Attributing Leads: Facebook Messenger and Google Referrals
When you receive a phone call lead do you credit the phone for sourcing that lead? Did the phone find that prospective customer and convert it into a call? The same principle applies for inquiries from website contact forms and Facebook Messenger.
Did the lead come FROM Facebook or THROUGH Facebook? There’s an important difference in crediting lead source.
Facebook Messenger is little more than a communication channel like a phone is. It facilitates conversation. It in itself did not find that lead. Same for a lead that came through your website, which very likely sources Google as the referral when something motivated that Google search to begin with.
You may be doing Facebook advertising, but are you able to directly correlate that those Facebook Messages resulted from the Facebook advertising directly compared to another source? Are you able to follow that entire journey?
The “myth of the last click” refers to the last touchpoint receiving all the credit for sourcing a lead, ignoring previous touchpoints that may have influenced a prospect. Someone doesn’t randomly conduct a Google search. They had a stimulus to, often the result of advertising. The same principle applies with Facebook Messenger. While it’s possible a Facebook advertisement sourced that lead, it’s also possible it came from another source.
Consider this progression of a lead:
- Prospective Customer sees ad on TV
- Prospective Customer Googles business after being motivated by the TV ad
- Prospective Customer lands on business’s website (or Facebook page)
- Prospective Customer messages from the website/Facebook page
In the above example, which source receives the credit and which credit deserves the credit? Had the first touchpoint (the motivating TV ad) not occurred, would the lead still have resulted?
These are important considerations in deciding advertising success.
