How to Track your Customer Journey

Do you know how to track your customer journey? With the Facebook attribution model tracking changes in 2020, leaving behind the option of 28-day tracking, tracking of customer journeys and how purchasing decisions look have drastically changed, often giving brands the wrong picture.

It was thought a shorter period for tracking (1 day or 7 days) might provide more accurate results when it comes to visitor behavior. However, this entirely depends on your brand's life cycle and your specific industry. Some industries take longer to have users go through the journey and convert, making the 28-day attribution model more effective for their needs.

Why did Facebook move to 1 and 7-day windows and drop 28 days entirely?

Did you know most e-commerce websites have user journeys that result in a conversion occurring after a 7-day window? Unfortunately, that isn't so optimal for Facebook. It's beneficial for Facebook if Facebook itself can take credit for conversions. Beyond a 7-day window, many other touchpoints can actively come into play during the user journey and purchasing decision process.

You can't just put your user's journey into a shorter time window because Facebook wants you to. Trying to cram your users' complete journeys and purchasing decisions into 1-day or 7-days of tracking instead of 28 days can leave you with one-fourth of the data and insights.

Comparing 28-days vs. 7-days

The disadvantage? Loss of Data! The main disadvantage of a 7-day attribution model is not the performance of your ad. What is actually changing and affected is the data you receive. It becomes much more challenging for you to see and analyze the impact of your ads throughout customer journeys that are longer. This is particularly true for industries and products where big-ticket items are sold, and the journey can be longer - such as an expensive holiday, a car, or a new smartphone or laptop.

But even if your brand sells smaller, fast purchase items, it never hurts to have the data from a 28-day attribution model. It helps you set up future campaigns and optimize your strategies, such as insights through user behavior after purchase through retargeting ads.

The more data, the better, regardless of your brand or industry. With the 28-day attribution model, you have more insights to optimize your entire user journey - however long or short it may be. Plain and simple, with the loss of the 28-day attribution model, you are sure to be losing access to valuable purchase behavior data.

What can you do?

Data privacy will become even more important all the time - who knows what changes Facebook might make in the future that will further affect this. Short-term solutions will surely need to be rethought of down the line with these changes.

But one thing is certain: companies that know what really performs have a decisive competitive advantage.