There is also an abundant choice between which B2B marketing growth tool to use, and businesses are mostly clueless about how to use them.

The customer journey in a B2B channel is long and complex, with numerous touchpoints. It is important to track and work on every single touchpoint and not just focus on last-click models. This is where customer journey mapping and marketing attribution comes into play. Read on to learn how marketing attribution helps your business reach new heights in B2B growth.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

A visual representation of every experience every customer has with your business is referred to as a customer journey map. It tells you the story of every customer’s experience with your business from the starting point to the endpoint. Customer journey mapping, especially in a B2B marketing sphere, helps businesses see a new perspective of their workings from the customer’s point of view. 

What is Marketing Attribution?

Closely linked to customer journey mapping, marketing attribution is the art and science of understanding and learning which touchpoints the customer interacted with before making a purchase. In B2B marketing, customers interact with the brand at multiple touchpoints. Whether it be via an email sent by the business or a social media post on the business’ Instagram account that drew the customer’s attention - the list of potential touchpoints is numerous. 

What is the Goal of Marketing Attribution?

Marketing attribution helps you identify exactly which channel is bringing in more value to your business and thus aiding in your B2B growth. Is it the Facebook ads that you have been running or Instagram posts that you post twice a week? There are several marketing attribution models that a business can adopt depending on which works best for them. These marketing attribution models are essentially a set of rules that help you identify which B2B growth channel should get exactly how much credit during a particular marketing campaign.

When you know exactly which marketing effort is bringing in more paying customers, you can allot more time and effort in that channel rather than wasting the same on other channels. Not just different channels, marketing attribution also helps you identify how much money should be distributed amongst multiple touchpoints (multi-touch modeling). 

How does Marketing Attribution Help us Understand Customer Journeys Better? (And Potential Application)

Marketing attribution helps you see clearly how a customer interacts with your business- which channel brought them to your website; if they arrived in a logical order, what made them abandon a purchase, what made them purchase a product, and so on. Marketing attribution also helps you identify the gaps in a customer’s journey that led them to delay the purchase or abandon it altogether. It can also help you know if the customer had a great experience in arriving at their required product or did it take them too long. 

Marketing attribution can help you focus your time, money, and effort on touchpoints that matter. This boosts the effectiveness of your B2B growth and gives it the much-needed push. They help you track a particular entity’s journey from being a visitor to a lead and then finally a paying customer. 

First Touch Attribution

This is a very simple model of marketing attribution where you invest 100% of your credit to all touchpoints that simply lead a visitor to your website for the very first time. It does not matter if they subscribe to your newsletter or make a purchase or not; the point of this marketing attribution model is to get them to the website. It is very easy to be implemented via Google Analytics; however, it does not help you learn what made the customer make a purchase. 

Last Touch Attribution

The last touch marketing attribution model is the complete opposite of the first touch, where all credit is assigned to last touchpoints in the customer’s journey. The products are already in their carts, and it is time to remind them to make a purchase. Non-converting customers are totally ignored, causing you to lose business that you could have converted. It also does not take into account the previous interactions of a customer with the website and only records what made them finally purchase the product on their nth visit. 

Lead-Conversion Touch Attribution

This allows marketers to understand which touchpoint generated the lead and is very popular, but it only focuses on a very small section of the customer’s journey. Not much information about buying or ditching purchase patterns can be found using this marketing attribution model.

Linear Attribution

In this marketing attribution model, equal credit is divided amongst every touchpoint that brings visitors and leads to your business. It pays attention to every touchpoint in every customer’s journey and develops an interconnected strategy. However, not all channels perform the same, and so, some high-performing channels will end up getting less credit.

How to Create an Attribution Report?

Marketing attribution reports are by far the most ignored portion of any marketing tool. For effective B2B growth, it is essential that you learn the importance of a marketing attribution report that can help you learn exactly which B2B marketing effort is paying off and which high performing channel requires more attention. When you have actionable data to learn from and act on, B2B marketing stops seeming like rocket science and becomes easy to tackle. 

To create a marketing attribution report, Google Analytics is one of the easiest tools to use. Report all your goals and transactions to your Google Analytics account. Make sure that you are using the ‘Campaign’ tag. Your Adwords account in Google Analytics has the ‘Tools’ tab. Clicking on this tab gives you the option for a lot of tools. Select the ‘Attribution’ option. Numerous marketing attribution reports of different categories will be ready for you to learn actionable steps for your B2B growth.

If you want your B2B business to grow with strong B2B marketing and highly optimized marketing attribution models but cannot figure out how to go about it, book a consultation with Filip Galetic today and allow us to help you with your B2B marketing endeavors.