Survey: Many Marketers Still Struggling with Revenue Attribution

Being able to attribute revenue has several benefits for marketers, but new research shows that there are still many barriers in the way to success in this area.

Ascend2 recently published the results of its “Revenue Attribution Outlook Survey,” and statistics showed that some of the top benefits of having a revenue attribution strategy include being able to make better decisions (59%), marketing and sales alignment (43%) and increased campaign effectiveness (37%). However, data quality (42%), analyzing marketing impact at each buyer stage (40%) and obtaining budget and staff (36%) are still providing to be hurdles for marketers.

Interestingly, social media marketing (47%) has proven to be the most difficult channel to analyze for attributing marketing results to sales revenue. Other channels that made the list were content marketing (40%), video marketing (35%) and email marketing (33%), proving that marketers continue to find difficulty with attribution in varying areas.

Marketers’ Dedication to Social Media Marketing

Despite the challenges with attributing revenue to social media marketing, in particular, previous research shows that marketers are still dedicating a good chunk of their budgets toward this channel.

The American Marketing Association conducted the “Techlash is Here” report, and data suggested that the majority of average ad spend in the U.S. (18%) now goes toward social media. This is followed by email (13%), websites (12%) and streaming video/radio (5%).

Most marketers are putting their social media marketing funds toward Facebook (34%). Instagram (14%), YouTube (13%) and Twitter (13%) also made the list, followed by LinkedIn (12%) and Snapchat (6%).