Viktor Sundberg is responsible for understanding the true impact of marketing efforts at AJ Products, a Swedish provider of Global workplace solutions celebrating its 50th year.
I like to call people sometimes just to have a chat. To some people it might sound old-fashioned, but that personal touch, that direct conversation, is also something we value highly at AJ Products. At the same time we are obsessed with having a progressive and data-driven mindset.
While our online presence has grown significantly, a large portion of our sales — over half, in fact — still comes through direct phone conversations with our customer service and project sales teams.
For years, this presented a challenge familiar to many of you: a disconnect between the digital journeys we were meticulously crafting and the final sale. We could see the clicks, the engagement, the online conversions, but the impact on those crucial offline channels remained largely a black box.
And it's these non-digital interactions that drove us on a journey to connect the dots between our online marketing efforts and those crucial offline conversions.
A vision for AJ: Understanding the full journey
This lack of visibility between online marketing and offline sales made budget allocation a challenge. It also hindered our ability to truly understand our customer journey and the touchpoints that mattered most.
This is where our exploration into advanced attribution began, with the invaluable support of our agency, Precis. The goal was simple: bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds and gain a holistic view of how our marketing truly drove sales across all channels.
This integration wasn't about simply importing data; it was about intelligently connecting the dots.
The key to unlocking this insight lay in a powerful technology: Google Analytics' Measurement Protocol. This tool works by collecting and sending events directly to Google Analytics from internet-connected devices like a point-of-sale system that complements your website or app.
Working closely with Precis, we implemented a system that allowed us to integrate our customer relationship management (CRM) data, which contained crucial purchase information, directly into BigQuery and Google Analytics (GA4).
This integration wasn't about simply importing data; it was about intelligently connecting the dots.
Mapping online touchpoints to offline sales
Here’s how it worked: when a customer made a purchase through our customer service or project sales teams, we could map their user ID in our CRM back to their client ID and user ID.
We could do this by using Measurement Protocol to send the offline purchase event data back into GA4, linking it to the customer's previous online sessions. This allowed us to see the digital touchpoints a customer had before picking up the phone or engaging with our project sales team.
The beauty of this approach is that it allows us to attribute offline conversions to specific campaigns and sources, providing a much clearer understanding of the entire customer journey.
Even if a customer hadn't made an online purchase, we could now see if they had previously visited our website through a specific ad, a social media campaign, or an organic search result before converting offline.
A clearer picture with insights
The results have been truly eye-opening. We’ve already seen a 16% increase in attributed sales — sales that were previously invisible to our marketing analytics are now being correctly linked to our campaigns.
What we discovered was that non-branded searches contribute almost as much to our customer service sales as they do to our direct online sales.
Furthermore, we can now see that about 31% of all offline sales originate from paid channels. This means we have a more accurate picture of what's driving our e-commerce conversions as well.
One of the most significant insights has been the realisation of the power of non-branded searches. We operate on a return on ad spend (ROAS) model for campaigns, and we were keen to validate its accuracy across all sales channels.
What we discovered was that non-branded searches contribute almost as much to our customer service sales as they do to our direct online sales. So someone searching for ‘desks’ and doesn’t know us, contributes just as much as someone who is searching more direct;y for us. This fundamentally shifted our perspective and reinforced the critical role of search in the entire customer journey, not just online transactions.
The project also confirmed that direct traffic plays a significant role in the online journey leading to offline sales. Possibly because customers use our website as a catalogue while on the phone with our sales team, or our team directs customers to specific product pages during conversations.
This insight has sparked conversations internally about how our online content can better support our offline sales efforts. For instance, creating more content with keywords people are actively searching for, shopping guides, how tos, and more.
Looking ahead with no blind spots
We can now identify channels that effectively drive both online and offline conversions and reallocate resources from those with a less significant impact on our total sales. In fact, our ability to attribute more sales has allowed us to optimise our ROAS targets, potentially lowering them by 40% in some areas, freeing up budget for reinvestment in high-performing channels.
We've moved beyond fragmented views of performance to a holistic understanding of our customer journey. This has not resulted in a significant uplift in attributed sales. And, it has provided invaluable insights that are shaping our marketing strategies and driving more effective budget allocation for the future.
