After spending the last ten years helping B2B SaaS companies measure their paid marketing impact I’ve learned one thing regarding the attribution system: most attribution models for B2B SaaS are broken. When your sales cycle is beyond 6 months and multiple stakeholders are involved in the purchasing decisions, traditional attribution just doesn’t work.
And on top of that knowing there is only 5% of buyers in-market this makes traditional last-click attribution fall short. The other 95% will have a non-linear journey before buying your product which means a nightmare to track accurately. Hopefully in the last 5 years a lot of improvements were made to access tools and methodologies much easier for non-tech marketers.
Different attribution methods serve different purposes and no single approach is perfect. Below is a comparison of the key methods used in B2B SaaS marketing measurement.
| Attribution Method | What it’s Best For | Pro | Con |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) | Bottom-funnel analysis | Shows detailed conversion paths | Undervalues brand impact (Meta example: 0.5% vs 20%) |
| Marketing Modeling Mix(MMM) | Understanding overall marketing impact | Captures zero-click ad impact | Requires long testing periods |
| Qualitative Research | Understanding purchase decisions | Reveals hidden channels (found 25% referral traffic) | Time-intensive to collect |
| Incrementality Testing | Proving marketing impact | Shows true causation | Expensive to implement |
| Session Tracking | Understanding engagement quality | Shows real engagement quality | Only shows digital touches |
| Share of Voice | Brand visibility tracking | Tracks visibility across all platforms | Hard to tie to revenue |
| CRM Attribution | Deal source tracking | Links marketing to revenue | Misses early marketing touches |
Key Takeaways
- No single method gives you the full picture. If you only use one attribution model you might miss key insights. For example, Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) shows conversion paths but often undervalues brand awareness, while Incrementality Testing helps prove which channels actually drive results.
- Some marketing impact is invisible in standard reports. Traditional attribution tools might not show that referral traffic is driving leads or how social ads are influencing conversions even if they don’t get the last click. Qualitative research and Mixed Media Modeling (MMM) help uncover these hidden effects.
- Using multiple models leads to better decisions. Combining CRM data (to track revenue impact), Share of Voice (to measure brand visibility), and Incrementality Testing (to prove what’s working) helps you see the real value of your marketing efforts.
- No single tool is perfect. Use a combination based on your needs and stage. Start with the basics (session tracking, qualitative research) and add sophisticated tools (MMM, incrementality) as you grow.
Understanding the B2B Marketing Measurement Challenge
Before diving into specific tools and system it’s crucial to understand that B2B SaaS marketing is not just about lead generation. Marketing initiatives improve sales outbound effectiveness, build brand equity, and create long-term value that traditional attribution models often fail to capture. This complexity necessitates a multi-tool approach to measurement and attribution.
Great brands are built through positioning, brand equity, and trust – things that don’t fit neatly into pipeline metrics. This means that marketing efforts often plant seeds that won’t be measurable for months or even years, making attribution particularly challenging.
1. Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA)
What it is: MTA tracks all digital touchpoints (ads clicked, content viewed, emails opened) in a buyer’s journey and assigns credit to each interaction that led to a conversion. Think of it like tracking the entire journey from first touch to final sale.
Multi-Touch Attribution is one of the most widely used approaches to B2B SaaS marketing measurement, but it also bring his complexities and limitations that you need to know..
The first challenge with MTA lies in its inability to capture all touchpoints effectively. I’ve seen how severely attribution models can undervalue marketing channels. Analyzing one of our clients metrics, LinkedIn ads was credited with 0.5% of revenue in last-touch attribution and 1.5% in multi-touch attribution. After running proper incrementality tests we discovered LinkedIn’s true impact was actually 20% of conversions, a good example of how traditional attribution fails to capture true channel’s impact in B2B paid marketing.
The problems get worse with impression measurement knowing LinkedIn Ads counts an impression if someone sees just half of your ad for 0.3 seconds. Think about that… Nobody can read an ad that fast. Yet LinkedIn charges you for these “impressions,” and the scary thing is that every platform does something similar.
For this reason I’ve found MTA works best for bottom-funnel analysis and lead prioritization. But please, don’t rely on it for measuring brand impact or early-stage marketing effectiveness. You’ll undervalue all your marketing efforts. First by missing many top-of-funnel touchpoints, and second by overweighting bottom-funnel interactions.
The solution? Use MTA for what it’s good at – understanding bottom-funnel behavior and lead prioritization. But don’t rely on it for measuring brand impact or early-stage marketing effectiveness. You’ll need other tools for that.
2. Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)
What it is: MMM looks at how your overall marketing spend correlates with business results. Instead of tracking individual users, it analyzes how spending changes across different channels affect your revenue while accounting for external factors like seasonality or competitor actions.
As privacy regulations are more strict and cookie-based tracking becomes less reliable MMM becomes more relevant. Here’s why: Think about zero-click ads. Someone watches your LinkedIn video ad, then googles your brand name. They click an organic result instead of your paid brand search ad. Traditional attribution would give zero credit to the video that actually drove the search. MMM fixes this by looking at broader patterns.
This matters more than ever because people consume more information without clicking. If you’re only measuring clicks, you’re missing half the impact.
MMM fixes this by analyzing how your marketing spend correlates with business outcomes:
- Competitor pricing movements
- Interest rate changes
- Economic conditions
- Industry-specific regulatory changes
- Market consolidation events
Marketing mix modeling works by looking at your historical data. Your marketing spend across all channels and your business results in order to find patterns between them. For example, it takes in account when you spent more on LinkedIn ads three months ago and demo requests increased even if people didn’t directly click on those ads.
For companies looking to implement MMM a platform like Recast is a good choice for their transparency and solid methodology. Companies with strong data science teams might also consider PyMC although this one requires more technical expertise.
3. Qualitative Surveys
What it is: Simply asking customers “how did you hear about us?” on your website forms and analyzing sales feedback and customer interviews. This could sounds basic and simple but it often reveals insights that your attribution tools miss.
Qualitative survey is one of the most underrated methodology in the B2B marketing attribution toolkit. You would be surprise to discover how many SaaS companies have been completely missed the impact of a channel using the traditional attribution methods.
Thanks to AI tools you can analyze massive amounts of customer feedback in minutes rather than weeks. They can quickly analyze hundreds of these conversations to spot patterns in why customers chose you, which competitors they considered, what made them trust you, and how they define success.
Another complementary solution for qualitative surveys is self-attribution reporting. This one is no brainer, it’s simply adding a “How did you hear about us?” field to your landing page / website forms or during sales calls. I’m always surprise to see how B2B buyers actually remember their journey quite well. In fact what customers tell you is more accurate than most of the tracking systems.
4. Incrementality Testing
What it is: Running controlled experiments to measure the true impact of marketing. Think of it like a scientific experiment – you test marketing in one area while creating a control group in another to see the real difference your marketing makes.
The concept is quite straightforward: stop spending in one area like a specific region or a channel and double spend in another to see the real difference it makes. This way you’ll be able to measure the true impact of your marketing programs. However with B2B’s SaaS with long sales cycles waiting a year for revenue impact isn’t practical. For example, you could stop LinkedIn ads in the UK while doubling spend in US to measure the true impact of your campaigns. That’s why you will need to focus on early indicators like demo requests or content downloads rather than waiting for final sale data.
One bottleneck for many companies that want to test this method is that it’s expensive and quite complicated. You need to spend significantly more in test regions to see clear results. second, good luck convincing your leadership to stop marketing to half your potential customers just to run a test.
The hard truth I’ve learned about B2B incrementality testing: it’s expensive and complicated to implement properly. You need significant spend increases in test regions to create clear signals. In addition, good luck convincing your leadership to stop marketing to half your potential customers just to run a test!
That’s why I recommend starting small. Focus on specific channels and measure early indicators like:
- Increases in branded search traffic
- Changes in demo request rates
- Content download volumes
- Website engagement levels
This way you can prove the concept before scaling to larger tests.
5. Session Tracking and recording
What it is: Analyzing how people actually engage and interact with your website.
I love session tracking for its immediacy. It gives instant feedback on engagement quality and helps filter out low-quality traffic. The bounce session metric, page views per session and time spent on GA4 are a good start for understanding real user interest and they’re very easy to implement. Recording session tools like Hotjar or Inspectlet are good complementary tools to check the actual user behavior.
Instead of looking at all website visits and page views focus on “quality” visits. Check the people actually spend time engaging with your content rather than bouncing after a few seconds. This will show you which paid channels are actually working. For example some ad channels like Meta might look cheap based on cost per thousand views (CPM) but when you look at how many quality visits they actually deliver they’re could be much more expensive.
Session tracking has also helped me identify significant bot traffic issues, particularly on platforms like Reddit.
For B2B, here’s what really matters on your website:
- Time spent on your products and features pages
- Multiple visitors from the same company
- Pricing page engagement depth
- Resource downloaded
Don’t just track that someone visited your pricing page, understand how they engaged with it and what path they have followed. This will help you to identify which marketing channels bring people who are actually interested in buying, not just “tourist” visitors browsing.
6. Share of Voice
What it is: Measuring how visible your brand is compared to competitors across search engines, social media, and industry conversations. It’s like taking the temperature of your brand presence across all channels where buyers research.
The B2B buying journey has changed dramatically. Younger buyers now start their research on social platforms instead of Google. They look everywhere: LinkedIn, forums, Reddit, communities and reviews sites.
Tools like MyTelescope help track your brand’s presence across all these platforms. They show you how visible you are compared to competitors, not just by counting mentions but by measuring engagement and what people are saying about you.
Why this matters: The traditional focus on Google brand search is becoming outdated. Your prospects might spend months researching solutions on LinkedIn, YouTube, or industry forums before ever typing your name into a search engine. If you’re only measuring traditional search presence, you’re missing a huge part of the buyer journey.
7. CRM Attribution
What it is: Using your CRM system to track which marketing activities led to deals by recording lead sources and marketing touches in your CRM. Seems straightforward but most companies do it wrong.
One of the most common mistakes I see is companies relying solely on the lead source field. Here’s a typical scenario : A prospect engages with thought leadership content for months. A sales rep then reaches out cold. The prospect books a demo. CRM shows “outbound” as the source – marketing gets zero credit despite warming up the lead.
One way to solve this is by implementing campaign influence tracking alongside basic lead source attribution. This means when a sales rep creates an opportunity, they can mark multiple marketing campaigns that influenced the deal. However, this approach only works if sales teams consistently record this information which is rare in practice.
Here’s another problem with CRM tracking: it doesn’t show the full story of how prospects find you. For example, someone download your whitepaper in January but only talk to sales in June. Without proper tracking, marketing doesn’t get credit for that early touchpoint.
That’s why it’s important to look at both CRM data and sales notes. The CRM might just say “referral,” but when you read the sales notes, you often discover that person first learned about you through a marketing campaign.
Final Thoughts
Perfect attribution is a mirage that doesn’t exist. None of these tools and methodologies is perfect. The key is knowing what each tool does best and what it can’t do – then using them together to get the full picture of your marketing performance.
If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS and Tech companies grow their MRR through LinkedIn ads, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.
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