From Black Box to Growth Engine: Rethinking Marketing Attribution in B2B Tech

Attribution isn’t broken. Your funnel is.

When we first started Somebody Digital, one of the patterns that stood out immediately was how often enterprise B2B tech companies complained about “broken attribution.” But what we discovered, serving $100M+ SaaS clients across 16 markets, is that attribution itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was the funnel.

Marketing teams were running in silos — brand, performance, and demand teams each chasing their own KPIs. Every touchpoint became an isolated signal. Data existed, but it didn’t add up to insight. The result was what our clients called a “black box”: spend went in, but revenue impact came out as a guess.

“Marketing attribution doesn’t fail because marketers can’t track clicks,” says Michael McCann from Somebody Digital. “It fails because the marketing architecture underneath those clicks was never designed for how B2B buyers actually make decisions.”

The Enterprise Pattern: Why Marketing Attribution Feels Like a Black Box

Across large, international companies, even those with advanced marketing attribution software,  the same inefficiency repeats: disconnected systems, siloed data, and misaligned incentives. Leaders end up making decisions based on incomplete signals. Top-of-funnel activity gets underfunded. Mid-funnel engagement is undervalued. And pipeline growth slows.

The companies that break this cycle start by treating attribution as an operational tool, not just a reporting exercise. They rethink how data, strategy, and execution connect end-to-end.

Turning Attribution Modeling Into a Growth Mechanism

One of our B2B SaaS clients, a provider of enterprise workflow automation, faced this exact challenge. Their marketing team spent heavily on programmatic campaigns, content, and webinars — but last-touch attribution credited none of it. Sales reported that leads often cited “seeing their ads” or “reading the blog” early in the journey, but this wasn’t captured in the reports.

We partnered with them to rebuild the funnel:

• Data Integration: CRM, ad analytics, website metrics, and marketing automation consolidated into a single view.

   

• Model Selection: Hybrid multi-touch and account-level attribution that weighted awareness and engagement alongside last-touch.

   

• Influence Metrics: Engagement scores, webinar attendance, and frequency of exposure across buying committees tracked consistently.

   

Within six months, the results were visible. Hidden ROI emerged, marketing-attributed revenue increased by 35%, and cross-team alignment improved dramatically.

“Once we connected the funnel end-to-end, marketing attribution stopped being analytics,” notes Michael McCann from Somebody Digital. “It became a growth mechanism.”

Measuring Influence, Not Clicks

What we’re building at Somebody Digital isn’t just about measuring interactions — it’s about understanding influence. Top-of-funnel campaigns, content marketing, and thought leadership don’t always produce immediate clicks, but they shape decisions and accelerate pipeline.

With the right attribution tools and data integrations, companies can quantify how top-of-funnel campaigns and brand visibility shape pipeline outcomes.

The Future of Marketing Attribution in B2B

For B2B leaders, the lesson is clear: marketing attribution is only as good as the architecture behind it. Align teams, unify data, and focus on influence over interaction, and suddenly the black box turns into a growth engine.

• Defensible budgets for top-of-funnel marketing

   

• Cross-functional alignment between marketing, sales, and finance

   

• Improved strategic decision-making with clear revenue impact

   

“Every modern B2B marketing system should answer one question,” Michael McCann from Somebody Digital adds. “Where does influence originate, and how does it compound across the funnel?”