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REVENUE AT TRIBUTION KEY AS CMOS EMERGE
AS CORPORATE LEADERS
Marketing leaders today are increasingly assuming a stronger role in corporate leadership, and now
more than ever specifically in relation to revenue generation. In assessing CMOs, CEOs award higher
performance ratings than other C-suite executives give to their counterparts in marketing. In fact, their
ratings are higher than the CMOs give themselves. This belies previously held beliefs that CEOs lack
faith in their CMOs and suggests that they have the ear of their CEOs. Still, even though 83% of CMOs
say their company executives view marketing as a vital contributor to business value, most CMOs are
also missing valuable opportunities to collaborate with their peers in other departments.
Revenue attribution is that missing link. It matches customer sales and company revenue to specific
marketing outputs. For C-suite executives and especially for the CFO, it proves marketing's value and
contribution to the company 's bottom line. For marketers, it is hard evidence and confirmation of the
critical contributions they are making to their company 's growth and revenue. Revenue attribution
also allows marketers to speak the language of business, which is dollars and revenue. It allows them
to extend their reach beyond brand equity and engagement, which are important to marketers but not
necessarily to the rest of the company.
In this Insights Report, a follow-up to The Leadership Outlook on Revenue Attribution Survey
published in December 2020, we take a dive into an executive perspective on marketing's ability
to provide revenue attribution reporting. This Insights Report considers ways to influence key
collaborators and provide strategies to help your marketing teams create or improve upon marketing's
revenue attribution reporting capabilities.
Without a revenue attribution strategy, marketers will have a difficult time maintaining the level of trust
they currently enjoy. Keeping that trust requires a mechanism that enables marketers to quantify value
through trusted data and delivering true attribution reporting on marketing's impact.
Accurate and trusted revenue attribution provides marketing, as well as other executive leaders,
with the information necessary to improve decision making across the entire organization. It isn't
surprising, therefore, that revenue attribution is associated with a revenue lift of between 15% and 18%
for those companies that implement it, according to Forrester analyst Tina Moffet.
Despite the fact that the majority of marketers recognize revenue attribution as an imperative, many
still do not have a strategy in place. While often viewed as a marketing problem, the lack of a coherent
revenue attribution strategy is an organizational deficit that directly affects revenue.
More than ever, the onus is on marketing leaders to provide revenue attribution data, and this requires
both leadership and partnership as they lead the charge for change at their organization.
We've made it to the table. Now we have to deliver.
