One-time wonders don’t work for marketers. In the marketing world, if you crack an ROI-driven strategy, you are supposed to repeat it over and over until it gets outdated.
However, there are multiple ad channels, including Google ads, LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads, and Reddit ads. And to build a profitable strategy, you need to know how these channels contribute to converting a B2B buyer.
This is where the multitouch attribution (MTA) concept comes into play. A multitouch attribution model estimates the weightage of different channels and touchpoints influencing a buyer’s decision-making. To estimate the effectiveness of your MTA model, you’ll need to estimate its conversion metrics.
This blog post will focus on the key multitouch attribution conversion metrics that help marketers allocate appropriate budgets in different B2B advertising channels.
4 B2B conversion metrics related to multitouch attribution
Understanding multitouch attribution and using it to develop a data-driven strategy is not for the faint-hearted. However, monitoring the appropriate conversion metrics is not impossible either.
Here are the top conversion metrics related to the B2B buyer journey in terms of multitouch attribution:
Conversion rate
In a B2B buyer journey, the conversion rate determines the percentage of users who completed a desired action out of the total number of engaged users. ‘Desired action’ could mean clicking on a specific CTA ( free trial, book a demo, or buy now), filling out a form (lead magnet forms, opt-in forms), or any other action.
For example, if your conversion for Instagram ads is 5% and that of LinkedIn ads is 3%, it is a clear sign that your target audiences are more active on Instagram.
These insights will help marketers optimize their ad campaigns by allocating the right budget to the right channel.
Return on Ad Spends (ROAS)
ROAS measures the percentage of revenue generated from an ad channel and the amount invested in it.
Return on Advertising Spend = Revenue Dollars / Advertising Spend Dollars
As an example, you invest $5,000 each on two ad channels: LinkedIn and Meta to generate $75,000 and $100,000 in product sales revenue attributed to LinkedIn and Meta ads, respectively.
| Meta | |
| Conversions: 3
Spend: $5,000 Revenue: $75,000 ROAS: 15 |
Conversions: 3
Spend: $5,000 Revenue: $100,000 ROAS: 20 |
The above table indicates that, for each $1 spent on the two platforms, LinkedIn generated $15 in revenue, while Meta generated $20 (even though both platforms show the same number of conversions).
Therefore, ROAS helps you make decisions regarding the profitability potential of different ad channels and groups to avoid overspending.
As a rule of thumb, if your ROAS > 1, you are at least covering your paid ads costs with sales revenue but are likely losing money after deducting expenses. Generally, a ROAS of 3 or above (meaning that every $1 spent on ad spend generates $3 in sales revenue) is considered reasonably good. What an ideal ROAS looks like can vary significantly depending on the industry, the type of business, the size of the business, the overall CPC/CPA in the category you’re bidding on, and so on.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Another major qualifier for detecting a campaign’s effectiveness is the total amount spent on customer acquisition (CAC). CAC measures the cost of acquiring new customers for different ad campaigns or channels.
CAC = (Sales cost + marketing costs) / # of customers acquired
Let’s consider another example.
| Channel | Spend | Number of customers acquired | CAC |
| $5,000 | 10 | $500 | |
| Meta | $5,000 | 20 | $250 |
LinkedIn:
- Spend: $5,000
- Conversions (new customers acquired): 10
- CAC = $5,000 / 10 = $500
Meta:
- Spend: $5,000
- Conversions (new customers acquired): 20
- CAC = $5,000 / 20 = $250
While both channels have the same ad spend, Meta acquired twice as many customers as LinkedIn. As a result, Meta’s CAC ($250) is half that of LinkedIn’s ($500).
CAC lets you rethink your acquisition strategies and empowers you to invest in cost-effective acquisition channels.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CLV measures a customer’s overall value during their engagement with your business. In the multitouch world, CLV measures long-term impacts on a customer, such as their retention potential, loyalty quotient, and the percentage of revenue they are likely to generate.
In a multitouch world, tracking the CLV associated with each customer will give you an idea of the potential of each channel and campaign to retain customers for a long time. With these insights, you can invest in optimizing different marketing touchpoints for more successful customer relationship management.
What’s next?
Measuring the B2B conversion metrics and deriving specific insights into your marketing campaigns can be exhaustive. Even a minor decision mistake could lead to overspending with zero ROI from ad campaigns.
That’s why you need expert assistance.
At NorthMetric, we work as your growth partner to help you build scalable lead-gen campaigns. We strategize performance marketing programs across native and targeted programmatic advertising through our network of DMPS and DSPs.
Want to know our process?
