Determine whether you need a B2B Attribution Solution 📋✓
As digital touchpoints continue to multiply, so too has the need to better understand exactly what’s happening in the customer journey.
In the B2B space, where the complexity and length of sales cycles is especially acute, this need has become even more pressing.
It is little surprise then, that attribution has seen a significant expansion over the last few years.
With the cost, complexity and effort of setting up in-house attribution being so great, and the capacity of ad platforms and analytics tools being so limited, it is to no-code attribution tools that companies have turned to for their solution.
But how do you know at what point attribution becomes business critical? What do you need to look for in an attribution tool? Where do you even start?
Well, a good place is right here 🙌
In this post we’re going to walk you through the factors you need to consider when assessing whether you need a B2B revenue attribution tool or not.
B2B revenue attribution tools deliver the biggest impact to businesses with long customer journeys and with multiple stakeholders involved in the cycle.
So, to measure whether you need a B2B attribution tool, we’re using these two factors:
Time: the length of time your average customer journey takes.
Stakeholders: the number of stakeholders involved in the deal.
With these you can now assess where your needs fall on the spectrum. 👆
B2B Revenue Attribution Need: Critical
Your B2B revenue attribution need is business-critical when your buyer journey stretches beyond 3 months and is shaped by multiple internal and external stakeholders.
Within this category B2Bs are typically struggling with the following pain points: inaccurate forecasting, missed revenue goals, weak lead generation, declining/suboptimal return on investment (ROI).
The right B2B revenue attribution tool will decloak your customer journey and improve your capacity to track and generate revenue. With this clarity, B2B decision makers will be empowered to overcome business-critical pain points.
There are a number of common characteristics shared by entities within this category. These include:
A buyer journey of 3+ months;
A buyer journey with multiple individuals from the same account forming part of the deal;
A sales cycle stretching across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams;
A techstack consisting of a two or more of the following: CRM (e.g Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive), Tracking (Google Analytics), CDP (e.g Segment), Customer success (e.g ZenDesk);
An average of over 50 deals a month; and,
A primary allocation of budget for digital marketing ad spend.
What a Revenue Attribution Platform can do for you
If your company profile matches the characteristics above, a revenue attribution platform is the best solution to overcome your business-critical pain points.
A revenue attribution platform will enable you to:
Track and identify anonymous and known users, and enrich user profiles.
Do away with unhelpful siloed models by collecting and sorting data from your CRM, Automations, Customer Success tools, and site, under one roof.
Help answer vital B2B marketing questions like, what’s the return on ad spend (ROAS), the Life-Time Value (LTV) of ads, which campaigns and channels to scrap or scale, and how long it takes to acquire new customers.
Enable demand generation and commercial ops professionals to focus on which B2B go-to-market (GTM) efforts are actually paying off, enabling them to repeat success and stop waste.
Help deep dive into the different points on the pipeline. Offering detailed granularity on all revenue related activities, whether marketing, sales, or customer success.
Offer business leaders reports based on concrete data, to help execute forecasting, plans, and strategies.
Recommendations
When it comes to selecting a B2B revenue attribution tool, there are some crucial functions that you need to consider if the tool is to have any real impact.
It is crucial to select an attribution tool that is:
B2B specific.
Focused on revenue attribution, not just marketing attribution.
Storing data in the EU - so as to be GDPR compliant.
Gives free access to raw data to store and query.
Factoring in customer success touches, not just marketing and sales.
Able to make a vast amount of data integrations.
Using state of the art (and legal) tracking technology.
Able to work with historical and after-the-fact data ie. events, meetups etc.
Able to apply attribution across (and between!) every pipeline stage.
B2B Revenue Attribution Need: Substantial
Your B2B revenue attribution need is substantial when your buyer journey sits between 2 and 3 months and is (typically) shaped by two external stakeholders per deal.
Within this category, a B2B revenue attribution platform offers a solution for major pain points. However a combination of other tools, such as a CDP (e.g. Segment) and Analytics (e.g. Google Analytics), might, in some cases, be sufficient at this stage.
The right solution will help make sense of your customer journey and improve your capacity to track and generate revenue. With this clarity, B2B decision makers will be empowered to take business critical decisions.
There are a number of common characteristics shared by entities with a substantial need for revenue attribution. These include:
A buyer journey of between 2 and 3 months;
A buyer journey typically with two individuals from the same account forming part of the deal;
A sales cycle stretching across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams;
A techstack consisting of at least two of the following: CRM (e.g Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive), Tracking (Google Analytics), CDP (e.g Segment), Customer success (e.g ZenDesk).
An average of over 20 deals a month; and,
A primary allocation of budget for digital marketing ad spend.
What a Revenue Attribution Platform might do for you
If your company profile matches the characteristics above, a revenue attribution platform is the best solution to overcome your biggest pain points. A revenue attribution platform will enable you to:
Track and identify anonymous and known users, and enrich user profiles.
Do away with unhelpful siloed models by collecting and sorting data from your CRM, Automations, Customer Success tools, and site under one roof.
Help answer vital B2B marketing questions like, what’s the return on ad spend (ROAS), the Life-Time Value (LTV) of ads, which campaigns and channels to scrap or scale, and how long it takes to acquire new customers.
Enable demand generation and commercial ops professionals to focus on which B2B go-to-market (GTM) efforts are actually paying off, enabling them to repeat success and stop waste.
Help deep dive into the different points on the pipeline. Offering detailed granularity on all revenue related activities, whether marketing, sales, or customer success.
Offer business leaders tidy visuals and reports based on concrete data, to help executing plans and strategies.
Recommendation
When it comes to choosing whether to go for a revenue attribution tool or make do with a stop-gap solution, there are some important factors to take into consideration.
For instance, you need to assess whether there are enough touchpoints to benefit from a tool. That is, if you are on the lower end of buyer touchpoints, your journeys are less complex and so could be unpacked and clarified by a CDP + Analytics solution.
Similarly, you might presently be on a growth journey and not yet churning enough deals to benefit from an attribution tool. Or your ad spend is not quite high enough to reap maximum benefit from an attribution tool.
In this case, opting for a combination of a CDP and analytics might serve as a useful stepping stone in the lead-up to . What’s more, your CDP tool will start collecting data that could then be integrated into a revenue attribution platform - so no loss of data.
The Dreamdata team is more happy to shed further light on what solution will best meet your present needs. Reach out.
Whether opting for a temporary stop-gap or deciding to go for a B2B revenue attribution tool, there are some crucial functions that you need to consider if the tool is to have any real impact.
Select an attribution tool that is:
B2B specific.
Focused on revenue attribution. Not just marketing.
Storing data in the EU - so as to be GDPR compliant.
Gives free access to raw data to store and query.
Factoring in customer success touches, not just marketing and sales.
Able to make a vast amount of data integrations.
Using state of the art (and legal) tracking technology.
Able to work with historical and after-the-fact data ie. events, meetups etc.
Able to apply attribution across (and between!) every pipeline stage.
B2B Revenue Attribution Need: Moderate
In this category your present sales cycle does not completely align with the solutions a B2B attribution platform can offer. Your buyer journey sits between a day and 2 months and is shaped by a single buyer who engages with one internal stakeholder.
Within this category, a B2B revenue attribution platform does not offer the best solution for the pain points your business is facing. So a combination of other tools, such as a CDP and analytics, or a B2C attribution tool is the best option at this stage.
There are a number of common characteristics shared by entities with a Moderate need for revenue attribution. These include:
A buyer journey of between a single day and 2 months;
A buyer journey with one individual forming part of the deal;
A sales cycle taking place solely within either Marketing or Sales teams;
A B2C business model;
A techstack consisting of a CRM (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) or Tracking tool (Google Analytics).
Recommendation
If your company’s characteristics match the above, your business needs will not be met by a B2B revenue attribution tool.
You should instead be looking at a B2C attribution tool or a combination of a CDP and analytics tool.
If you’re unsure, or still think you might be able to benefit from a B2B revenue attribution tool, feel free to reach out. Dreamdata’s team will be more than happy to point you in the right direction.
