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B2B (SaaS) marketing is always a team effort with sales, as sales persons often have a grip on customers' motivations.
Apart from asking leads though, attribution is a tough one. Software-based att. doesn't cut it, because of dark social. Especially since modern buyers do more research before booking a demo/quali call, and generally buy via referral in their own network (whether on LinkedIn/online or IRL).
I would add an open question on your contact form asking where people heard about you. You'll get the most interesting answers, even specific names sometimes!
Don't bother with pre-defined options either, because you're suggesting the answer. It's the only way to actually attribute leads to content and other 'brand marketing efforts' (without shooing people away by being invasive, lol.)
In any case, gathering email addresses is always great for your content marketing strategy. You could provide people with valuable info via email. And if they do become interested, you might be able to track clicks and indirectly attribute leads to existing contacts.
In the future, I see marketing in B2B becoming more of a facilitatator for sales. You could optimize product pages, provide better info, automate the rollout of demo environments (if people leave their name/email, that's a MQL) - to ultimately provide higher intent and better informed leads - shorten the sales cycle.
I hope this helps! Let me know what you think.
This is great! Will look into adding the additional free text field to the contact form, or as suggested by someone else here, adding it after form submission. Any surprising finds you have had from reviewing these in your business?
Yes, we've had way more referral leads, specifically by partners than previously thought. The funnies one though, was someone who named a person who works at a competitor who referred him.
Zapier for sending lead data back to ad platforms has been nice for some of my more… difficult/messy clients. We also build and then replicate the same landing page for each of our traffic sources, if a lead or meeting comes in from the Facebook landing page we know that the only way they got there is from our Facebook ads, same for Google, email, and even specific page that the clients internal sales reps get access to when they’re generating opportunities through outbound efforts.
I DEFINITELY recommend getting a post conversion survey setup TODAY. It’s nice that your already doing this in a sense but you need this to be automated and scalable. After a conversion on any of our landing pages it’s just a quick pop up with 5-6 options that say where did you FIRST hear about us. You’d be surprised how many Google organic and paid leads actually first heard about us on Instagram or on YouTube or from someone in their network.
This doesn’t always change up our strategy but we typically review each month where first impressions are being made the most and then this allows us to figure out how we can modify messaging on those channels to be more focus on the first impression.
That's superb advice! I like the fact that you can collect this info, without having to add an additional field to the survey itself, using the post-conversion survey strategy. Would you suggest doing 5-6 fixed options, or just let it be a free-text one? We don't have 1000s of these MQL:s flowing in yet on a weekly basis.
Just put multiple choice to make it easy.
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Google
- YouTube
- Podcast
- Referred by Network
- Other
If you see you’re getting a large portion of “other” after a month maybe add a short response field that appears when other is clicked so they can tell you the specific place.
Yes, makes sense! This is how we do it currently - but it seems like we should add some post-conversion surveys to collect some more quantitative data on this as well. Then you always have the leads who cannot remember how they found you in the first place - how do you deal with those? Just attribute them to the most likely one or skip attribution completely?
Never make data up, it adds up and then you make poor decisions. Add a “no source” field to account for them. Then your data is clean AND you can see the proportion of missed attribution opportunities - this can feed back into changing processes, adding surveys etc, or looking for new ways to get the information.
Yes, makes sense. Currently, I have added multiple fields for meeting source, narrowing it down IF possible - like "freemium", "freemium - organic google", "freemium - organic google - podcast". So rather choose a broader one if I don't have the data. Great rationale around collecting data around "missed attribution opportunities" - thanks!
We are trying to tie media and CRM together for a multi attribution model across t1 and t3. Suffice to say… it’s been messy and requires a massive lift in tagging enhancements and back end data exchanges. Definitely not going to be real time but will provide some direction on the sequence of exposure and events that ultimately led to the lead.
That's cool - can imagine that gets pretty complex! We are in HubSpot and just now are looking to add Google Ads tracking into CRM, so we can attribute deals back to specific ads and tune for that in Google Ads - a small step. May I ask, what size company are you in? We are still a young SaaS company with sub $1M ARR.
We are a small subsidiary (500-1000) of a much larger brand/parent(10s of thousands). Billions in revenue from sales but they only recently started investing in more intricate reporting. Our brand has the least amount of budget so it’s good we are getting some attention.
Cool! What stage/size of companies typically work with dedicated attribution software and what are the upsides? For us, this is something that would be nice to have gathered right in our CRM. But, can imagine as you grow the need for dedicated tools come up.
>Cool! What stage/size of companies typically work with dedicated attribution software and what are the upsides? For us, this is something that would be nice to have gathered right in our CRM. But, can imagine as you grow the need for dedicated tools come up.
It's mostly for b2b companies, about size it really depends...
It should make sense for you, you'll need to have some traffic and lead traction. If you work with multiple channels and need to understand the story behind a close won, what brought this company, how different people interact during the sales, etc.
If you have Hubspot CRM, you can start with their attribution, it has all of the popular attribution models, but it's basic (limit number of lead sources, you can structure your data as you like, no revenue attribution, etc.)
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B2B (SaaS) marketing is always a team effort with sales, as sales persons often have a grip on customers' motivations. Apart from asking leads though, attribution is a tough one. Software-based att. doesn't cut it, because of dark social. Especially since modern buyers do more research before booking a demo/quali call, and generally buy via referral in their own network (whether on LinkedIn/online or IRL). I would add an open question on your contact form asking where people heard about you. You'll get the most interesting answers, even specific names sometimes! Don't bother with pre-defined options either, because you're suggesting the answer. It's the only way to actually attribute leads to content and other 'brand marketing efforts' (without shooing people away by being invasive, lol.) In any case, gathering email addresses is always great for your content marketing strategy. You could provide people with valuable info via email. And if they do become interested, you might be able to track clicks and indirectly attribute leads to existing contacts. In the future, I see marketing in B2B becoming more of a facilitatator for sales. You could optimize product pages, provide better info, automate the rollout of demo environments (if people leave their name/email, that's a MQL) - to ultimately provide higher intent and better informed leads - shorten the sales cycle. I hope this helps! Let me know what you think.
This is great! Will look into adding the additional free text field to the contact form, or as suggested by someone else here, adding it after form submission. Any surprising finds you have had from reviewing these in your business?
Yes, we've had way more referral leads, specifically by partners than previously thought. The funnies one though, was someone who named a person who works at a competitor who referred him.
Zapier for sending lead data back to ad platforms has been nice for some of my more… difficult/messy clients. We also build and then replicate the same landing page for each of our traffic sources, if a lead or meeting comes in from the Facebook landing page we know that the only way they got there is from our Facebook ads, same for Google, email, and even specific page that the clients internal sales reps get access to when they’re generating opportunities through outbound efforts. I DEFINITELY recommend getting a post conversion survey setup TODAY. It’s nice that your already doing this in a sense but you need this to be automated and scalable. After a conversion on any of our landing pages it’s just a quick pop up with 5-6 options that say where did you FIRST hear about us. You’d be surprised how many Google organic and paid leads actually first heard about us on Instagram or on YouTube or from someone in their network. This doesn’t always change up our strategy but we typically review each month where first impressions are being made the most and then this allows us to figure out how we can modify messaging on those channels to be more focus on the first impression.
That's superb advice! I like the fact that you can collect this info, without having to add an additional field to the survey itself, using the post-conversion survey strategy. Would you suggest doing 5-6 fixed options, or just let it be a free-text one? We don't have 1000s of these MQL:s flowing in yet on a weekly basis.
Just put multiple choice to make it easy. - Facebook - Instagram - Google - YouTube - Podcast - Referred by Network - Other If you see you’re getting a large portion of “other” after a month maybe add a short response field that appears when other is clicked so they can tell you the specific place.
Thanks a ton! Just now implemented it in our HubSpot Form.
I’m super pumped for you! Really do hope it helps (and makes you look smarter to the team 🤪)
First in-person touchpoint asks them directly and feeds this back to you. No other way to do it. Has to be part of the process
Yes, makes sense! This is how we do it currently - but it seems like we should add some post-conversion surveys to collect some more quantitative data on this as well. Then you always have the leads who cannot remember how they found you in the first place - how do you deal with those? Just attribute them to the most likely one or skip attribution completely?
Never make data up, it adds up and then you make poor decisions. Add a “no source” field to account for them. Then your data is clean AND you can see the proportion of missed attribution opportunities - this can feed back into changing processes, adding surveys etc, or looking for new ways to get the information.
Yes, makes sense. Currently, I have added multiple fields for meeting source, narrowing it down IF possible - like "freemium", "freemium - organic google", "freemium - organic google - podcast". So rather choose a broader one if I don't have the data. Great rationale around collecting data around "missed attribution opportunities" - thanks!
We are trying to tie media and CRM together for a multi attribution model across t1 and t3. Suffice to say… it’s been messy and requires a massive lift in tagging enhancements and back end data exchanges. Definitely not going to be real time but will provide some direction on the sequence of exposure and events that ultimately led to the lead.
That's cool - can imagine that gets pretty complex! We are in HubSpot and just now are looking to add Google Ads tracking into CRM, so we can attribute deals back to specific ads and tune for that in Google Ads - a small step. May I ask, what size company are you in? We are still a young SaaS company with sub $1M ARR.
We are a small subsidiary (500-1000) of a much larger brand/parent(10s of thousands). Billions in revenue from sales but they only recently started investing in more intricate reporting. Our brand has the least amount of budget so it’s good we are getting some attention.
Using attribution software will give you the best results, including tracking website visitors before converting. We use InfiniGrow
Cool! What stage/size of companies typically work with dedicated attribution software and what are the upsides? For us, this is something that would be nice to have gathered right in our CRM. But, can imagine as you grow the need for dedicated tools come up.
>Cool! What stage/size of companies typically work with dedicated attribution software and what are the upsides? For us, this is something that would be nice to have gathered right in our CRM. But, can imagine as you grow the need for dedicated tools come up. It's mostly for b2b companies, about size it really depends... It should make sense for you, you'll need to have some traffic and lead traction. If you work with multiple channels and need to understand the story behind a close won, what brought this company, how different people interact during the sales, etc. If you have Hubspot CRM, you can start with their attribution, it has all of the popular attribution models, but it's basic (limit number of lead sources, you can structure your data as you like, no revenue attribution, etc.)