The Challenge
The client, a B2B Cyber Security Provider selling workforce planning tools to mid-sized firms, closed around thirty deals a quarter at contract values ranging from £15k to £200k. While this sparse sales series ruled out marketing mix modelling, every buying journey was richly tracked and linkable at account level through the CRM.
However, marketing reporting stopped at the lead form, meaning paid search and gated content claimed all credit for sign-ups. Meanwhile, webinars and LinkedIn activity that sales reps kept hearing about in discovery calls registered barely anywhere, causing quarterly budget conversations to go round in circles.
The business needed to identify which specific activities built qualified pipeline across a slow three-month sales cycle.
The Solution
An audit of the client’s CRM and marketing platforms confirmed that touchpoints could be linked to accounts rather than individuals, an essential step given that a typical deal involved three or four stakeholders researching independently before a demo was booked.
A data-driven attribution model was built on those account journeys to distribute credit across every digital touchpoint preceding a qualified opportunity, choosing qualification over raw lead forms as the outcome that mattered. Anchoring the model to opportunities put early-journey activity on an equal footing with conversion campaigns harvesting demand, while a three-month look-back window kept slow-building journeys intact.
The resulting attribution insights were integrated monthly inside the client’s existing CRM reporting for joint review.
The Impact
Webinars emerged as the most under-credited activity, appearing in over half of qualified opportunities despite claiming no credit in lead-based reporting. Conversely, paid search largely harvested demand created by earlier touchpoints, converting few unique sign-ups into actual pipeline.
Reallocating spend towards pipeline-building activities cut cost per qualified opportunity by 21% over two quarters, with total pipeline value holding steady on a slightly reduced budget.
Both teams now operate from the same account-level evidence, removing the legacy lead-quality friction from quarterly planning.
Key Takeaways
- Attribution Where MMM Cannot Reach - Thirty deals a quarter ruled out aggregate modelling, while rich account-level tracking made journey attribution reliable.
- Accounts, Not Individuals - Stitching touchpoints across the three to four stakeholders in each deal captured journeys a person-level view would have fragmented.
- Qualification as the Outcome - Crediting touchpoints against qualified opportunities rather than lead forms put early-journey activity on a fair footing.
- Commercial Results - Cost per qualified opportunity down 21% with pipeline value held on a smaller budget.
Tools and Techniques
- Multi touch attribution
- CRM and marketing platform audit - validating multi-stakeholder mapping and tracking consistency
- Data-driven attribution (Markov chain) - calculating account-level removal effects across a three-month window
- SQL - extracting and transforming touchpoint and opportunity tables
- R - handling data and algorithmic attribution models
- HubSpot - CRM integration and reporting
Related services
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