Why you shouldn’t chase marketing attribution (and what you should do instead)

Hot take: Chasing marketing attribution creates more problems than it solves for enterprise B2B startups and scaleups.

This is because of “The Attribution Theater” 

1️⃣  Success makes attribution irrelevant. If you’re hitting your pipeline goals and the company is doing well, nobody cares about attribution.

2️⃣  Failure makes attribution dangerous. If you’re missing targets, attribution isn’t going to help you achieve them.

Instead it becomes a weapon for:

☹️ Sales vs. Marketing useless finger-pointing

☹️ CEO / CFO micromanagement of channel spend

☹️ False precision in diagnosing real issues

Here’s what to do instead –The scaling founder / VPM “attribution playbook” 

✔️ Install “good enough” tracking

1. Implement basic last-touch attribution to satisfy board / CEO / CFO reporting
2. Never let attribution debates consume >5% of team bandwidth

✔️ Focus on what matters

1. Channel wins – lean into channels that work, kill what doesn’t
2. Sales cycle compression – improve this through enablement and better sales / marketing collaboration, not attribution math.

The bottom line

Stop debating attribution – implement last-touch to quiet the board, then obsess over hitting pipeline goals and winning deals. 🥇

Further reading

• Why Last Click attribution is (almost) always the way to go
• What’s working in Enterprise B2B marketing right now: Updates to our marketing myths
• Why I don’t believe in A/B tests (and what to do instead)
• Busting the most common B2B marketing myths