How B2B revenue attribution helps you optimise your sales funnel

If you want your business-to-business (B2B) marketing efforts to yield more revenue, then you need to ensure your sales funnel is structured in the right way. This means having the most effective process in place to analyse, measure, and adjust your sales funnel based on concrete data.

Enter, revenue attribution – an essential approach for any marketer looking to understand the true impact of their marketing efforts and make critical decisions to boost revenue.

Read on, as we explore B2B revenue attribution and how it gives you unprecedented insights into your sales funnel and marketing performance.

What is B2B revenue attribution?

To understand what B2B revenue attribution is, let’s first look at how the process of revenue attribution works.

Revenue attribution is an analytical approach that links sales directly to the original marketing sources that generated the purchase. Integrated software will show you exactly how your marketing efforts are directly impacting revenue, revealing the true value of every channel, campaign, and activity.

B2B attribution models simply apply this process to B2B sales instead of B2C. Unlike simpler consumer sales cycles, B2B environments involve:

• Multiple stakeholders who take part in decision-making processes
• Longer sales cycles spanning weeks or months
• High-value transactions with significant financial implications
• Complex interactions across various marketing and sales touchpoints

With software like Mediahawk’s call tracking platform, you’ll go beyond surface-level metrics and gain a comprehensive understanding of how different marketing activities contribute to your B2B sales.

You need a platform that recognises how complex B2B sales cycles are rarely the result of a single interaction, but instead, emerge from a carefully navigated journey. Only then will you have the insights needed to optimise your sales funnel with more effectively targeted marketing.

Conversion attribution vs. full revenue attribution

While conversion attribution focuses on tracking different types of interactions – like lead form submissions, content downloads, or phone calls – revenue attribution pinpoints campaigns that generate actual revenue.

If you want to really hone in on where your sales are coming from and how to improve them, revenue attribution gives you the actionable insights that matter.

Consider these practical examples:

• Conversion attribution: Showing you that a B2B prospect filled out a demo request after reading a blog post.
• Revenue attribution: Showing you how that blog post followed by several key touchpoints, ultimately contributed to a £100,000 multi-year contract.

Conversion attribution provides initial insights, but revenue attribution reveals the true financial impact of your marketing strategies.

The former answers: “How many leads did we get from this marketing activity?”.

The latter answers the critical question: “How much revenue did that marketing activity ultimately produce?”

Why B2B revenue attribution is important

B2B revenue attribution delivers transformative benefits for your business, including:

1. Performance measurement: Instead of relying on vanity metrics (such as website traffic or social media likes), businesses can accurately measure their marketing success through concrete financial outcomes.
2. Strategic insights: By precisely identifying which campaigns and touchpoints generate revenue, your business will be able to make more impactful, data-driven marketing decisions.
3. Marketing and sales alignment: B2B attribution models bridge the traditional gap between marketing and sales teams, letting you focus on revenue-generating activities rather than disconnected metrics.
4. Resource optimisation: Understanding which marketing efforts directly contribute to revenue allows companies to strategically allocate budgets, eliminating wasteful spending and amplifying high-performing channels.

Understanding B2B attribution models

Choosing the right B2B attribution model is crucial for accurate revenue tracking. There are different approaches that offer unique perspectives on how your marketing interactions contribute to sales:

1. Single-touch attribution models in B2B

• Single-touch models provide a simplified view of marketing interactions:
• First-touch attribution: Credits the initial touchpoint that introduced a prospect to your brand.
• Last-touch attribution: Gives full credit to the final interaction before a prospect makes a purchase.

While these models are straightforward, they limit your understanding of complex B2B sales journeys. They ignore the nuanced interactions that occur between the initial contact and final sale, which are often key to measuring marketing performance.

2. Multi-touch attribution models in B2B

Multi-touch B2B attribution models offer more comprehensive insights:

• Linear attribution: Distributes credit equally across all touchpoints, acknowledging the significance of every interaction in the prospect journey.
• Time-decay attribution: Assigns more credit to interactions that occur nearer the conversion, suggesting that recent touchpoints have greater influence.
• Position-based attribution: Allocates varying credit percentages based on touchpoint position, but often gives more credit to the first and last interaction, with varying credit in-between.

These models reveal the interconnected nature of B2B marketing efforts, showing how different channels and interactions collectively drive revenue. To fully comprehend the effectiveness of your campaigns at generating revenue, you need a holistic view that spans across channels and activities.

Final thoughts

B2B revenue attribution moves beyond simplistic metrics and offers comprehensive insights to measure and improve your marketing performance.

The message is clear: to truly optimise your sales funnel, you must adopt robust revenue attribution software that gives you the means to make smarter, more strategic marketing decisions that directly impact your bottom line.

To start embracing B2B revenue attribution, request a demo from Mediahawk today, and watch as your marketing efforts become more targeted, efficient, and ultimately, more profitable.