Most B2B companies’s websites play a vital role in their lead generation. It’s here that visitors download brochures or request quotations, for example. Account managers then enter into a dialogue with leads to identify opportunities or create client accounts. This process generally takes place away from the website, which means it’s not possible to link client accounts to specific marketing channels or campaigns within a digital analytics tool. Many B2B companies face this challenge.

Similarly, many companies use Google Ads, Facebook and other marketing tools to promote products and services to potential clients. To determine the returns on these marketing investments, accounts and opportunities need to be attributed to a corresponding marketing channel. Doing so reveals which channnels and campaigns are the most effective when it comes to new business and the turnover each channel is generating. Only when armed with these crucial insights is it possible for companies to futher optimize their marketing efforts.

The solution

As part of our Gio Coffee/Viteau project, Cloud Nine Digital recommended consolidating data using a visualization tool.

Their customers relationship management (CRM) system generates a general messaging platform (GMP) hit with a unique Lead ID. It’s this lead ID that akes it possible to consolidate data from their CRM system and Google Analytics (GA) within an analytics tool such as Power BI. This ensures that the right tool is used for the right purpose, for example, GA for online marketing data and the CRM system for sales data.

This solution has several benefits:

• Minimal data duplication
• Managable dataflows
• Correct attribution of opportunities/accounts to marketing channels
• Minimal investment in resources, e.g. development
• Future flexibility, e.g. upselling and crosselling

In short, this was the least expensive and most durable solution capable of providing Gio Coffee and Viteau with insights they required.

The setup

How are Gio Coffee and Viteau’s processes configured behind the scenes?

1. The GA ID assigned to a website visitor when requesting a brochure or quotation is forwarded to the CRM system (attribution).
2. The CRM system then generates a Lead ID and sends this – along with a GMP hit and the GA ID – to the GA servers.
3. Data from these systems forms the input for Power BI

Power Bi consolidates data from the various systems to visualize the performance of each marketing channel.