First, there is confusion among industry personnel on revenue attribution and marketing attribution. Are they the same? It feels terrible to break it, but they’re different. The B2B SaaS website marketing attribution measures a prospect’s engagement with the website and the buyer’s journey. On the other hand, revenue attribution measures marketing activities that increase B2B SaaS revenue growth. By combining marketing and sales data for revenue attribution, marketers can determine which campaigns is driving revenue. It’s important to note that revenue attribution relies on both data sources to determine which channels is driving revenue.
Why is Revenue Attribution Essential for B2B SaaS Companies?
The customer journey in a SaaS environment is a difficult procedure. Throughout the buying process, there are lots of decision-makers, touch points, and routes, and there is continuous involvement before an order is made. Revenue attribution does not focus on conversions only, which address one specific B2B SaaS lead generation, such as filling out a form or clicking a button but rather tracks all of the customer’s touch points throughout the journey. It then allocates the revenue generated from these touch points.
For B2B SaaS companies, it’s imperative to track revenue attribution so that marketers can see how different customer journey touch points impact revenue. This information can then be used to optimize marketing strategies and campaigns.
How Can B2B SaaS Companies Improve Revenue Attribution?
B2B SaaS companies can take several effective actions to improve their revenue attribution. Here are these.
1. Align Marketing and Sales Teams
Within an Inbound Marketing strategy, sales and marketing are often aligned. Such an alignment improves customer retention, closes rates, and increases B2B SaaS revenue growth.
To determine if you have the required alignment, ask the following questions yourself:
- Do our marketing and sales teams have an SLA; is it being reviewed quarterly or half-annually?
- Are there agreed-upon definitions for customer lifecycle phases?
- Is there a documented sales approach that describes the collaboration between marketing and sales concerning post-sales follow-up?
- Is the ownership of tools clear? Is that software communicating with one another?
- Are the marketing and sales goals aligned?
To align these two crucial aspects of your revenue stream, you should ensure that their goals are aligned, their definitions for lifecycle stages are shared, and that ownership of different tools is clear. This sort of organization will result in revenue growth.
2. Simplify Data Collection and Management
It is essential for B2B SaaS companies to quantify ROI. But, gathering data is one of the greatest difficulties in B2B SaaS marketing and sales. Having well-managed sales and marketing data sets is crucial for tying your efforts to revenue. Here are some tips to avoid data bling spots:
- Consider automating data collection wherever possible, including landing pages, conversions, and any other places that might create blind spots.
- Use filters to see SQLs, MQLs, and other data segments of revenue attribution.
- Ensure the integration of systems and tools; also, make sure that the customer lifecycle data is transferred.
3. Centralize Data Reporting
Having your CRM, marketing automation and even website all in a single platform makes things easier. It is vital that these systems communicate and seamlessly transfer data to ensure mission success. Marketing and sales must have end-to-end visibility into lifecycle data from prospect to customer.
Pro Tip: It is beneficial to create a spreadsheet that displays all the tools and technologies employed throughout the company and who is responsible for them. This is a fantastic method to track all the data points that must be linked to guarantee accurate reporting.
4. Employ the Right Technology
I still remember trying to map customer journeys using Salesforce, Google Analytics, HubSpot, subscription billing software, and our homegrown CMS in order to report on attribution in a HubSpot dashboard; It felt like Sherlock Holmes every time when I’m in the data.
Every month, I looked for clues, reason, and effect, peeked for opportunities, and tried to determine whether they had been exposed to marketing before the sales team took the lead responsibility. It took significant time and effort, but still, I wasn’t certain that I was reporting the right thing.
Attribution modeling and reporting have come quite a distance; now, there are effective tools that simplify the process. It’s critical to choose the right technologies to automate how and where data is collected but also by merging the data in a central location.
You can pick among the following B2B SaaS management tools:
- Younium
- HockeyStack
- Bizible
- Neustar
- Attribution
- Adjust
Ending Note:
It requires dedication, investigation, and fine-tuning to optimize your B2B SaaS revenue attribution. Aligning your sales and marketing teams, collecting data more efficiently, and employing required technology are just a few of the crucial steps you can take to improve your SaaS revenue attribution.
