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The Forever Debatable Marketing-Attributed Pipeline
The Forever Debatable Marketing-Attributed Pipeline

November 18, 2022

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Did my Instagram ad kick-off that customer journey or the paid search ultimately led to a conversion?

This prospect filled out a form, but there's no sign of marketing traceability in our pipeline reports! 

Sounds relatable?

 

The marketing-attributed pipeline has always been a topic of debate since time immemorial. The discourse seems to continue with the advent of multi-touch campaigns and changing complex buying patterns. Various models emerged, but none realistically hit the nail to create 'the universal' solution. Several marketing mix models were born, but their relevancy faded with time. For example, would a W-shaped attribution model do ideal justice to a scenario where an MQL identified via an FB post encounters relevant content across paid digital platforms and converts at a customer round table? Or would an 'evenly weighted attribution model' justify the touchpoints that made a more significant impact than others? Ultimately marketers, in due course of time, temporarily satisfy their eternal quest for attribution and relevancy by surrendering to in-house models to respectfully claim the attribution of a pipeline and pitch for their upcoming budget.

But guess what? The problem remains; there is still no solution.

 

How can you enable the marketing pipeline?

Innumerable modern tools emerged; we tried to unearth them as soon as possible only to realize that several elements of a multi-touch campaign are still not capturable. I went through numerous demos, product details, etc. I discovered a plethora of platform-based optimization, analytics, and attribution tools that could easily integrate with your existing marketing automation platform, collect data from various APIs, and provide jazzy reports. The moment a new requirement comes up, you flip the switch and integrate another new tool, and your short-term goal is satisfied (for one type of campaign only). Some of the popular tools nowadays are:

HubSpot

An all-in-one CRM platform providing insights at your fingertips. So far the most widely used platform, but there is a struggle to fit in your offline siloed channels in an interpretable manner according to the fields in this tool. There are predefined models with pre-allocated % allocation for various touchpoints, so most of the efforts go into finding out which model matches your revenue pattern rather than determining what's driving revenue.

DreamData

Another B2B revenue attribution pipeline platform that gives you fantastic insight into these journeys through visualized interactive timelines of every lead in your funnel.

Active Campaign

A customer experience automation platform with attribution reporting capabilities.

Windsor.ai, Adobe Bizible, Chartable…

And the list goes on...

 

Are these tools enough?

These are fantastic tools, provided your campaign is pure-play digital. In the case of multi-touch programs with frequent offline tactics, the attribute gets lost unless every interaction is captured digitally and made to fit in predefined templates offered by the above tools. 

Moral of the story: while marketers worldwide unavoidably do have pipeline targets, knowing each marketing play's worth may not be the right thing to do. Assigning credit to each tactic is misleading as brand, conversations, content, and relationships are overlooked. The buyer journey is pretty complex, and you can never really capture where and when your product/service would have caught someone's attention. Brand plays a significant role; brand equity is almost impossible to capture in the case of attribution calculation. Brand-based demand generation, if done correctly (not lead generation), is a significant lever to drive subconscious brand awareness over a period of time and reduce the sales cycle, eventually increasing sales. That is why most of us will walk into an Apple store straight away and purchase an iPhone rather than filing multiple online forms and going through product demos.

In this eternal quest to unearth the mystery of the 'apparently-easy-yet not so simple' marketing credited pipeline, a few marketers end up hastily making some common mistakes which are:

Correlation-based bias: A hypothesis where a marketer assumes that one event triggered another event in the customer buyer journey, thus assigning scores based on correlation, which in reality may not be the correct order.

Brand and behavior: Not understanding how an attribution model measures the effect of a brand is a common and detrimental mistake, leading marketers to make decisions based on incomplete recommendations. This can devalue the brand. 

The digital bias: This occurs when attribution models do not factor in the relationship between online activity and offline sales. Marketers must make optimization decisions based on both online and offline data, not only what they can trace digitally. 

Overlooking the content: Concluding that the messaging is ineffective when in reality, it would be impactful for a targeted audience. Creativity can do wonders in target-based marketing. One small video has enough potential to progress a lead up the sales ladder and even generate closures.

 

Solving the puzzle

Attribution may serve as a conceivable indicator to keep the marketing demand gen function running; however, in reality, there shouldn't be anything as a 'credit.' It is a combined effort of sales and marketing and several other relevant stakeholders belonging to different departments. These are solely my point of view based on my experience, and I'm sure there are other marketing stalwarts out there who may have a solution to decode the puzzle. My intent is not to stir a debate here but share my thoughts in this democratic environment. So ending with my two cents: (a) it is okay to have a not-so-accurate solution to attributes; this is a game of probability. It is just fine to have estimated figures. (b) Brand and demand are directly proportional. Well-thought-through efforts on brand awareness campaigns will naturally increase demand.

About the Author

 

Niveeditha Ajoy Ganguly

 

Niveeditha Ajoy Ganguly is the Director of Marketing at Intelliswift Software. She is a mission-oriented, Marketing and Communications leader, who has explored and excelled in all facets of IT Solutions and Services Marketing. She firmly believes that Marketing has a pivotal role in a business's success, just as much as innovation, and works diligently to balance her side of the scale.


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Intelliswift delivers world-class Product Engineering, Data Management and Analytics, Digital Enterprise, Digital Integrations, Salesforce, and Talent Solutions to businesses across the globe. We empower companies to embrace new technologies and strategies along their digital transformation journey through data-rich modern platforms, innovation-led engineering, and people-centric solutions. Strong customer-centricity makes us a trusted ally to several Fortune 500 companies, SMBs, ISVs, and fast-growing startups. Reach us at marketing@intelliswift.com to know more. 

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