The goal of campaign attribution is to assign accurate credit to every marketing and advertising tactic. Simple enough, right?
Yet, for more than twenty years—since attribution models first appeared in the marketplace—marketers, sales leaders, advertisers, analysts, and agencies have all struggled to find a solution that works for all.
“Most attribution solutions have the problem of death by combinations. What I’m looking for is something that helps me make decisions quickly on what’s working and what’s not.” – VP Marketing, Spend Management SaaS
Attribution has long been a double-edged sword. While essential for campaign analysis and planning, modern attribution tools often don’t meet marketing and demand generation teams’ need for a view of the entire funnel from top to bottom. And they rarely connect campaigns with pipeline generation.
That’s because attribution has grown increasingly difficult. Today, marketing and advertising tactics involve a complex web of paid, earned, and owned campaigns across online and offline marketing channels on multiple devices.
“We are struggling with accurate attribution of qualified leads and opportunities from marketing initiatives, accurate prospect journeys, and most impactful touches for conversion.” – Head of Demand Generation
The effort of patching together disparate systems—from marketing automation platforms to
sales force automation technology to customer relationship management systems—has bred distrust and frustration.
Some of the biggest challenges include:
- ROI reporting that is retrospective rather than proactive
- Inability to align on an attribution methodology that works for everyone
- Incomplete data capture and the challenge of the "dark funnel"
- Oversimplified, rules-based attribution models
- Disconnection or misalignment with day-to-day funnel management
- Lack of insight across segments, personas, or regions
- Inability to allocate attribution by role (sales, marketing, and business development)
Many organizations struggle with "attribution wars" and debates about which team, activity, or campaign deserves credit for a successful conversion. Realtime campaign analytics are a perennial challenge.
But there’s a better way.
Reimagining Campaign Attribution
Today’s marketing teams need to harness the power of full-funnel attribution. Mapping your go-to-market motion with a unified funnel metrics system from lead to opportunity to revenue is critical.
What if attribution isn’t just about determining who gets credit or calculating quarterly ROI? What if attribution is forward-looking and predictive?
“We work with different kinds of vendors with paid tactics and need to see KPIs and ROI during the quarter. But marketing programs don’t just generate within the quarter. [We need] to connect the dots and make sure marketing gets the credit for influence and not just sales.” – Team Lead, Integrated Marketing Programs, Remote Support, SaaS company
AI-powered attribution solutions are next-gen tools that can do so much more for today’s marketing teams:
- Enable a forward-thinking, predictive approach to attribution
- Link attribution to funnel tactics for nuanced, real-time strategy
- Guide day-to-day funnel tactics and decisions
- Answer both "who gets the credit?" and, more importantly, "what is the optimal role and timing for each campaign type?"
- Reveal which campaigns, channels, campaign types, and activities are most effective in converting leads to MQLs and MQs to SQLs
- Analyze attribution data to recommend "Next Best Action" for lead nurturing and conversion
“We are trying to figure out the right nurturing tactics for leads based on what we have seen work earlier. For example, before conversion, are they scheduling a meeting, raising their hand, or signing up for a trial?.” – VP Demand Generation, Digital Whiteboard, SaaS
In the era of modern marketing, it's crucial to think differently about attribution. The right tool can give you a holistic view of all the data across all your systems for every type of marketing spend across channels, campaign types, and activities. It’s the insight you need to design and execute more effective campaigns and drive higher ROI.
“The challenge is how to attribute between sales, BDRs, marketing, and partners. Who gets credit for the pipeline gen?.” – CRO
Learn more about how to overcome the challenges of decoding the deep funnel by reading our latest solution brief. Download your copy here (PDF).
Ready to take the next step? Schedule your personalized demo of RevSure today.
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