Understanding B2B Marketing Attribution Challenges

Measuring B2B marketing performance across platforms and channels is one of the biggest challenges that organizations are facing. In fact, in a recent study from Demand Gen Report, it was the most commonly cited obstacle holding organizations back from rating their ability to track and analyze marketing data as excellent. Almost half (47 percent) of the marketers asked chose this as their number one challenge.

For marketers, understanding the value that each marketing channel brings is a crucial component of determining where marketing dollars are best used. It ensures that your focus is on areas that drive sales and grow revenue. However, this isn’t always a simple task to complete. Customers often take multiple paths that ultimately lead to making a purchase. Measuring the impact of each touch-point along the buyer’s journey can make it difficult to determine which channel, campaign, or platform should get credited with the conversion.

That’s where attribution modeling comes in, and there are various ways that marketers approach it. Attribution modeling helps measure the value of each channel along the customer journey. This ensures that marketing dollars are spent wisely.

Types of Marketing Attribution Models

There are various marketing attribution models that fall under two categories, single-touch and multi-touch attribution.

Single-Touch Attribution Models

There are two models in this category:

• First-touch attribution – This model is based on the belief that the first channel that introduced the customer to the product or brand is what is responsible for the sale. So, the attribution is fully credited to the first touch-point in the customer’s journey.
• Last-touch attribution – Conversely, the last-touch attribution model is based on the belief that the last touch-point of the buyer’s journey is responsible for the conversion. As a result, the attribution is credited entirely to the channel that occurred just before the purchase.

You can see that these two models are conflicting. Consider this example, a potential buyer first clicks on a Facebook ad for a product and views the product description. From that webpage, the individual clicks on the site’s blog, reads a post about the product, and then subscribes to the blog. A week later, the prospect uses organic search to get to the business’s website and makes a purchase. First-touch attribution would credit the Facebook ad for the sale, while last-touch would credit organic search.

Multi-Touch Attribution Models

Multi-touch attribution models aim to better understand the customers’ entire buying journey, instead of just the first or last step that led to a purchase. There are several types of models that fall under the multi-touch category:

• Linear attribution – This attribution model takes into account all the touch-points along the prospect’s path to becoming a customer and gives equal credit to each one. Linear attribution provides an understanding of which channels contributed to the sale, but it doesn’t differentiate which were most influential. Using the same example as the single-touch models, with linear attribution, the Facebook ad, blog post, and organic search would all get equal credit for the conversion.
• Time-decay attribution – This attribution model also considers all touch-points, but it weighs them differently. The most recent touch-points are given a higher percentage of the attribution, because they are believed to be the most influential. This model may be more effective for B2B marketing, because it tends to have longer sales cycles than B2C. In our example, the organic search would receive a higher percentage of the attribution credit because it occurred closer to the point of conversion.
• Position-based attribution – This model is also known as U-shaped attribution. It also considers all touch-points, but it places more credit on the first and last touch-points than on those in the middle. The first and last receive 40 percent of the credit, and the remaining 20 percent is divided between those touch-points in the middle. In the example we’re working with, Facebook and organic search would each get 40 percent and the blog post would get 20 percent.

Which Marketing Attribution Model is Right for You?

If only this were an easy question to answer. Unfortunately, it isn’t. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all attribution model for B2B marketing. In some cases, you may have to use multiple different models to get the most accurate view of attribution. However, there are some important questions to ask yourself that will help you make the right choices:

• Does this model make sense for the business?
• Is this model flexible? Will it adapt over time to continue to meet business growth?
• Do you trust this attribution model? Do you actually believe in the accuracy of the credited attribution?

While attribution isn’t the only thing you need to optimize marketing budgets, proper attribution will provide you with insights that will help you focus on the most effective channels for the organization.

Do you need help deciding and setting up the proper attribution model for your business? Reliable Acorn is experienced with several forms of web analytics and can help. Contact us today.