name that defines your business line, so you don’t have to keep playing the guessing game when you have a long list.

This is where you’d find yourself standing now.

6- Hit finish And wait for as long as Facebook wants you to wait. 

Facebook just asked you to keep calm for the next few hours while it is collecting data.

As Facebook suggested, keep reading to find out more about the attribution.

7- On the next page, click on the *ad platforms* at the top.

You’ll see a list of 32 ad platforms (if you click on the *see all* option) that you can include in your attribution map. The window would also show you five platforms not supported by the publisher (including LinkedIn).

8- Hover over the platform you want to add to your tracking journey and hit *connect*. Hit *I agree* to proceed.

Depending on what platform you pick, you’d have to take different simple avenues, and you’d have all the ad platforms added to the attribution map. 

This means that once a prospect interacts with the ad on a chosen platform, you’d see that interaction (with its sequence in the overall events line) in the customer journey presentation.

Having added all the ad platforms on the map now is the time to seek peace in rest.

That’s all!

But you can’t make the anticipated greatness out of it without having good know-how of the related concepts.

Here are some of the basics you need to know:

Facebook Business Attribution – Understanding The Relevant Concepts.

Time for some short yet the most valuable information!

Attribution Models:

What are the attribution models?

The attribution models are the variety of models that show which of the interactions and touchpoints of prospects with our content have been the most useful in generating conversions.

These are the attribution models that Facebook offers:

• Last Click

As the name employs, whatever content got the last click gets the credit for the conversion.

You got it!

The whole concept of attribution points to the fact that a single click doesn’t lead to conversion. It is a process, so the last click doesn’t get the full credit – unless it is the last-click attribution model we are talking about.

• Last Touch

In the case of the last-touch model, the credit goes to the last interaction instead of just the click. It could be the last view etc.

And our disagreement with the concept doesn’t change here either.

• Equal Credit

Now, this might sound like a logical model to some, while most would still disagree with this.

As per this model, all the touchpoints get equal credit for a conversion.

• Promotional 30%

In the promotional 30% model, the first and the last touch points before each conversion get 30% credit combined. In contrast, the rest of them all get 70% credit, divided between them all.

• Promotional 40%

If you got the concept of the Promotional 30% attribution model, this should be a no brainer.

The first and the last touch points get 40% weightage while the rest divide 60%.

• Time decay (1 day)

According to this model, the efforts/campaigns/touchpoints closer to the conversion are more important in driving the conversion. Therefore the touchpoints closer to the conversion (towards the end) get more credit than the ones towards the beginning.

As per 1-day time decay, the touchpoints within one day before the conversion have 50% credit, and those within two days before the conversion get 25% credit of the conversion.

• Time Decay (7 Day half-life)

Like the last model, this model also gives more credit to the touchpoints closer to the conversion.

The difference between this model and the previous model is that the touchpoints within the last seven days of the conversion get 50% credit. The touchpoints 14 days before the conversion get 25% credit.

The result stats that Facebook shows you depend on the model you pick in the settings.

You can pick whatever you feel is better for you, but most marketers prefer the time decay models.

Facebook Attribution Windows

Attribution window refers to the time between someone interacting with your ad/content and taking a conversion action. Call it the time they take to decide to purchase from you after coming across your content.

When Facebook gives you the option to choose your attribution window, what does it mean?

It means you are given a chance to choose during what frame of time before a conversion do you want to give the credit of that conversion to the interactions.

These are the Facebook Attribution Window Options that the platform offers you:

• 28-day click and visit, 1-day impression.
• 7-day click and visit, 1-day impression.
• 14-day click and visit, 1-day impression.
• 28-day click and visit, no impression.
• 28-day click and visit, 4-hour impression.
• 7-day click and visit, 4-hour impression.
• 14-day click and visit, 14-day impression.
• 7-day click and visit, 7-day impression.
• 14-day click and visit, no impressions.

And so on. 

(The options continue to 90 days of attribution windows.)

What attribution window you choose depends mainly on the kind of ads you are running and your products.

For instance, you can’t expect your targets to buy your shirts 14 days after they saw your shirts-ad. For such production, you definitely want to keep your attribution windows short (or, rest assured, one of your competitors has successfully tracked him down before reaching you). Similarly, the impression based ads can only afford short attribution windows. In contrast, the interaction-based ads may go with the longer ones.

Information On Other Facebook Tools

People often confuse Fb attribution tools with other Facebook tools. Let’s take a look at some other tools associated with Facebook to have a clear picture in front of us:

How to use Facebook as a marketing tool?

There are more than one ways in which you can use Facebook as a marketing tool. For instance:

• Using a Facebook page as your virtual business shop or point of interaction.
• Using Facebook groups to interact with your potentials.
• Leveraging the power of Facebook paid advertising to build awareness or draw sales.
• Using Facebook chatbots to engage prospects and make up their mind to purchase from you.

What is a Facebook monitoring tool?

Like other social media monitoring tools, Facebook monitoring tools are used to measure your Facebook engagement and analytics. These tools help evaluate the success rate of your Facebook strategy through in-depth analytics.

Facebook Insights is one such in-built tool for trend mapping and giving you insights into your content’s progress. 

Do we have a Facebook keyword tool?

Unlike Google, people only search for people and pages, not information on Facebook. Therefore there is no point in having a Facebook keyword tool. 

However, if you need specific keywords to target your ads right, Facebook ads manager and audience insights tool help with that based on age, gender, location, and affinity level.

What is the ‘Facebook tool kit’?

Facebook tool kit, Facebook Social toolkit, or tool kit for Facebook are all the names of a Google chrome automation-extension for Facebook. 

It consists of several features to make the Facebook user experience better, improve your functionality as a Facebook marketer, and saves you time.

Here are a few tasks you can perform with ‘toolkit for Facebook’ – the chrome extension:

• Liking, unliking, following, unfollowing multiple pages at once.
• Accepting or rejecting all friend requests with one click.
• Unfollowing multiple groups at once.
• Deleting many comments with one click.
• Extracting ids.
• Inviting numerous friends to join a group or like a page or send multiple friend requests.
• Facebook video downloading

The premium version of the Facebook tool kit allows for a lot more functionality.

Wrap Up

In this blog post, we have tried learning about the Facebook attribution tool, cookie-based single interaction or non-cookie-based multi-interaction touchpoints, and setting up the attribution tool. We have also tried learning the relevant concepts, including attribution models, and attribution windows, etc. We have ended the post with a little information on other relevant Facebook tools as well.

So, how to use data from Facebook attribution tool?

For the tenth time, when Facebook helps you track the exact route of your conversion, you have a jackpot of data on the touchpoints that helped you convert. In your future strategy, you can boost your efforts and the outputs by focusing on those touchpoints more.

What next?

Knowledge is power. 

Knowing everything about the Facebook attribution tool and how to set it up, you are all set to set up your attribution tool.

Have you started yet? What seems like the most difficult step throughout the process, to begin with?

Shoot us a comment if you are still stuck anywhere. We’d love to help you carry out your Facebook marketing processes independently. 

But, it all starts with small steps. Lucky for you, we are working on creating guides on each small step for you.

If you are planning to master Facebook Business Manager, give these useful resources a quick read:

Keeping Up with Facebook Business Manager Updates

What is ‘Creative Hub’? Does your business need it?

Leveraging Facebook Audience Insights in 2020 and beyond

Happy tracking your efforts 🙂