Self-Reporting Solves Attribution - Trinity Nguyen - Hard Corps Marketing Show - Episode # 332

Marketers need to measure which channels actually drive revenue efficiently, but most attribution models are short-sighted at best. However, adding one little field to your forms can a big difference and we have a marketing leader from the world of SaaS to show us how it’s done. Trinity Nguyen is the Vice President of Marketing at UserGems and an industry thought leader. Trinity dives into the issues with attribution that B2B marketers face, why self-reported data is the most accurate source of attribution insights, and how to design personas that help your entire team. Busted Myths:Attribution doesn’t work! Only in extreme cases will a single touchpoint result in a deal, regardless of whether it’s the first or last touchpoint. Multi-touch attribution is more accurate but still falls short of painting the bigger picture. Takeaways:Even with the best available multi-touch attribution models set up with all of the best martech tools, marketers still won’t have accurate reporting for channels such as word-of-mouth and dark social.B2B sales cycles have grown by 24% and the buying group has increased from 7 to 12, meaning that channel attribution is only getting more complex. The challenge for marketers is now to track the journey of the entire buying group within a company.The most accurate source for determining attribution is self-reported attribution. Try adding an optional text field to your forms and ask leads where they heard about your company. You’ll be surprised by the quality of the responses, especially from marketers.Effective attribution doesn’t have to be fancy. Consider manually reviewing all of the “closed won” deals from last quarter and examining all of the touchpoints from any contacts associated with that deal. While not perfect, this can reveal great insights.Shortening your forms doesn’t mean that you need to miss out on the data from those excess fields. For example, there are many tools that can identify a lead’s title and seniority based on their email address, meaning you don’t have to ask them for those.To create useful personas, you don’t have to limit them by seniority or title. Use broader strokes to paint your personas. For example, one for marketers and one for salespeople.Although you treasure your data, with how often people change companies now, the accuracy of your data is constantly eroding. This means that when internal champions of your product switch companies, your email contact with them is cut off.  Quote of the Show:“Life is not a ladder, it’s flat and it's just full of people running their own path” - Trinity Nguyen Shout Outs:Udi Ledergor Gong Connect with Trinity:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trinitynguyen/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/trinity_nguyen UserGems website: https://www.usergems.com/contact UserGems LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usergems/  Ways to Tune In:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show/id1338838763Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/37228621-2f9c-4905-a223-1844effb49ddSpotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/1vVLpNI1LssMTiL6KdsamnStitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-showGoogle Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/m/Im7mytmu2wa2mekhoeixlja5hpe?t=The_Hard_Corps_Marketing_ShowYouTube: https://youtu.be/HBMzkIGigwA  Hard Corps Marketing is produced and sponsored by Ringmaster, on a mission to create connections through B2B podcasts. Learn more at https://ringmaster.com/