Have you ever seen this lovely mug, made by Amanda Nielsen? It’s hilarious, and it has a kernel of truth to it.
Attribution is an invented concept with the purpose of explaining human behavior. But what does that mean, really? It’s a tool, a system within to work. For a moment I even thought, isn’t math itself made up, if you think about it? But of course, math isn’t fake, despite how much I would have liked it to be at report card time.
Even other sales and marketing methodologies like pipeline, have been cemented as ‘real’ and reliable much more so than attribution. But if you take a step back, pipeline is similarly conceptual—it’s treated as concrete but it’s really just a method of estimating revenue from deals using stage-based forecasting.
In measuring pipeline, we’re ascribing stages to human behavior based on a sales person’s opinions or a set of criteria. But why has pipeline become much more accepted and trusted than attribution?
I think the ‘attribution is fake, attribution is dead’ statements are bold, but behind the boldness, lies frustration and confusion with how attribution is practiced and perceived. The rise of concepts such as the ‘dark funnel’ cause people to believe attribution is an impossible task, even though we’ve always known that not everything can be measured, that attribution is not a crystal ball telling you exactly how a buying decision was made. These limitations have always existed, and all methodologies will have limitations. As CaliberMind’s VP of Marketing, Nadia Davis once said, “Attribution should be directional, not dogmatic”.
Why people love to hate attribution
To many, attribution carries the connotation that everything must be trackable, that nothing is worth doing if it doesn’t result in perfect trackable engagements and ROI.
Of course people wouldn’t like that. Marketers at our cores, are people who enjoy creativity, and if attribution serves to stifle that creativity, well no one enjoys that, do they?
But reactions are often over corrections. So marketers go from “data-driven everything” to well… “abandon all data, go with gut.” Then the problem with this is it leaves you with no system. If you don’t measure anything, you make decisions based off of vibes, bias, and the highest paid person’s opinion. So please consider this my petition to find some middle ground between all or nothing.
How attribution should work
The point of attribution is to apply a system to help you evaluate ROI and how to spend better. A wise person in the chatbox of one of our recent webinars said, “First, you prove your ROI, then you can improve it.” And I think that sums it up—attribution’s most basic job is to prove marketing’s value. Then you use it to improve your performance, earn more budget, and so on.
Proving marketing’s value gains trust. By using attribution effectively, you should actually be gaining the opportunity to spend more in ways that might be considered ‘less trackable’. When under pressure to prove their worth, people become biased towards the most visible impact—choosing to invest in bottom of the funnel tactics such as lead generation because they have tangible short-term impact, even if they don’t serve your strategic interests the best in the long term.
Andre Proulx, a VP of Revenue Operations and CaliberMind client summed this up well— “Every marketer has a theory. CaliberMind helps us test ours. When you can do that, you stop playing defense and start leading the strategy.”
Attribution done right should establish trust and open up the door to experimentation and budget expansion, but how does one ‘do attribution right’?
4 Keys to Successful Marketing Attribution
1. Pull together the most complete picture of the data you can
Attribution lives or dies by the quality and availability of your data. That means pulling together both your marketing and sales data—campaigns, lead sources, touchpoints, opportunities, pipeline stages, the whole deal—into one place. You won’t succeed with siloed views. You need to see the full buyer journey, including both sales and marketing data. Though that isn’t to say that you’ll be able to capture every single data point. There will always be things that can’t be tracked. But by tracking everything possible, and bearing in mind that nothing is 100%, we get the most complete picture we can. Marketing attribution you get out of the box with marketing automation platforms is a start, but can give a myopic view of your data, relying on simpler models like first/last touch and only the data within the platform.
2. Get stakeholders on the same page about goals
If sales, marketing, and leadership aren’t aligned on what attribution is supposed to do, things get political real fast. Start by agreeing on the questions you’re trying to answer—what’s working, where should we invest, how long does it really take to convert a deal? Then, make sure everyone understands the model you’re using (and what it can and can’t tell you). Attribution isn’t about assigning blame or taking credit—it’s about finding insights you can act on together.
3. Choose the right attribution model for your needs
There’s no one-size-fits-all model. If you just want a directional view of where leads are coming from, simple first or last-touch might be fine. If you’re dealing with long buying cycles and complex buyer committees, multi-touch or algorithmic models (like Markov chains) will give you a much more accurate picture. Choose the model that matches your maturity, data readiness, and the kinds of decisions you’re trying to make.
4. Test, optimize, and iterate
Attribution isn’t a “set it and forget it” situation. Start small, and build from there. As your data quality improves and your team gets more comfortable, you can get more sophisticated. Look at your attribution insights regularly, compare them to business outcomes, and adjust as needed. The goal is progress, not perfection. It’s unrealistic to expect omniscience from your attribution, but it should provide more clarity than you had before.
If you want more detail on how to start out with attribution, check out this guide to DIY attribution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, let’s not forget what attribution can and can’t do, and what it’s actually for. Attribution should: give you clarity, help you justify spend, and help you make the case for receiving more budget. Attribution should not: prevent creativity or ‘untrackable’ initiatives or be a tug-of-war over credit.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
