Why sales leaders should understand marketing attribution

The method of effectively tracking, documenting, and comprehending the performance of marketing is known as marketing attribution. It combines data into a single source of truth and enables marketers to identify precisely which of their initiatives are influencing down-funnel KPIs. The business (and the sales staff) succeeds when marketing measures their performance in terms of opportunities, pipeline, revenue, and ROI.

Does marketing attribution show the lead’s and account’s entire history?

Lead insights play a significant role in a salesperson’s outreach and the customization of sales talks and demos. Without a clear picture of how a lead entered the funnel and who they have interacted with, it can be difficult to successfully personalize interactions.

Quality attribution tracks all site activity, form submissions, content downloads, and even offline channels like events, phone calls, and more throughout the entire funnel. both at the level of an account and not simply at the level of an individual. This information is essential for sales interactions that are tailored to the consumer, especially for companies with a wide range of goods and use cases.

What metric is it tied to?

Because marketing attribution models are all about connecting marketing efforts to outcomes, it’s important to understand what those outcomes are. Initially, attribution was limited to tracking marketing qualified leads (MQLs), prospects, and pipeline. Marketing attribution may now be traced all the way to revenue.

This is crucial since the further down the funnel marketing attribution goes, the better the sales. Marketing attribution should ideally be matched with revenue, so that the conversion rate of a funnel is reflected into marketing ROI.

Does attribution give credit to BDR or sales-sourced activities?

Since business development representatives (BDRs), also referred to as sales development reps, work within the sales team in many firms. Additionally, some businesses allow account executives to conduct some of their own prospecting. When either situation applies, it’s critical to understand how marketing is taking those activities’ effects into account when assigning marketing attribution.

For a thorough view of the prospect’s journey, not simply what marketing touched, effective marketing attribution models are able to track activity, such as phone calls and sales outbound emails.

Does attribution give marketing credit for support for opportunity progression?

When this is the case, many marketing attribution models come to an end since some marketing teams think that their only duty is to provide opportunities and funnel to sales. One of the more common justifications for marketing’s style of thinking is that marketing attribution ends with the development of opportunities, however there are other justifications as well. In other words, it’s a technology limitation. In recent years, multi-touch attribution models like complete route have become accessible to aid marketing teams in having an impact across the entire funnel.

When marketing understands the influence of marketing on opening prospects (also known as deal progression), it may invest more actively in assisting sales. Marketing attribution is used for more than just marketing. It’s also for sales, and sales may have a greater stake in quality attribution than marketing. Discuss this essential topic with marketing leadership and ensure that the quality is high considering the impact it has on marketing efficiency and thus your commission.