Marketing Attribution Meets Financial Reality: A Guide for Growing Businesses

Why does marketing think they’re killing it and your money tree looks dead?

If you’re a growing business this is a problem you know all too well.

Sales teams bring in leads from marketing and rave about all of the pipeline they’re producing. Meanwhile finance reviews your financial reporting and wonders where all of your revenue went.

Basically…

Your marketing loves exists in Marketing attributionland and your finance team lives in financial reports hell.

The disconnect between marketing attribution and financial reporting is costing you growth.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How your Marketing Attribution is DESTROYING your Financial Reports
• The Financial (and Team) Impact Of Disconnected Data
• How to Connect Marketing Attribution and Financial Reality
• How to Choose the Right Financial Platform
• Making sure everything plays nice together.

Marketing Attribution Without Financial Reality is Siloed Guesswork

Your marketing team has probably been down the path of marketing attribution.

Marketing teams that employ attribution report up to 30% higher ROI on marketing spend. Score!

Well that’s what they think…

Marketing attribution tools track every funnel and pipeline your customers travel through on their journey to becoming a paying customer. You know how many clicks it takes to convert a lead. You know how much pipeline each campaign is driving.

What you don’t know is how much of that marketing pipeline actually makes it to your bank account.

Marketing Attribution Without Financial Data Leaves you Guessing

The problem is your finance team is looking at a whole other set of data.

Finance teams care about invoices sent and payments received.

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With two sets of completely different data…

Marketing thinks they created $500K worth of pipeline this quarter. Finance shows $200K of revenue booked. Now where did $300K disappear to?

Disconnected data costs your company real money.

When marketing attribution and financial reporting don’t connect you end up making decisions based on best guesses and you fall into these common traps:

• Budget is repeatedly allocated to bad performing campaigns that LOOK good in marketing reports but lose your business money.
• You miss out on funding the campaigns that actually create profitable customers.
• Leads to blaming and negativity between marketing and finance teams.

Time to Build your Attribution-Finance Bridge.

How to Connect Marketing Attribution and Financial Reality

Want to know exactly which campaigns are driving profitable revenue?

Stop guessing and connect marketing attribution with financial reality. Here’s how.

Align Around Shared Metrics

Communication is key.

Get marketing and finance on the same page by aligning around common goals and metrics.

Sprinkle in a few finance terms they don’t understand and BAM! Fight city.

Aligning around a common set of metrics you both care about is the first step to a unified view of your marketing performance.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to Lifetime Value (LTV) ratio. (Yes you’ll need data from finance to get LTV).
• How long does it take to turn marketing pipeline into revenue? (Tip: It starts at lead generation and ends with payment collected)
• Not just how much revenue a campaign drives, but how profitable it is.
• How long does it take to make bank on a marketing campaign? (aka marketing payback)

Map your Data

Here’s a secret…

You should be able to track the path of a single customer from their first interaction with your marketing touchpoint all the way to the bank deposit.

Ideally you have this view in your CRM and financial software.

In reality there are gaps in this process where your marketing attribution data stops connecting to your financial data.

Map out how a lead becomes a customer and where you can improve data connection.

Picking Software That Integrates

Pick platforms that integrate seamlessly.

I can’t stress this enough.

If you’re marketing tools don’t integrate with your financial reporting you’re headed for headaches.

You can avoid some pain by demanding your teams export data to a shared spreadsheet but that still requires someone to manually build reports.

At minimum you should be looking for platforms that connect through:

• APIs
• Unified view of a customer (same customer ID)
• Real time data sync
• Automated reporting

Software that doesn’t play well together forces you to create extra manual processes.

How to Choose a Financial Platform that Fits

Just like marketing tools. There is no one-size-fits-all financial platform.

You want to pick a platform that not only works for you now but will scale with your business.

Small businesses: If you’re just starting out or have small finances you can manage, cloud-based financial platforms are flexible and have minimal set up costs. They also allow you to get up-and-running quickly.

Businesses that are scaling: As you start to scale you’ll want platforms that can grow with you. Need to start selling in multiple currencies? Want more in depth reporting? Pick a financial platform with that functionality and integrations.

Complex: Every once in a while you run into a business that has more complex financial needs. Luckily there are enterprise versions of financial platforms with automated revenue recognition, project accounting, and multi-entity support.

Pick a financial platform that meets your businesses needs both now and in the future.

Making Sure Everything Plays Together Nice

Its one thing to connect marketing attribution to your financials, but how do you maintain this connection?

Keep these three things in mind:

Monthly Touch Base

Schedule a monthly meeting with marketing and finance to review:

• Which campaigns drove revenue.
• Where pipeline fell short.
• What data is still missing.

These meetings are crucial to improving your connection between marketing attribution and financial reporting.

Better Data

Clean data starts with defining data standards your teams adhere to. Have consistent naming conventions and required fields. Schedule regular audits to maintain clean data.

Real-time Automation & Reporting

Your business is constantly evolving. So should your marketing attribution and financial connection.

Don’t be afraid to test new attribution models and refine your financial reporting to better serve your businesses needs.

Wrapping it up

Liking marketing attribution reports that don’t connect to your bank account is like spinning your wheels.

Flying through financial reports without context from your marketing team’s efforts is like driving blind.

When you put two together properly you’ll finally see exactly which marketing activities are driving profitable revenue.

You’ll catch problems before they impact your cashflow.

You’ll encourage collaboration versus office politics between teams.

Best of all its 100% achievable.

Start tracking one campaign from marketing touch point to payment collected. Learn what works. Then rinse and repeat for other campaigns.