B2B marketers have struggled with the mystery of their "direct" traffic, with 71% of website visits left unexplained. While this traffic likely stems from a mix of marketing efforts, a clearer solution is emerging—offering hope to finally unravel this challenge.
B2B marketers have been plagued for years by an inability to determine the source of 71%* of their web site traffic. Sure, lots of people may type in your website and actually visit “direct”, but when the customer segment is isolated to understand net new, the source(s) of the vast majority remain unknown and get ignored.
The negative impact of ignoring the largest customer signal is far reaching with attribution models leading to the wrong conclusions (#marketingops), campaign performance grossly understated (#digitalmarketing), and internal credit for deal and pipeline influence misrepresented (#marketingleadership). While we all inherently know that the actual source of traffic is likely driven by a myriad of hard and soft investments in organic social, display advertising, email, direct mail, content syndication, video and even CTV; the allocation is largely misunderstood. How should it be allocated? Don’t wait for A.I. to tell you, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Enter “View-Thru” Technology
There are several ways to uncover which digital asset or program (including offline) that drove that engagement with your company.
Pixel technology with native account intelligence that time stamps first impressions and the subsequent path to your web property is certainly one way. This has been proven successful to show that the view-thru attribution of display ads can generate 4-7 times the attribution vs. visit from ad clicks. But ignoring the view-thru attribution in this simple example, the cost per visit is likely to be overstated by 70%+. Hard to make decisions with confidence if this happens to be the case at your company.
Email, whitepapers, video also contribute to the direct channel with digital footprints that can and should be understood. While you may first think that this does not work for offline channels like direct mail, events or dinners … think again. Time stamping events and then mapping account activity immediately following those activities can reveal obvious attribution to those channels or vendors previously unknown.
What about the “Dark Funnel”?
Engagement generated from social activity, like this post or blog, plays a major factor in driving direct traffic with no credit given back to the source, channel or person. I personally love to see the most active companies reading my LinkedIn posts to see if I am influencing my company’s pipeline. What if the posts by your community leaders, execs, or salespeople could be tied to account engagement and influence? We all (kinda) know it happens, but it has been immeasurable to know if we should spend more or less time. Is it technically possible? Absolutely. Can you implement tomorrow? Not yet, but hopefully soon, with a privacy-forward solution that protects personal information and online behavior.
The role of A.I.
The hope and dream that A.I. will tell us where to shift budget or how to improve campaigns is certainly real, but it will only be possible if the underlying data and customer signal is known and accurate. This means that the real “source” of the direct traffic must be uncovered at scale so that the actual financial efficiency of channels, vendors and campaigns is well understood. Join Channel99 on this journey and I promise that however you’re thinking about measurement, attribution or future investments, will dramatically change.
*Average percentage of web traffic allocated to Direct across more than 50 B2B web sites
