Capturing the attention of an easily distracted audience and accurately measuring their fragmented path to conversion is now a key focus for marketers. A comprehensive approach is necessary to better understand the touch points that help engage consumers and contribute to a campaign, ultimately driving awareness, conversions, and sales – but this process is not yet happening in B2B marketing.
A recent study by Regalix shows that 82% of U.S B2B marketers viewed marketing analytics as absolutely critical or very important. Results also show that a cross-channel view of results is considered by 82% of marketers surveyed to be the key capability required when evaluating marketing analytics tools, ahead of predictive and prescriptive analytics (68%), and dashboards (64%). These statistics highlight the enormous appetite for accurate measurement, so where is it going wrong?
B2B sales cycles are typically lengthy due to the large number of decision makers involved and the difficulty in tracking the successful conversion of online transactions. To move the B2B buyer through the sales cycle, marketers can update messaging at each stage of the process, encouraging them on the path to purchase. If marketers better understand the full impact that each touch point has on sales and conversion rates, they can create highly targeted data-led campaigns as a result – something most are currently failing to do.
Marketers can also achieve a better understanding of the impact of each touch point by using an advanced attribution solution that presents transparent results. Advanced attribution enables the analysis of all media investments across channels and quantifies the true impact of creating awareness, consideration, and preference.
Often these results reinforce the importance of taking a holistic view of a marketing campaign, as they clearly illustrate the influential impact of each touch point across multiple channels. This demonstrates how different media investments can work together to drive conversions.
Understanding what constitutes a conversion is another challenge that affects B2B in particular. Marketers need to be open to considering events other than on-site purchases as a conversion. The issue with B2B attribution then often lies in tracking those conversions and attributing the right amount of credit to each touch point along the path to conversion. This can often be long-winded and convoluted with longer cookie windows.
So how can B2B marketers harness an advanced attribution solution to achieve success and ultimately improve conversion rates?
Streamline your data
Brands should collect data from all channels, as well as analysing and consolidating the findings. Cross-channel data from standard display, in-stream video, email, affiliate, mobile, social, and search, should complement one another and work together towards a common goal rather than competing against each other.
Successful attribution models are intuitive to the user and provide recommendations and insights based on actual performance. In light of this, campaigns should ideally be flexible to allow optimisation in real time, based on the information presented by the attribution model.
By taking these points into consideration, brands will find themselves best placed to take advantage of measurement systems that offer a full picture of their digital marketing spend and its effectiveness. This approach will ensure campaign results are transparent and provide a more accurate picture of the impact each marketing tactic has on the conversion rate.
By understanding the touch points that contribute most towards uplift in conversions and awareness, and by utilising streamlined data, future campaign planning can be adjusted to maximise ROI for B2B brands.
