This article first appeared on my LinkedIn profile on February 4, 2025.
“Our ads aren’t working.”
“We spent $5,000 this quarter and didn’t get any SQLs from it.”
“Sure, they came to our site the first time 6 months ago from an ad, but we talked to them at a tradeshow last week. That’s why they signed.”
These are just a few examples of the conversations I’ve had or heard from executives when it comes to understanding the effectiveness of online ads.
The flawed state of B2B attribution
For about 10 years, marketers had a golden age of attribution where we could measure almost anything and attribute it to a specific tactic or deliverable. While we still have a lot of tools and measurements at our disposal, the idea that every single dollar can be attributed to a click and conversion is in the rearview mirror.
And when it comes to B2B companies with longer sales cycles, this gets even trickier. We’re throwing in things like buyer’s journey, multi-touch attribution, and omnichannel marketing, but leadership still wants to measure online ads like a direct-to-consumer click-to-purchase model. That idea is set up to fail from the onset.
The problem with short-term focus
We miss the long-term impact of campaigns by focusing on short-term conversions. Leads may take several months to move through the journey, and attributing their conversion from form fill to SQL to a specific ad within a quarter will almost always fail.
If you know it typically takes a salesperson 12 months to close a lead, why would you expect someone who filled out a form in January to sign a $250,000 contract by March 31?
How a lot of Marketers and Execs are currently looking at ad performance
This short-sighted approach leads to bad decisions, such as reducing the needed budget or cutting off campaigns that are generating valuable leads but haven’t converted within the short attribution window.
Another issue with the current attribution model is the neglect of brand marketing. B2B companies often hyper-focus on performance marketing, targeting only the 3% to 5% of in-market buyers. These buyers are extremely hard to reach, and even when we do, it doesn’t change the length of the sales cycle.
We have to look at ads for brand and performance differently, knowing that brand is meant to generate awareness that you exist and performance is meant to get them to take immediate action. But that action is more like downloading a case study or scheduling a call–not signing a contract for a complex service.
How it works in the real world
- December 3: Prospect clicks on a search ad and visits 2 pages on the website and leaves
- January 4: Clicks a retargeting ad, visits one page on the website and leaves
- January 5: Clicks on a search ad, visits 3 pages and fills out a form saying they are interested in services
- January 5: Salesperson calls and tries to schedule a meeting, but the prospect won’t commit. The Salesperson emails some information
At this point, there is some back and forth with sales trying to get a meeting on the books but the prospect isn’t ready to talk just yet and wants more information.
- February: Prospect opens monthly newsletter
- March: Prospect opens monthly newsletter and registers for a webinar
- April: Prospect attends webinar
- May 13: Prospect emails asking for a meeting
- June 4: First meeting with prospect
After this meeting, the prospect is now considered an SQL
- July 15: Prospect becomes a client
This is a slightly oversimplified and condensed version of how I’ve seen this play out repeatedly. And some executives will argue that the ads didn’t lead to the deal. It was the webinar or the calls–ignoring the impact of the other touchpoints.
Whether you use first-touch, last-touch, or multi-touch attribution, every touchpoint has an impact. In the above example, the prospect may have never known the company existed if it weren’t for the search ad. Does that mean the search ad led to the conversion? No, but would the rest of it have even happened without it?
A more holistic approach
B2B marketers need to adopt a more holistic approach to understand the effectiveness of paid ads. We should track conversions over an extended period, considering the entire customer journey from initial awareness to closing the deal. If someone visits your site in Q4 2023 from an ad click and becomes a client in Q1 2025, your ads worked, but if you’re only looking at performance in the quarter for that quarter, you will never know that.
How Marketers and Execs should be looking at ad performance
By adopting a more holistic approach and incorporating brand awareness into the paid media strategy, B2B advertisers can better understand the effectiveness and drive better long-term results. They can also build stronger relationships with potential customers and nurture them through the sales process, leading to increased conversions and revenue.
It’s time to ditch the flawed and outdated attribution model and embrace a more comprehensive approach to measuring the effectiveness of your paid ads.
If you’d like to learn more about our approach and how we can help with your B2B ads strategy, contact us to start a conversation with a strategist.
