B2B marketing attribution: Unveiling the truth about the buyer journey

As B2B marketers, we've all been there: poring over data from multiple platforms and trying to piece together the impact of our marketing efforts on the bottom line. It's a common challenge and you're not alone if you're frustrated with the results.

However, there is a way to approach marketing attribution that aligns with the complex realities of the B2B buyer journey. You can think about it like this, marketers are non-fiction storytellers. We’re finding the narrative within the data that tells us who our buyers are and what marketing touchpoints are most effective at translating into sales.

Here are our go-to recommendations for finding the truth within your marketing attribution data and how doing so opens the window into your customer buying journey.

1. Understand and educate stakeholders about the modern B2B buyer journey

There’s a Gartner report we come back to repeatedly at Aimtal. The report shows— definitively—that the B2B buyer journey is rarely linear. As marketers, we intuitively know that buyers move up and down the funnel and engage with digital channels right up to the moment of purchase. They read a case study, see a social post from your CEO on LinkedIn, request a demo, download an ebook, attend a webinar, and then make a purchase decision—many times 6 months plus down the line.

Hear us talk more about the B2B Buying Journey Report from Gartner and how it relates to your marketing attribution:

The difficulty is sharing this information and the value of each of those touchpoints to leadership teams that are primarily sales- and revenue-minded. When you set up marketing attribution effectively, you can connect the data back to sales, finding the plotline of your customers’ messy buyer journeys and turning them into compelling stories explaining how marketing affects the bottom line.

There are two key ways to do this. First, rather than relying on first-touch or last-touch attribution models, focus on finding tools that allow you to implement multi-touch attribution. By attributing success to a single interaction, you’re not doing justice to the intricate web of influence that contributes to a sale. Multi-touch attribution will give you the full picture of your buyer journey. 

Read more about the different types of marketing attribution models in our blog “Cracking the code: Understanding marketing attribution models for improved ROI.”

However, to leverage multi-touch attribution, you need to integrate all your marketing channels directly into your CRM.

By using your CRM as a "command center" for marketing attribution, you can:

• Track engagement across all channels in one unified view
• Connect marketing activities directly to revenue
• Identify the most effective channels and content for moving prospects through the funnel
• Demonstrate, with confidence, marketing's impact on the bottom line

This approach doesn't just improve your attribution; it transforms marketing from a perceived cost center into a clear, measurable driver of revenue and growth. It's a powerful way to showcase your team's value and inform strategic decisions.

2. Tell your attribution story with confidence

Data is important, but it doesn’t tell the full story on its own. To truly demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts, you need to weave the data from your attribution models into a compelling narrative that resonates with stakeholders.

Consider creating attribution reports that highlight:

• Key marketing touchpoints that nurtured a customer down the funnel
• Clear connections between specific marketing engagements and sales activities
• The tangible impact of marketing creative on customer value and deal size
• Patterns across multiple deals that identify your most effective marketing strategies

By presenting this information in a clear, story-driven format, you're not just sharing data, you're providing actionable insights that can drive business decisions.

For example, when you share attribution data and insights with your sales team, you're opening the door to powerful collaboration and creating a shared understanding of the customer journey across your organization. 

Imagine being able to:

• Educate your sales colleagues on which marketing programs are driving the most qualified leads
• Provide valuable context about a prospect's interests and engagement history
• Collaborate on creating more effective messaging and content
• Identify highly engaged accounts for targeted sales outreach

This level of sales and marketing alignment leads to more efficient sales processes, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, increased revenue. It's a win-win for both teams and the business as a whole.

‍Practical guidance for identifying and leveraging buyer signals in B2B marketing

Let’s pretend you landed a deal with Microsoft and your CEO wants to know: “Okay, what were the marketing engagements that contributed and how was marketing involved with this sale?” Marketers get questions like this all the time. If you're responding with panic, start digging into your marketing attribution to uncover the facts. (Marketers are non-fiction storytellers, remember.)

First of all, because you have all your marketing channels fully integrated into your CRM, you’ll be able to uncover key buyer signals, like:

• Demo Requests: A strong indicator of serious interest.
• Email Engagement: Opens and clicks, especially on nurture emails.
• Webinar Attendance: Shows active interest in your solutions or industry topics.
• Content Downloads: Particularly guides or whitepapers.
• Multi-Person Engagement: Activity from multiple individuals within the same organization.

After taking a look into your CRM, you start to notice key buyer touch points from the Microsoft deal, such as:

1. Webinar Attendance
   • Signal: A Microsoft employee attended a webinar in October, showing active interest in your brand.
   • Action: You flagged this as a high-value interaction in your CRM.
2. Deal Creation
   • Signal: A deal was created in your CRM three days after webinar attendance.
   • Action: You take note of the quick progression from webinar to deal creation and flag the webinar as an effective lead magnet.
3. Email Engagement
   • Signal: You look back in your CRM and see that the prospect opened 10 lead nurture emails, including 5 in the month leading up to closing the deal.
   • Action: This shows ongoing interest and the effectiveness of your nurture campaign for engaged users.
4. Content Engagement
   • Signal: Look back at the specific pieces of content that the Microsoft employee engaged with the most. This reveals their particular interests and potential pain points.
   • Action: Note which topics or solutions garnered the most interest and look into weaving this content into workflows for similar buyers.

Now you have all the pieces you need to report to your CEO how marketing contributed to the closed-won deal. Better yet, you can take what you learned from this buyer journey and begin to compare it to others to inform your future strategy.

• For marketing, you can refine your nurture campaigns based on the most engaging content, create more content on the most-engaging topics, and adjust your attribution model to give appropriate weight to key touchpoints.
• For sales, you can provide a detailed engagement history for personalized outreach, alert sales when engagement reaches a threshold that in the past indicated high buying intent, and use content engagement data to tailor pitch decks and demos.
• And for strategy, you can analyze patterns across multiple deals to predict which signals indicate highest likelihood to close, refine your ideal customer profile based on engagement patterns of successful deals, and allocate resources to channels and content types that consistently produce strong buyer signals.

Embracing your role as a non-fiction storyteller

As B2B marketers, we're not just data analysts or campaign managers (phew). We're non-fiction storytellers, tasked with uncovering and sharing the true story of the modern B2B buyer journey. By embracing this role, we can transform our approach to marketing attribution from a daunting data exercise into an engaging narrative that leads to better decision-making, improves sales and marketing alignment, and ultimately contributes to stronger business growth.

For more on rethinking your B2B marketing attribution, listen to this episode of Called to Action, Aimtal’s video series where we share the latest trends and research in B2B marketing and tactics to use in your company’s marketing efforts.