2024 will be an eventful year for B2B marketing analytics. We’ve been working with and talking to a number of CMOs and marketing leaders in the B2B technology industry. There are two B2B marketing analytics use cases that come up in EVERY conversation. Multi-touch attribution and Account-based Marketing. From Fortune 100s to Series A start-ups, marketing leaders want to understand what tactics are working and implement an effective account-based marketing strategy. Why?

Let’s start with Multi-touch attribution. The basic need is to attribute every marketing lead to a tactic and understand which tactics are producing the most leads. Most marketing leaders have gone beyond that basic approach. They are using B2B marketing analytics to understand the quality of the marketing lead (did it turn into a sales lead and ultimately a deal?). Importantly, they want to evolve even further, to understand all activities that influence revenue (marketing tactics, sales actions and service interactions) and model those in a comprehensive MTA solution. 

Their challenge lies in evolving the MTA models and the data that feeds them. Many tech CMOs are struggling with simplistic MTA models that are inaccurate. Inaccurate MTA leads to incorrect decisions on budgeting and tactics. In fact, when comparing basic and advanced MTA models, we have found that basic models have a margin of error of +/- 200%. That’s a wild swing! No wonder the ‘insights’ from basic models are often not trusted and used. Combine that with budget pressures and you have an environment in which poor decisions are almost guaranteed. 

That leads straight into Account-based Marketing. Many are struggling with analyzing what tactics are truly effective for each account. Their analysis of tactics comes from the company-wide MTA models mentioned above. Account-based marketing plans are often just derivatives of a generic corporate-level mix model, with minor personalization added to websites and content. What’s more, most marketing ops leaders are struggling with their data – matching orgs and linking them in a hierarchy, and deduplicating and cleansing contacts who work at those organizations. 

The underlying challenge with MTA and ABM is that the traditional marketing and sales cycle is dead. Traditional B2B marketing analytics is dead too. In B2B technology, there is a continuous flow of interactions across marketing, sales, and service that span pre and post sale. Revenue comes from usage. Upselling comes from expansion. Cross-selling occurs when products are utilized, effective and blend seamlessly together. In 2024, analyzing traditional “touches” or implementing simplistic ABM campaigns won’t work. 

Looking to improve their B2B marketing analytics strategy, CMOs are intrigued by Unified Marketing Analytics solutions. They are modular, data+analytic solutions that address specific use cases, such as Multi-touch Attribution and Account-based Marketing. They utilize modern data management processes using your existing data management technology, and add modern technology where required. These solutions use advanced analytics for more accurate insights and AI for decision support and recommendations. And they are “unified” because they integrate with one another. The insights from one flow into the other. MTA insights flow into a budget optimization solution. MTA results also flow into ABM analysis – enabling account-based MTA and budgeting insights. Using Unified Marketing Analytics, CMOs can achieve that mythic “exponential effect” from insights. 

In working with B2B marketing execs in high tech, we’ve developed a self-assessment tool for unified marketing analytics. Try the tool and get a baseline for your capabilities in data and insights and put them into action to jumpstart your data-driven marketing strategy. And if you’d like to chat with one of our Unified Marketing Analytics experts to validate your strategy and get an external perspective, just email us at info@qsparkgroup.com.