While the practice of affiliate marketing has existed for centuries, the modern-day form of the practice was birthed from the digital marketing world. Founded on the principle of connecting businesses with audiences interested in their products, affiliate marketing became popular in the early 2010s as people looked to make money online while perhaps also being able to help others along the way.

Despite the practice being around for quite some time, many companies have only just started realizing the true potential of affiliate marketing. With the growth of content creators on YouTube and Instagram and social media platforms like Twitter putting the power of the “publish” button into everyone’s hands, digital marketers are finding new ways to spread their marketing messages farther and faster than ever before.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or simply looking to gain some skills, this article is for you. Here we’re going to discuss some of the basics of full attribution online marketing, including:

What Is Full Attribution Marketing?

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes for a moment. What is your first impression of this article?

Is it a well-written piece that engages you? Does the information make sense and are the examples used relevant to your industry?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, then congratulations! You’re reading an article that is doing its job. Now it’s time to dive into the finer details.

How To Perform Full Attribution Marketing Research

You’ve finished reading the article, and now you’re probably wondering how you should proceed. What is your next step?

Well, in order to figure out what works and what doesn’t, you need to perform extensive research. Luckily for you, we’re here to help with five research methods that can help you form the ultimate guide to performing full attribution marketing research.

1. Interviews

One of the most important things to do before launching any kind of digital marketing campaign is to conduct interviews.

The purpose of these interviews is to gather as much information as possible about the various kinds of customers you might end up serving. While it might be tempting to grab some quick quotes using SurveyMonkey or Zoomer, digging deeper and getting real answers is the key to crafting the ultimate guide.

By involving multiple respondents and using open-ended questions, you can ensure that you’re hearing from everyone and that you’re getting a representative sample of opinions. If you perform a half-baked marketing campaign without first doing proper research, you could end up wasting a lot of time and money.

2. Task Analysis

Once you’ve collected as much information as possible through interviews, it’s time to delve into the nitty-gritty of marketing research. Specifically, you’re going to analyze tasks, and by doing so, you’re going to build a clearer picture of what elements of your marketing campaign are working and which ones need some adjustment.

A task analysis is a type of survey that focuses on measuring the amount of effort that customers actually put into their specific tasks. So, for example, if you ask customers to take a trip to the supermarket to buy some groceries, they might tell you that it’s a difficult task for them to do so because there’s a lot of pressure at work or because they have more important things to do. In these kinds of cases, you have some elements of your marketing that aren’t working as well as you’d like them to.

By measuring the effort customers put into specific tasks, you can see which ones are difficult for them and which ones might be easier to do. From there, you can determine which parts of your marketing campaign need to be reworked and which ones can be left alone.

3. Questionnaires

Another effective way to get solid industry-specific information is to put together a questionnaire. A questionnaire is quite similar to an interview, but instead of getting straight answers, you’re going to be getting mostly yes or no answers. Questionnaires are also frequently used to test a certain theory or idea, so if you’ve got something you’re looking to prove or disprove, questionnaires are a great way to do so.

The benefit of using questionnaires is that you can send them out to hundreds or thousands of customers very easily. Additionally, you can monitor the progress of your questionnaires over time and see which ones are most effective and which ones need to be phased out.

4. Web Analytics

Once you’ve established yourself as an authoritative voice in your field, the next step is to look at which parts of your site are working and which ones can be improved upon.

You can do this using tools like Google Analytics or Hitwise, or if you’re looking for a more advanced solution, you can build your own tracking tool. With the help of an analytics tool, you can easily track the progress of your marketing campaign and see exactly what’s working and what’s not. Additionally, you can use web analytics to determine the goals you’ve set yourself for the year and the progress you’ve made towards reaching those goals.

5. User Testing

If you’ve got a new product that you’re trying to launch or a service that you’re trying to improve, the last thing you want to do is launch it and find out later that customers don’t like it or can’t understand it. User testing allows you to find out what changes you need to make to your product or service before you put it out there for the world to see.

In user testing, you’re going to bring a small group of customers into your office or home and have them try out your product or service. This way, you can ensure that the final user experience is the best it can be and that there are no unpleasant surprises once the product is released.

Before you put together a detailed marketing plan, you should have a good idea of what is and isn’t working. Conducting some or all of the above can help inform your plan and guide your decisions moving forward.