Definition
Marketing attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that contributed to it. At its simplest, that might mean "last-click wins" - the final ad a visitor clicked before converting gets all the credit. More sophisticated models include first-click (credit the original discovery), linear (evenly split across all touchpoints), time-decay (recent touches get more), and data-driven (machine-learning weightings from platforms like Google Analytics 4).
The hard part is not the math - it is the data. You need every touchpoint recorded, joined on a stable identifier, and preserved long enough to connect a first visit to a final purchase that might happen months later. That typically means capturing UTMs, GCLIDs, fbclids, referrer URLs, and a stable user ID on every form submission, purchase, and support interaction.
How SheetLinkWP relates to Marketing Attribution
SheetLink Forms captures the full attribution payload (UTM parameters, ad-click IDs, referrer URL, landing page URL) automatically on every form submission. Because the data lands in your Google Sheet, you can join it against your CRM or billing system using email or a custom form ID to reconstruct multi-touch attribution without paying for a dedicated platform. Many customers layer a simple last-click revenue-by-source pivot table on top of their leads sheet to make weekly spending decisions.