How to select a B2B revenue attribution tool
With the number of digital touchpoints per deal set to continue rising, the need to make sense of customer journeys is growing ever more urgent.
To help decloak these journeys and take control of revenue-related activities, companies are turning to attribution tools. But, with so many platforms out there, deciding which one to go for is not exactly a walk in the park.
Especially, as these differ enormously in what solutions they deliver under the hood. For instance in whose customer journey they track (e.g. B2B or B2C), or whether they do revenue or marketing attribution. So how do you select the best revenue attribution tool?
Failing to select which of these best meets your needs could have very negative consequences - and possibly put you off attribution altogether (with all the risks that entails). As a B2B company you have to be especially careful with selecting a tool that meets your unique B2B needs.
We want to make sure this doesn’t happen. So we’ve put together this easy-to-follow step-by-step guide for selecting the right B2B revenue attribution tool for your business.
You might want to check out the post ‘What is attribution, really?’ for a balanced take on attribution.
Not sure whether you need a B2B revenue attribution tool?
Before reading any further, go through this assessment to discover your B2B revenue attribution needs.
Ok, so you’ve gone through the assessment 👆and you’re now in a position to kick-start the process of selecting an attribution tool.
Great, let’s do this.
When it comes to selecting a B2B revenue attribution tool, there are 8 crucial questions you need to consider if the tool is to have any real impact in helping you scale and overcome your biggest pain points.
And here we’re talking: inaccurate forecasting, missed revenue goals, weak lead generation, declining/suboptimal return on investment (ROI), etc.
These are:
Is it a B2B-specific tool?
Is it a revenue, not just marketing, attribution tool?
Can it integrate with all your tools and ad platforms?
Does it track and store on-site data and identify users?
Is it able to work with historical and ‘after-the-fact’ data?
Will you have free access to all raw data?
Does it store data in countries compliant to your needs?
Can it apply attribution across and between your pipeline stages?
The best revenue attribution tools are B2B-specific
The very first aspect to consider is whether the tool is B2B-specific. That is, whether the tool caters exclusively to B2B companies.
Why is this so important?
Well, the B2B and B2C customer journey differs drastically.
Here’s a bit on revenue attribution models.
In a nutshell, the difference between the two lies in the complexity and length of the customer journey. There are way more touchpoints and people involved in the B2B buying process than in B2C, and deals on average take a lot longer to close.
The B2B journey has three distinguishing features:
The multiplicity of touchpoints, which looks something like this
The customer is not a single individual but an account (company), where a host of employees are typically involved in the buying journey.
The deal is closed by a team effort spanning marketing, sales, and even customer success teams.
You might be interested in this great post on all things B2B customer journeys.
If you select a tool that is exclusively, or even partly, focused on B2C attribution, it is very likely the tool will not be capturing and accounting for important data.
This is why it is crucial for B2Bs not to rely on stop-gap B2C attribution solutions, it is only a B2B-specific attribution tool which can meet the needs of your complex B2B sales cycle.
Revenue Attribution vs. Marketing Attribution
As a B2B company you need to be looking at revenue attribution tools.
Attribution, the label, is used loosely to describe its use across all contexts. Yet in reality there are two broad categories: revenue attribution and marketing attribution.
Revenue attribution tools bring together data from across all revenue-related activities, from marketing, to sales, to customer success. The reasoning behind this being that all touchpoints matter. You need to understand the full journey of an account.
Revenue attribution tools are able to apply attribution across all these touchpoints. Some tools are even able to apply attribution to specific parts of the pipeline - more on this a little further down.
Marketing attribution tools focus exclusively on marketing-related touches. This means that they focus on unpacking marketing channels and campaign performance, e.g. Google Ad words, Facebook, Linkedin. In this way, marketing attribution tools are generally primed for B2C business models, where marketing alone converts customers.
In excluding vital parts in the B2B sales cycle, e.g. meetings with the Sales team or a call with Customer Success, these tools do not encompass the full road to revenue.
As Phil Gamache pointed out in this Humans of Martech podcast, “[B2B] attribution … isn't a marketing problem to solve... This is a company problem and we're trying to figure out where the company is driving growth, and we want to double down on those things.”
It is clear therefore, that only a B2B revenue attribution tool can meet your needs.
Integrate with every tool on the techstack
The B2B revenue attribution tool is only as good as the data you put into it. That is why it is essential that the platform is able to integrate with all your systems and tools.
This means it needs to be able to integrate with all possible combinations of tools on your commercial techstack now and if, or most likely when, these change.
Here you want to be looking for tools which offer a limitless option for integrations with CRM, Ads, Automations, and Customer Success tools.
Tracking and Identification of users on your site
Once again, revenue attribution is only as good as the data you put into it; and what users are doing on your site is pretty vital data.
So, when selecting your B2B revenue attribution platform only a tool that handles on-site behavioural data tracking and identification can credibly meet your needs.
Why? Because it allows you to gather as much user behaviour as possible, and just as importantly, link this behaviour to an identified user. With this you will be able to connect vital dots on the customer journey and enrich user profiles.
So how do you know a revenue attribution tool has on-site tracking and identification?
It can be offered in two ways, either through integrating a CDP tool (making sure it is also B2B-specific) or through their own tracking and identification script.
Learn how Dreamdata tracks users here.
Access and work with historical ‘after-the-fact’ data
You are likely already working with a number of tools, such as a CRM or CDP, or have hosted a webinar with a partner. These tools and events have already collected valuable data.
You should not miss out on the months, even years worth of customer data stored in these platforms.
This means that being able to access this data is a crucial factor to consider when selecting your B2B revenue attribution tool. As doing so will not enable you to build your customer journey much more quickly, but also have vital details about the journey from get-go.
Free access to all relevant raw data in your revenue attribution tool
By this point you’ve realised just how important data (past and present) is for revenue attribution. All this data however should not be ‘owned’ by your B2B revenue attribution tool host.
Unfortunately, most attribution tools charge companies extra for accessing their own data. Yet, the simple fact is that the data is yours, so there should be no restrictions in freely accessing it.
Make sure to get yourself a B2B revenue attribution tool that grants free and limitless access to your data.
Storing data with best security and privacy compliance
Data security and privacy is (rightly) a major concern. Where the data is stored can determine how safely and privately data is handled and stored.
With GDPR, EU-US privacy shield and other strict measures in place, the EU is about as safe a data storage destination as there can be.
So, for peace of mind on data privacy and security, you need to look for a B2B revenue attribution tool that stores data within the EU.
More on data privacy in this article.
Best ways to apply revenue attribution across and between pipeline stages
The final consideration when deciding on a B2B revenue attribution model is a functional one. Does the platform allow you to apply attribution across and between your pipeline stages?
One thing is applying attribution across the entire pipeline, where, yes, you can gain a picture of your activities’ impact right across the journey. But, it is quite another to have a tool which can separate the pipeline into parts and attribute within and between each of these.
For example, you could be using First-touch attribution on your marketing activities to learn which campaigns are converting most customers, and a last-touch model for your sales activities, to identify which meetings are sealing the deal.
This flexible approach will allow you to gain the maximum benefit from attribution possible, and so vital in arriving at your final buying decision on a B2B revenue attribution tool.
Concluding remarks
With these questions answered, if, and when, you arrive at the buying decision you can be sure to have selected a tool that is best aligned with your B2B needs.
The right B2B revenue attribution tool will enable you to examine every aspect of every deal to reveal what should be scaled or scrapped. The revenue attribution tool will help enrich customer profiles, and improve marketing, sales and customer success metrics by revealing the end-to-end customer journey. And, it will ensure you can build, repeat and scale success across campaigns, channels and experiments without relying on other teams.
