A CEO's Guide to Marketing Attribution

When you think about it, marketing attribution is a wild topic because of the criteria, tools, implementation, and data consumption all vary greatly, and there is no single source of truth on the subject.

To simplify this topic, I've broken down the common phases of attribution in a company and provided some tips for CEOs and leaders.

The Phases of Attribution

When companies and products launch, their primary focus is on GTM. They need to get traction with prospects and customers before worrying about attribution.

It is common for companies to start with the basics and work their way up over time.

Phase 1: What brings leads

This one is pretty easy because tools like Google Analytics are quite ubiquitous, and people can understand the concept of setting up goal conversions.

You complete this first phase if you are tracking goal conversions in GA and have the tracking script on your site.

Phase 2: What brings qualified leads

The jump from phase 1 to phase 2 is pretty big for many companies and heavily depends on your tech stack.

Using a tool like Hubspot for marketing automation and CRM, you can get pretty good source data tied to a specific record and follow that record through to understand if it is qualified.