Tracking the Cost of Sales and Marketing: Fresh Thinking

Posted on August 30, 2012 by | 15 Comments |

Time is money, so they (still) say, and we all want to spend our time on the activities and channels that we trust to deliver results. If this is something you’re thinking about right now, Ruth P. Stevens’ recent post on attribution is worth a read. I’ll summarize it here, and you can read the rest of it on Target Marketing for a deeper dive.

The overarching big questions are:

  1. How do my prospects buy, and how can I make their journey easier, faster, and more likely to result in a sale for my company?
  2. What’s the ROI on the sale, meaning how much sales and marketing investment do I need to close the piece of business?

In online digital marketing, marketing attribution analysis is useful, and it’s possible in a way that’s harder in the offline world. The four main techniques used are:

  1. First touch, last touch: Credit for a sale or conversion goes to the media channel that acquired the prospect (the first touch) OR the channel immediately before the outcome (the last touch). B2C may look more to last touch; B2B to first touch, as that information supports where to spend prospecting dollars.
  2. Weighting: All recorded touches are weighted equally, or according to some factor that has influence (such as where they occur in the funnel). In complex B2B cycles, which involve serial touches to multiple contacts through multiple channels (some perhaps offline and hard to capture), this can get murky.
  3. Modeling: Statistical analysis of purchase patterns against touch sequences can show high-level trends, but doesn’t help much with on-the-ground decisions about how best to construct a series of touches. Few B2B marketers are doing this.
  4. Test and control: The most reliable method of sorting out the impact of an isolated single variable. But the real world is a messy, difficult place to do research.

Ruth goes on to conclude that because the B2B marketer operates in such a complex environment, “a zillion touches are going to go into the selling process.” She recommends not trying to track credit for every single touch, but applying attribution analysis to two more important concerns:

  1. Gain insight into the buyer’s journey: Not for assigning credit to any particular touch, but for understanding how better to identify prospects, engage with them, build a relationship, fend off competitors and get the sale, faster. Note that “buyer” means an account, not an individual contact.
  2. Evaluating and improving the cost of selling: Track marketing and sales expense by account, and then analyzing the data by product type, by industry and other variables.

Ruth ends by underlining that these last two practices—understanding your buyer’s journey and understanding the expense of gaining an account by sectors you can invest in are where attribution analysis can really add value in B2B.

What’s your experience? Do you have tracking or attribution methods that work particularly well for you? Let us know, in the comment section below.


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  • http://www.mybusinessintegrated.com Chris Kiersch

    I would also consider reviewing how are they find you, are you also using trackable phone number so you can measure the conversion of phone calls. Which search strings are driving online conversions and are they the same as the search terms that are driving phone calls? We are using a tool for http://www.ifbyphone.com to track our calls.

  • http://www.iGrafx.com Guedo Fanony

    We use the integrated Salesforce CRM with Act-On to track a lot of our sales funnels. If we send out emails to a select group of our database, we can see as soon as people come to the site and download collateral, once they get enough to raise their lead score to a set level, our sales teams are notified and they get it touch in a very timely fashion. This definitely helps the process be much more successful.

  • http://www.jacobcurtis.co Jacob Curtis

    Just by simply asking the lead or newly acquired client how they heard about you and what influenced their decision to choose your company can provide you valuable insights. This is especially important in evaluating the ROI of social media. For example if you are running Facebook ads or have a engaged fanpage, asking them if they are a fan or if their purchase was in response to a promotional post will help you determine the success of your campaigns.

  • Nuala

    This article is helpful. Calculating the ROI on the sale is one of the biggest challenges for our department. I’d be interested to hear how others are dealing with the complexity of tracking online & offline touches. We tend to meet the same prospects at different seminars and conferences throughout the year so it’s difficult to attribute the sale to any particular event.

  • Tim

    Some great points here. I have found that a post-sale follow-up interview with customers is very helpful for determining a lot of this information and give god intel to adjust marketing efforts. I ask questions pertaining to the buyer’s journey. What information was most helpful? What information was not readily available or not available at all? What information or content do you wish our website would have provided that it didn’t? Is there any part of our website or resources that just isn’t valuable or necessary? What did the sales team not cover or explain well? Is there any marketing and sales information that our competitors offered that we didn’t but should? You can learn a lot from new customers to help marketing do a better job aligning content to the buyer’s journey and ultimately increase ROI by offering more pertinent information and avoid wasting time creating content that might not matter.

  • Jeff

    All great points here. Jacob made a good suggestion on determining the success of your campaigns by asking a client how they heard about you as well. We just started using Act-On and it makes it really simple to track all of your data. Very easy to use too!

  • Dani Calvert

    Gaining insight into the buyer’s journey is key – all accounts are different, and they likely go through different purchasing paths. By better understanding the buyer’s journey, we can invest in what’s important and add significant value in B2B. We love tracking our data in Act-On – it’s simple and intuitive.

  • http://www.taos.com Dave Gross

    It is definitely something we all struggle with inside the B2B space. How do we see the ROI on the investments we make in a multi-layered approach? How do you unite the different sales groups in a “win” and then give out compensation to one or the other? I would love to hear any comments on what others are doing in this instance.

  • http://overnitecbt.com thomas craft

    We are a B2B and this information was helpful, especially the emphasis on weighting and modeling.

  • Greg Palmer

    We have a particularly involved sales cycle and require a pretty good relationship to turn a prospect into a buyer. As such, attributing the conversion to the sales function isn’t terribly difficult. The hard part is tracking the prospects that don’t turn into buyers. There are any number of reasons this can happen and making sure we are on top of where in the funnel and why they are leaving is important. Like some others above, we’ve found that simply asking questions of prospects allows us to gain quite a bit of useful information–both positive and negative.

  • Bobby Holt

    In the B2B business world you aren’t afforded the luxuries of traditional marketing. Ads don’t really have a place in that sphere, so you’re required to think outside the box. Your ability to think about new strategies and realize what works and what doesn’t is the ultimate deciding factor between sinking and swimming.

    • Craig Dykstra

      I agree. I think that traditional ads have a place but they are not enough. In today’s world, we don’t have to fudge the numbers anymore. We have can gather all the information we need for campaigns that are highly interactive and half the cost of traditional. Gone are the days of 1+1 = 3. The tools that are out there right now allow for marketers to take responsibility for their actions and are accountable for them.

  • http://twitter.com/matthewmilad Matt A

    Insight into the lead’s problem at hand is critical. Offering the information they are looking for and having a well-built and well SEO optimized website is critical for getting leads to the site and in the right place.

    • http://twitter.com/kdelucia22 Kristen DeLucia

      Matt, you make a really good point about knowing what problem the lead is trying to solve. We use buyer personas to outline what our prospect is looking for and then create a relevant path through the site to move them through their journey.

  • http://twitter.com/LisaLaura Lisa L

    I agree with Matt, a marketing plan with your service as the solution is great, but it’s those fine details of the lead’s problem that make that critical connection and it’s tracking that gives your approach traction for future exploration and testing.

About Sherry Lamoreaux

Sherry's title is Marketing Writer/Editor for Act-On. She writes/edits blog posts, emails, case studies, white papers, articles...any kind of words on paper (or screen). She is an award-winning creative writer.

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