How G2 Partnerships are Helping B2B Marketers Solve Complex Attribution and ROI Measurement Challenges

Sometimes it’s not about the data you collect, but what you do with it once you have it.

And oftentimes, sales and marketing teams are juggling various data points from complex buyer journeys while feeling unsure how they can drill into these numbers to pinpoint their next best action.

One way to get clarity on customer journey data and the countless touchpoints along the way is to integrate buyer intelligence data with a marketing attribution platform. This is especially important when you consider that the research stage in the buyer journey is the longest buying stage overall. In fact, more than a third of buyers (34%) mentioned in our Buyer Behavior Report that research is the longest stage in their buying process.

Companies use marketing attribution platforms to determine how actions, engagement events, or touchpoints during the prospecting and sales processes contribute to the success of their marketing and sales teams. Three of these tools, Dreamdata, Factors.ai, and Hockeystack, now integrate with G2, using mutual customers’ G2 Buyer Intent data to bring the buyer activity and research taking place on G2 into the attribution and account intelligence dashboards that these platforms offer. The purpose of these integrations is to reveal in-depth journey analytics of companies within an ideal customer profile (ICP), and determine G2’s role in impacting the multichannel buyer journey. 

Each platform uses first party (e.g. website visits), second party (e.g. G2), and third party (e.g. LinkedIn advertisements or 6sense) data, to unite a company’s entire go-to-market data stack and highlight holistic maps of all touchpoints.

Currently, this offering is available for mutual customers of G2 and any of the three platforms  Some of these platforms, like Dreamdata, include a freemium version of their product to reveal a portion of the platform’s value and integration with G2. 

Why you should use G2 with an attribution platform

Mutual customers that bring G2 intent signals into multi-touch attribution platforms including Dreamdata, Factors.ai, and/or Hockeystack can view and analyze holistic journeys across the G2 universe, in pre- and post-sales. 

Adopting these attribution platforms is more important than ever, especially when you consider that multi-touch attribution is easier said than done. With so many complexities, companies armed with these platforms and integrations can simplify how an attribution model is built, creating more transparency and visibility for everyone involved. 

Using an attribution platform provides a timeline of activity that occurs on G2, plus every other signal from a third or first party data provider. Having this attribution view makes it easier to analyze a user’s journey over a set period of time. For instance, when a user interacts with G2 leading up to a purchase, the platform will attribute a portion of the overall revenue to G2, which guides the customer in calculating the return on investment (ROI) from their intent data investment.

In addition to calculating their ROI, customers can create automated workflows to act on their most valuable audience. Marketing attribution platforms can streamline use cases like building audiences and triggering sales engagement email outreach to engage the right audience at the right time.

There are several benefits to activating a marketing attribution platform. 

Unify your go-to-market data

The ability to see G2 Buyer Intent data  on accounts in the active or pre-pipeline stages can set teams up for success. 

Having these insights makes it possible to:

• View number of impacted opportunities by G2 Buyer Intent signal types 
• Validate G2 Buyer Intent data’s impact on account influence
• Understand the value of each Buyer Intent signal and their correlation to driving subsequent engagement or conversions 

Analyze and report on your data ROI

It’s crucial to discover the ROI and impact of your G2 investment across every stage of your funnel. Users can compare its performance against other marketing efforts, from paid campaigns to offline events, so you can optimize your spend and confidently report on results.

Having these insights makes it possible to:

• View the number of impacted opportunities by G2 Buyer Intent signal types
• Validate  G2 buyer intent data’s impact on account influence
• Reveal ROI by marketing channels for new business opportunities and existing customer review

Inform and optimize sales and marketing activation

Finally, utilizing these attribution partners will create automated workflows from the “low-hanging fruit” opportunities based on specific G2 engagement. Users can also distribute marketing channel spend by focusing on the signals and touchpoints that convert at the best, or highest, rates.

How G2 integrates with attribution partners

The Marketing Attribution partner will receive G2 Buyer Intent data from G2 through a unique identifier API (application programming interface) Key. Each signal sent to the partners contains the URL (the page where the intent data occurred), company name, company website, location, and session time. The partner then maps every intent signal through a timeline view, surfacing relevant touchpoints to corresponding accounts in the platform. 

For example, G2 Buyer Intent and Dreamdata enables marketers to prove and scale the impact of G2 data at every stage of their funnel. 

Thanks to the G2 API Token setup, Dreamdata collects and models co-to-market data, making it easier for B2B marketing teams to visualize every G2 touchpoint in an account's journey with the Dreamdata’s Customer Journeys timeline. This integration can also measure ROI of G2 spend, use data to build custom audiences, and reveal the companies with high-intent signals.

With Factors.ai, users can maximize ROI from sales and marketing efforts by gaining full visibility into account journeys. Factors.ai unifies signals from website visits, G2 profiles, and more, showcasing a complete, clear picture of what prospects are doing and when. Having this visibility makes it easier to identify, qualify, and prioritize high-intent accounts more effectively, while also segmenting high-intent accounts visiting G2 and activating them through various channels. 

And with Hockeystack, users can see various reports, including their proprietary funnel report, which shows data for the buyer journey stages that can be customized by each user. For example, users can see the steps for a journey that involves searching on G2, followed by a page visit, which becomes an MQL, then pipeline, then a closed-won deal.

Use cases for using G2 with an attribution platform

For sales and other go-to-market roles, these marketing attribution platforms offer visibility into a company’s interests and interactions, so teams can take informed action to engage and convert the company. Buyer intent signals, website interactions, content download, ad views, and more, are all aggregated in a single view.

Altogether, bringing G2 into a marketing attribution platform allows teams to build attribution across all organic and paid channels for a better understanding of which channels have the highest impact on conversion, sales cycle speed, deal size, and more. Incorporating G2 intent signals into the journey analytics calculates the impact of your G2 investment, and builds the highest performing, most efficient revenue engine.

Sales teams who integrate G2 Buyer Intent to marketing attribution platforms can:

• Build a holistic attribution model inclusive of all buyer journey touchpoints to invest in
• Measure the impact of G2 on your buyer’s journey before and after a company enters the pipeline
• Calculate customer and prospect revenue influence from G2
• Optimize your buyer and customer engagements 

Key metrics from customers who utilize marketing attribution platforms

Customers of all shapes and sizes can see success when pairing G2 with a marketing attribution partner.

For instance, check out the Factors.ai ebook on how to turn G2 Buyer Intent Data into go-to-market action. Some successes they’ve seen are:

• Roughly 17.5% of accounts identified by G2 as showing intent will visit the product’s website for further research.
• Nearly 13.5% of paid search traffic also showed some activity on G2.
• Roughly 5% of accounts visiting from paid search went on to submit a form. Compared to this, accounts reported by G2 and then later detected on the website convert at 8.31% - a whopping 67% higher conversion rate than paid search traffic.
• G2 Buyer Intent accounts have a 60% higher chance of converting to a deal than all outbound accounts.
• The Average Contract Value for G2 Intent Accounts was 23% higher as compared to All Outbound Accounts.

In addition to Factors.ai, Dreamdata also released a benchmark report on how they measured G2 Intent Data impact on B2B buying journeys. Some impressive results from this report include:

• Of the hundreds of deals analyzed, the data found that 12% of closed won deals have a G2 signal appear in the organization’s journey before closing date, confirming G2 signals are important enough to pay close attention to, especially when we consider the deal size where G2 shows up.
• The value of deals with a G2 signal are 2x larger than the average deal size.
• On average, there are 3 G2 touches in successful buying journeys.
• G2 Comparison signals have 3x more influence than Product signals. Comparison signals influenced almost 15% of closed deals per session, which represents over 3x more than Product (Profile) signals, and 5x more than Category signals.

The perfect pairing

Some things are just better together, like G2 paired with a marketing attribution partner. Investing in both G2 and an attribution platform can go a long way in knowing more about your customers, their data touchpoints throughout the buying journey, and more.