Looking Ahead to a Post Marketing Attribution World

If you’ve spent any amount of time in marketing, you’re likely very familiar with the concept of marketing attribution. It’s identifying which touchpoints or tactics led to a lead, a conversion, or a sale. Attribution tells us what’s working, what’s driving results, and where we should invest our resources.

Lately, though, I’ve been having second thoughts about this whole attribution thing.

Yes, attribution can be incredibly useful—at least theoretically. It promises clarity, accountability, and a neat answer to that nagging question: “What exactly did marketing do to help close this deal?” It’s comforting to pinpoint a specific webinar, email campaign, or social media ad as the magic catalyst behind a big win.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: attribution often falls short of delivering genuine insights that help you grow your business. Why? Because today’s buying journeys simply aren’t that linear.

Attribution: Proving Value or Improving Performance?

Here’s the real question we need to ask ourselves: are we using attribution primarily to prove our worth to stakeholders (hello, CFO and sales team!), or are we genuinely focused on improving our overall marketing performance?

If the goal is the former, attribution is great at ticking boxes. You can march into meetings with clean reports that say Webinar A drove five pipeline opportunities. But does knowing that really help you replicate your success?

Let’s dig deeper.

That webinar didn’t exist in isolation. There were likely multiple touches before it: social posts, emails, previous webinars, or even offline events. Attribution often ignores these critical interactions or, at best, undervalues them dramatically.

Today’s Buyer Journey is Complex

Today’s buying journey is far from straightforward. Buyers engage across multiple channels, over many months, and involve several stakeholders. Attribution tends to miss this nuanced, interconnected reality. How exactly do we attribute value to the relationship-building and trust-generation stages that buyers typically navigate long before they hit our measurable touchpoints?

Consider these questions instead:

• How many meaningful interactions does a typical deal require?
• How many stakeholders are genuinely involved in moving a deal forward?
• Which broader marketing channels—rather than individual tactics—consistently contribute to winning deals?
• What sets apart the deals we win from the ones we lose?

Attribution models, particularly those obsessed with “last-touch” or “first-touch,” rarely provide satisfactory answers to these questions. They’re overly simplistic in a world that’s anything but.

Zooming Out: The Bigger Picture

If we truly want to improve our marketing impact, we must shift our focus from isolated tactics to broader channels and campaigns. Instead of meticulously dissecting the contribution of a single webinar, we should identify patterns that consistently yield results across multiple prospects and deals.

Imagine you discover that deals frequently stall when accounts reach MQA (Marketing Qualified Account) status but haven’t had enough meaningful interactions. Traditional attribution won’t tell you that—but analyzing broader campaign engagement could.

With a wider lens, we can also identify which combination of channels best supports deals at critical junctures. Perhaps your successful deals consistently involve:

• A well-timed webinar to educate and build authority
• Personalized email nurturing that addresses specific stakeholder concerns
• Strategic social ads targeted at multiple decision-makers

Recognizing this combination is far more valuable than crediting success to any single tactic.

Moving Beyond Attribution

Traditional attribution frameworks often break down when faced with complex, multi-channel interactions. For instance, let’s say a field marketing event set up a sales call, and during that call, the prospect visits your website. Where does attribution place credit in this scenario?

The answer, unfortunately, is usually incomplete or overly simplistic. And that inadequacy reinforces why we must look beyond attribution to understand how buyers truly engage.

Instead of chasing the perfect attribution model, marketers should:

• Map entire journeys rather than isolated interactions.
• Analyze patterns and channels that consistently appear in successful deals.
• Collaborate closely with sales teams to understand nuanced engagement moments.
• Prioritize customer experience and relationship-building over easily attributable, but isolated, tactical wins.

The Role of Marketing in the New Landscape

Marketing’s true job isn’t just generating leads and opportunities—it’s guiding potential buyers through a complex web of interactions, building trust, and nurturing relationships at scale.

When you adopt this approach, your conversations with sales and leadership change. You stop trying to justify individual tactics and instead discuss strategic insights like:

• How many engagements are optimal before sales intervention?
• Which campaign sequences best nurture leads from MQA to SQL status?
• How to replicate relationship-building successes across accounts?

This elevates the role of marketing from mere lead generator to strategic revenue driver.

So, Should We Abandon Marketing Attribution Altogether?

Not necessarily. Attribution still has a place as one of many tools in your analytical toolbox. But it shouldn’t be your primary or sole source of truth. Instead, combine attribution insights with qualitative data, sales feedback, and broader engagement patterns to form a comprehensive, actionable picture.

Final Thoughts

I’ve felt skeptical about traditional attribution methods since the early 2010s—and now, as marketing continues to evolve rapidly, that skepticism only grows.

It’s time we stopped asking attribution to do a job it was never meant to fully accomplish. Instead, let’s lean into a more holistic, relationship-focused approach that genuinely reveals how buyers engage, what motivates their journey, and how marketing can best support them throughout.

If you’re struggling with attribution and feeling frustrated by its limitations, you’re not alone. Let’s shift the conversation away from narrow attribution models and toward understanding, optimizing, and replicating the broader patterns of successful customer journeys.

Because, ultimately, the goal isn’t just to attribute—it’s to truly understand.