B2B Excellence - Is attribution dead?

B2B Excellence - Is attribution dead?

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We include the perspectives from a variety of enterprise marketers, stories from fast-growth businesses challenging the conventional ways of working and thinking, and the top 1% of B2B marketers shaping modern-day practices.

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Main POV - Is attribution dead?

?Summary


“What is better – information that is cheap and wrong or information that is expensive and accurate? Soon, marketers may have to decide.”

Attribution-led companies could be hamstrung in their future growth if they continue to over-rely on attribution-based models.

Attribution is great for unsophisticated products, impulsive purchase decisions, low budgets, and early-stage brands.

But when you have a long sales journey, complex buying ecosystems, and multiple decision-makers, it can be at best, limiting your marketing output, and at worst completely wasteful.

An over-obsession with attribution can dictate all “things successful” in marketing campaigns, as such, all things marketing-wise, need to be engineered to look good for your attribution.

That means…

Video is less important.

Key branding platforms are less important.

Non-digital platforms are less important.


All channels and executions that are very important for driving brand building, which we know drives long-term business growth.

There is no one size fits all solution, brands need to explore complementary measurement methodologies that usually consist of a framework that includes a diverse mix of effectiveness techniques.?

But limiting yourself to a methodology that is very quickly becoming less meaningful in isolation, will continue to stunt your marketing activities and limit the effectiveness of it.?

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Key Insight

  • Eric Stockton, senior vice-president of demand generation at cloud desktop provider Evolve IP, perfectly summarized the situation late last year on LinkedIn: “In an ironic twist of marketing fate, the channels that aren’t the easiest to measure are often the best contributors to pipeline and revenue … correlation of buyer behavior [is better than] direct attribution by channel.”
  • The Fallacy of Immediacy - Marketers often assume that an effective ad will convince someone to buy or become a lead immediately. But many ad-driven purchases occur long after the advertisement appeared – and especially long after the ability to track the sale with digital attribution has disappeared.
  • In January 2023, Paul Arpikari, chief commercial officer at econometrics platform Sellforte, posted on LinkedIn that branded search and “performance” channels in general are overestimated in sales attributions. Online video is underestimated due to not having clicks.

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Source


Conversations or articles I liked this week.

Do your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) care about Gartner’s Magic Quadrants?

How not to plan

Copywriting is a superpower. | Save these 17 principles to inspire your readers into action.

A common misconception about modern demand gen is that it’s all about getting people to voluntarily raise their hands through inbound.

Simple things can infect your brands performance without you knowing it.?


Archive Content (oldies but goodies)

“Yes, you need a good product, but it's not enough to win in the market.”

Three reasons it pays to be a category creator in a saturated market

Optimise to the 99.6% of your audience not the 0.4%

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Andrew Challier

I help clients and their teams understand the 'what', the 'why' and the 'so what' of their media investments

1 年

,У Беларус? ,, @ om 2 2

回复
Andrew Challier

I help clients and their teams understand the 'what', the 'why' and the 'so what' of their media investments

1 年

. У 2/!, што ? 2ь the w .. m.. @ and 1 I , NC

Simon Ruben Hemph

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There! I Help B2B Brands Build GTM Programs, Infrastructure, and Teams, Using My 15+ Years of Experience and Five Acquisitions in AI, Tech, Telco, HR, Healthcare, and Consumer Goods. ??

1 年

The great attribution conundrum! In our digital age, it's easy to focus on quantitative data, especially vanity metrics, which can obscure the qualitative insights that drive genuine connections and growth. Quantitative attribution may favor easily measurable aspects, sidelining channels that build enduring brands. We must embrace a holistic approach, supplementing hard data with softer, qualitative information – exploring customer motivations, experiences, and aspirations. Navigating complex buying ecosystems requires prioritizing authentic engagement over mere metrics to unlock growth and lasting impact. Remember: balance quantitative attribution with qualitative human experience ??

Joachim Vishart Hummel-Gryholm

Automotive marketer with a passion for electric vehicles and sustainable tech

1 年

Iting (Abby) Lin Magnus Wenger Maarten van Hulten good little tid-bit on what we’ve discussed numerous times now in regards to the measurement challenges we’re facing from time to time ????

Maxence de Villepion ??

Building the revenue architecture of forward-thinking companies (YC S23) - Growth ??

1 年

Interesting article, I like the cannibalization aspect that we often forget to measure because really hard to know. Referral is a great example of a channel where there is a big overlap with other existing channels as well. would have loved some actionable example of attribution model beyond just mixing qualitative poll with multi touch analytics tools, things like using the modern data stack for the multi touch, multi threaded b2b journey we have Great topic anyway - Subscribed :)

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