Episode 43 - Sumo Logic: Zoe Hawkins' on creating space for curiosity
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The customer journey is complex, especially for SaaS teams. If you cast a wide net when distributing content, you have a myriad of touchpoints where people find out about you. Figuring out which LinkedIn carousel, tweet thread, or newsletter can be attributed to a conversion is complex.
Still, understanding how content fuels the business better than anyone else is crucial for any content organization. Once you know which pieces of content are most influential, you can refine your strategy and amplify what works.
Below you’ll see firsthand how six content teams approach attribution.
The first method for tracking attribution is technical but fascinating. Tracey Wallace, Director of Content Strategy at Klaviyo, uses content-assisted MRR as one of her main KPIs.
Dive deeper into Klaviyo’s strategy by listening to the podcast:
“We’re responsible for reporting on content-assisted MRR (monthly recurring revenue), organic MRR, and content download MRR. Content-only MRR is usually a very small number, versus content-assisted, which takes into account the content org straddles both strategy and service.
Tracey continues, “A lot of our content gets used by our performance marketing, sales, and events teams. They take credit for metrics they drive through those channels, which means the work we did to produce that isn’t ours anymore. That changes when you can include the content-assisted revenue.”
Klaviyo uses their own software to capture content downloads and sessions. They’re moving their data over to Salesforce to get a more definitive view, but right now they use a measurement stick that’s “good enough.”
“Right now we’re triangulating the metric—anyone that comes to the website, any visitor who is not a lead or MQL, if they MQL within 60 days of landing on a content page or downloading a content asset, then we get to count that as a content assist if they close later,” Tracey explains.
Zeeshan Akhtar, Head of Marketing at Mailmodo, takes a multipronged approach to attribution.
“Tracking and optimizing can be a tough job. What eases our process of looking at the data is:
“We create content clusters and use the landing page as the touchpoint for attribution. We then create a funnel with this initial touchpoint and the conversion step (sign-up and demo). This shows what content is driving the top of the funnel that converts into signups over a period of 30 days.
“Other than looking at content clusters, we group the conversions by exact URLs, which helps us deep dive into the nuances of each page re: conversions. We have also built monthly dashboards and reports to look at what is important for us without having to build it again and again,” Zeeshan explains.
Mailmodo is an email marketing platform with a pretty clear marketing funnel: landing page (within a content cluster) → sign-up → demo. Since the funnel is straightforward (unlike some longer B2B buying cycles), they can use a single-touch attribution model.
Ryan Prior, Head of Marketing at Modash relies primarily on Amplitude to track content-influenced conversions.
“Amplitude tracks both our website and product activity so I can use it to see what users are doing before (which pages they viewed) and after the sign up (their usage/activation).
Ryan continues, “One simple way to check the impact of content on a KPI (like sign-ups or demo requests) is to check for users who viewed that page within X days of signing up. It’s not totally bulletproof, but you can be quite confident that those pages at least influenced the sign-up—and many (especially if they get high-intent search traffic) could be 100% responsible.”
This is a cool way to show how content as a whole is driving the business and moving things in the right direction. Amplitude has a free plan that includes core analytics charts like the ones above.
Naman Nepal, Founder, eCommerce growth agency Cove Commerce tactically breaks down how they set up first-click attribution reports in GA:
“We use the Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics, set the attribution report to "First Interaction," and report how the revenue and leads goals are pacing monthly.
“By focusing on a customer's first touchpoint with our content, we can identify which channels and pieces of content are most effective at driving initial engagement. We also get to see how long it takes for a prospect to land on the website and make a purchase, which gives us ideas on the type of content we should be producing more of to make an impact on the bottom line.
Naman continues, “Overall, we use first-click attribution reports on GA simply because it allows us to focus on what matters most—creating valuable, engaging content that connects with our target audience and drives real business results for companies we work with.”
This is a straightforward, popular way to track content attribution—focusing on a single touchpoint—in this case, the first piece of content a prospect lands on.
Kellie Davis, Director of Content Marketing at impact.com, a partnership automation platform, relies mainly on Google Data Studio for attribution.
“For organic traffic, we work with our SEO manager to view reporting through Data Studio. She holds monthly meetings to report keyword rankings, Google snippets, and other relevant organic search data. She also provides UTMs for links we use in infographics, ebooks, and other downloadable assets.
Kellie continues, “We work closely with our demand gen team to track how content performs in campaigns. We can scale content that performs well, and improve the content ecosystem by creating supporting material further down in the funnel. Additionally, we’ll assess high-performing content together and work on adjacent campaigns—such as turning case studies into customer story articles. Demand gen tracks content performance through Marketo campaigns.
“Additionally, we house our content library sourced by sales in Seismic. We can view which assets get used during stages of the funnel. We can also verify content throughout the customer journey in Salesforce through dashboards created by our marketing ops team,” she explains.
Like Klaviyo, working closely with other teams to keep track of attribution is important so the credit doesn’t get lost for the content org.
Levi Olmstead, Director of Content at Whatfix, explains how his team adopted a more refined way to track content attribution.
“Through the end of 2022, we had a few basic metrics to track attribution. Those include things such as sessions, contacts created from articles, and new opportunities created with the first source being content.
“We knew we were missing quite a bit with this model—and at the end of Q4 2022, we invested in a new content attributions tool called HockeyStack. It's a BI-type analytics tool that we were able to quickly integrate with our blog, build reports and goals, and start tracking more in-depth attribution.
“Now we can nail down "content-influenced" attribution to identify both contacts and companies that have engaged with any of our content at any time in their buying journey,” Levi explains.
These custom attribution tools can be an investment (HockeyStack starts from $949/mo for 10k visitors per month), but they do give a clear idea of how each piece of content drives the business.
Though it might be complex, attribution has to start somewhere! Start by using GA to track visits, page views, and other interactions with your content. Set up UTM links to know exactly where prospects came from. If budget and skills allow, enable custom tracking tools like HockeyStack or Amplitude.
Does your team have an interesting way to track content attribution? Reach out to [team at superpath dot co] and let us know!
P.S. Most of these crowdsourced answers came from Help a B2B Writer, a Superpath-owned platform that connects B2B writers with top-quality sources. Try it out and let us know what you think.
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Cierra is the Content Marketing and Community Manager at Superpath. You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.
