When Sales and Marketing Attribution Goes Wrong

November 27, 2012

Striving for greater efficiency with their sales and marketing dollars, organizations are always trying to draw a firm link between a dollar of spending and the corresponding dollar(s) of revenue. Thanks to technological developments, such as personalized links, A/B testing, and IP address tracing, organizations are finding that once immeasurable marketing campaigns or activities can now be optimized and compared against one another.

As an overarching movement, the quest for accountability using sales and marketing attribution is a good thing… I think.

However, the expectation that every action can and must be quantified by the sales it generates can be unrealistic and detrimental.

This is especially true in sales and marketing activities aimed upstream from the actual sale. One example is a brand awareness campaign, or its sales equivalent — a non-closing, lead qualification program. In either case, the revenues come so far downstream of the activity that attribution is practically unfeasible and rarely attempted.

Does the lack of a measurable ROI mean one isn’t there? Of course not. But in a misguided rush for accountability, organizations sometimes confuse the two.

This is a mistake. Early-pipeline sales and marketing activities should be evaluated critically, but if they’re fulfilling a business need, they shouldn’t be held to an impossible standard of revenue attribution.

In many ways, a sales and marketing organization is like a football team. A casual fan might attribute a team’s win to the player who scored the last-second touchdown. While it’s true that without that player, their team would not have won the game, a more nuanced understanding acknowledges a variety of factors and circumstances contributed to the team pulling out the win.

The player wouldn’t have scored without the linemen who blocked for him. Without a first quarter field goal, the team wouldn’t have even been in position to win on the last play of the game. And without practicing the play over and over again during the prior week of practice, it would never have been successful in the game.

Only one player will be attributed with the game-winning touchdown, but many other events were just as crucial in leading to the win. The trick is to strike a balance between accountability for performance when performance is directly measurable, and maintaining a healthy appreciation for the unsung heroes who indirectly contributed to the victory.

Football teams don’t ignore their supporting cast, and neither should your sales and marketing organization. Before you pull the plug on a marketing activity that isn’t leading directly to revenues, consider whether the ROI isn’t there, or whether you just can’t measure it. There’s a big difference.

Behavioral Data Analyst

Nick is a Behavioral Data Analyst at <a href="https://www.betterment.com/">Betterment</a>. Previously he analyzed OpenView portfolio companies and their target markets to help them focus on opportunities for profitable growth.