Don’t have it? Don’t worry, you’re not alone – most companies don’t have a solid attribution reporting process set up. Also, it doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds; just take it one step at a time!
Now, more than ever, marketing leaders NEED to know what investments are producing revenue, and which are not performing as well. If you are the CMO or marketing leader, your role in this process is to step back, forget about report design or fields, and just answer the question, “What information do I need to make strategic decisions right now?” This information may be able to help you figure out where you can cut your budget with minimal impact on your bottom line. Or it might be that this information will help you redesign your strategy for 2020 – whatever you had come up with for January likely doesn’t apply right now!
Many companies right now have been forced to focus solely on revenue generation for 2020 and not beyond. If this is your situation, request that your reports are framed within the appropriate time constraints – you only want lead sources where leads typically move from MQL to SQL within a few weeks/months. You only want opportunity sources that convert in 6 months, not longer. These are important factors to think through when creating your request for information.
Analyst lead – your turn! Time to ask your marketing leader more questions to clarify the request and determine full reporting requirements. Then you get to the fun part – diving into your systems to explore:
The systems you have – do they cover capture, tracking and reporting?
The data fields you have – are they clean, standardized and populated?
Are your systems integrated, and are the integrations setup properly to derive the information you need?
We could go on, but for now, you need to put one foot in front of the other and get started!