Customer journeys are never as simple as going from A to B. When it comes to B2B purchase decisions, it can look more like A to C, then a pit-stop at X, than R. With so many stakeholders invested in purchase decisions such as gatekeepers, end users and the all-important decision maker, how can you efficiently attribute conversions?
Multi-touch marketing attribution can help. By implementing the right attribution model for your business, you can easily track the most valuable touchpoints, optimised your budgets based on real customer data, and scale your business profitably and effectively.
In the blog, we’ve put together the ultimate guide to B2B marketing attribution, answering all your burning questions. From what is marketing attribution right through to how using it correctly can enhance your B2B marketing campaigns.
Before we dive into the various types of models, what is marketing attribution and what is it used for? Marketing attribution involves creating a set of rules that enable you to understand which touchpoints in the customer journey have the greatest impact on conversion, by assigning value to each.
B2B marketing attribution can be trickier than B2C. There are typically multiple decision-makers involved in B2B transactions and this can result in multiple touchpoints. For that reason, B2B businesses may prefer to use multi-touch models for attribution modelling, as opposed to simpler models such as first click and last click.
Marketing attribution is important because no two customer journeys are the same. Marketers are running complex campaigns designed to reach customers across multiple touchpoints, which means that your customers are taking different paths to conversions.
There are several types of marketing attribution models, including multi-channel models that can offer a more sophisticated overview of the customer journey. The most common attribution models for marketing are:
First click or lead creation – This model attributes 100% of the conversion to the first point the customer interacts with, otherwise known as the point of entry.
Last click or opportunity creation – This model attributes 100% of the conversion to the last point the customer interacted with before they converted into a sale.
Linear or equal-weighted – This model attributes the conversion equally to each of the touchpoints the customer interacted with during the acquisition process.
Positional or first and last click weighted – This model attributes the conversion across each of the touchpoints, but upweights toward the first and the last.
With so many options, you might be wondering how do I choose the right B2B attribution model for my business? It’s important to remember that successful multi-channel marketing attribution relies on being able to see the full picture.
You need to have the right tools in place. With the right marketing attribution software in place, gathering the data you need is a piece of cake. Here are two things to bear in mind when selecting an attribution tool:
How does it fit within your existing tech stack?
Can it provide accurate multichannel attribution?
Choosing a tool that integrates with a variety of partners creates a streamlined flow of data and makes it easier to extract insight without bringing in the data scientists. Providing accurate attribution is critical for business growth, as it gives you unique insight to attract customers and retain the ones you’ve already converted, without wasting time or budget.
Using an attribution model to accurately track your marketing activity makes your decision-making more data driven. You can map out the full customer journey, online and offline, and gain a better understanding of the roles different stakeholders will play.
With this knowledge at your fingertips, you can start to optimise your marketing campaigns and your budgets to ensure everything you do has a direct impact on your bottom-line. Here are just a few of the benefits of using attribution models.
Marketing campaigns often comprise of many elements - organic social, paid social, search advertising, dedicated landing pages. B2B attribution modelling can identify high-performing marketing activities and understand which ones are the most successful in driving both leads and conversations.
Not only can accurate revenue attribution help identify your most impactful marketing channels and activities, but it’s also primed to help you pinpoint the moment of conversion. Using the right tools, you can understand which channels, keywords, social ads or websites led to your customer picking up the phone and making a purchase.
Accurate revenue attribution pulls in multiple data sources to provide a holistic overview of the customer journey. It streamlines the process of gathering data across your core marketing channels and improves your ability to analyse it by bringing it all into one central dashboard, whatever that might look like for your company. This empowers your marketing team to unearth insights faster, without needing a data science degree.
Accurate marketing attribution enables your marketing and sales team to work in tandem, rather than in silos. It also helps align your wider strategy by sharing insight into the most impactful marketing campaigns and prevent under- or over-valuing specific channels using data-driven insight.
We’ve reviewed the types of attribution models available to you and outlined the key benefits of implementing it effectively. But how exactly does attribution improve B2B marketing campaigns and what processes can you put in place to make it easier?
Getting started with marketing attribution involves three simple steps:
Collect the data that matters to your business
Combine your data sources in one place
Visualise data in a way that enables you to extract relevant insights
It can be easy to forget that all of your digital marketing activity drives offline conversations as well as online. When a customer picks up the phone and takes the conversation offline, as they’re likely to do with important B2B purchases, you lose visibility of the touchpoints that drove that action.
Call tracking can cover your blind spots by accurately connecting the customer journey to the call, providing the insight you need to invest your budget in activity that works. It allows you to connect in-depth marketing data such as keywords and marketing channels to those winning calls.
Successful B2B attribution depends on you being able to see the full picture. This means you need to be able to combine multiple sources, in a way that doesn’t create a headache for your teams. That’s why Infinity’s suite of tools are designed to integrate seamlessly with a range of partners - including Google, Facebook and HubSpot - letting you analyse data how you want it, when you want it, in the format that suits you best.
So, what have we learned about marketing attribution and the impact it could have on your B2B marketing campaigns? Here’s a recap:
It can help identify high-performing marketing activities and understand which ones are successfully driving leads, giving you everything you need to make informed decisions that will help your business grow.
It can reduce costs and boost your return on investment by enabling you to be more targeted with your marketing spend and activities.
It streamlines the process of gathering data across marketing channels and improves your ability to analyse it, allowing you to unearth insights faster.
Call tracking can connect online interactions with offline conversion, collecting precise customer data and filling gaps in the customer journey.
Every conversation matters. Start one with us to discover how Call tracking can help you optimise your most valuable customer conversations.