Triangulating the Truth: What to Do When Google Analytics Disagrees with Your Buyer

When Google Analytics and Your Buyer Tell Different Stories

According to your marketing dashboard, there was an opportunity generated via Google Organic Search. It is confirmed by your CRM; thus, the marketing team can be certain that SEO brought that deal. However, things start getting complicated when the first discovery call commences.

Asking the sales representative about how the potential buyer found out about the company produces a completely different answer. In fact, it turns out that the buyer heard about the CEO on a podcast a few months ago, followed your company's activity on LinkedIn, talked to their co-workers about the solution you offer, and only then started searching on Google.

Who is right? Both of them are.

While Google Analytics provided accurate information about the last touchpoint, your buyer shared his journey, which he has undertaken many months ago, even before visiting your website. That is the reason why B2B businesses today need to triangulate the Truth.

What is meant by Triangulating the Truth?

Triangulating the Truth is an approach of comparing several sources of attribution data that helps in discovering the ways in which a client turned into a customer. Companies know that there is no need to find a single source of the truth since all sources provide their contribution to the general picture.

Marketing software tracks digital activities including website visits, campaigns, and conversions. The Self-Reported Attribution provides a buyer's perspective about the discovery of the company. Sales discovery conversations reveal more information related to factors that affected the evaluation process and participants involved in the process.

Every source provides different information. Software shows where the activities were performed. The buyers' perspective explains how awareness and trust were generated. The sales discovery conversation gives a picture of the decision-making process.

The combination of these sources helps companies move from arguments about which report to believe to the analysis of the whole buying process. This is the meaning of Triangulating the Truth.

Why Attribution Conflicts Are Increasing

Attribution conflicts are not uncommon anymore. This is because the changing dynamics of buying behavior make them an integral part of B2B marketing in today's world.

Modern-day buyers do not take a direct route from advertisements to purchasing decisions. On the contrary, they research potential solutions over a period of weeks or even months, via various channels. The buyer interacts with podcasts, follows industry experts on LinkedIn, engages in private Slack groups, attends webinars, watches videos on YouTube, gets referrals from credible colleagues, and reaches out to vendors only after all this.

A significant share of these interactions happens outside the visibility of conventional analytics tools. Consequently, marketers often track just the last digital interaction rather than the experiences that led to it.

And that's why a customer journey usually does not match the attribution analysis report.

With increasing investment in thought leadership, education, and community building, such differences will become much more common. Rather than regarding attribution conflicts as reporting mistakes, companies need to view them as indications of the influence exerted on buyers by factors beyond website interaction.

Why Google Analytics and Your Buyer Can Both Be Right

Marketing departments often believe that when data is inconsistent, one of the sources is wrong. In actuality, both Google Analytics and the buyer are actually right because they view the same actions from different angles.

Google Analytics is meant to track digital activity. It tracks website visits, referrers, campaign traffic, actions, and conversions. It works perfectly fine since it is reporting on the digital world it knows.

A buyer has a completely different recollection of how things went. He remembers how he got to know the company via a podcast, how he trusted the information provided via a LinkedIn post, how his friend recommended your company to him, how he decided to learn more.

Let's take a buyer who got to know your company via an industry podcast. After some time, he has read several LinkedIn posts about you, discussed you with his colleagues, and searched Google before requesting a demo.

Google Analytics would credit Organic Search since it was the measurable conversion source.

The buyer would credit the podcast since this was where the story began.

Both recollections are correct and provide a much better insight into customer behavior.

Three Pillars of Triangulating the Truth

Attribution takes more than just software reports. Triangulating the Truth uses a combination of three different types of information to give an entire story of the buyer journey.

The first pillar of Triangulating the Truth is Software Attribution. It includes Google Analytics, CRM platforms, and marketing automation tools that measure website visits, engagement rates, conversions, and performance of the channels used.

The second pillar is Self-Reported Attribution. Organizations ask their customers, "How did you actually hear about us?" It helps organizations gather information that software can't measure, as it involves podcasts, referrals, private communities, executive content, or industry talk that buyers have heard.

The third pillar is Sales Discovery, where account executives consistently find new information in conversations with potential clients. They learn from buyers why and how they started research and what helped them evaluate their options.

All pillars bring unique information, and when combined, give much more reliable results than any single information source.

Triangulation of Truth: A Real-Life Scenario

One such real-life example can be taken from ClearPivot, wherein founder Chris Strom describes how the triangulation process, with the help of comparing web analytics and Self-Reported Attribution, has led to the discovery of many new facts that were overlooked by web analytics alone. In an example shared by Chris, web analytics pointed towards Organic Search, but the buyers mentioned that they learned about the company on various other channels like social media.

Turning Attribution Conflicts Into Better Marketing Decisions

Organizations must consider attribution conflicts as an opportunity to make informed decisions instead of solving problems. Where multiple sources talk about various touchpoints during the buying journey, they offer a lot of information that is impossible to capture through software only.

Consistent responses from prospects can show a pattern that would affect future marketing decisions. If a buyer always mentions that podcasts, thought leadership by executives, word of mouth by customers, or private communities have made a big impact on them, such channels deserve more consideration than what is shown in traditional attribution metrics.

Triangulation provides an opportunity to build alignment between Marketing, Sales, and RevOps teams. Marketing knows which actions raise awareness. Sales representatives enter discovery conversations with a clearer understanding of the prospect. Leadership gets a better understanding of marketing performance during budget allocation and growth decisions.

Rather than optimizing for whichever channel gets the last measurable click, organizations start investing in actions that prospects mentioned to be impactful.

Mistakes Common to Triangulating the Truth

While Triangulating the Truth increases attribution accuracy, a number of mistakes common in the approach may decrease its effectiveness. The first and most common mistake is relying solely on Google Analytics as the primary source of data. Software is useful but is not capable of covering all the influences on the buying decision.

Another mistake is in the assumption that the buyers have bad memories. Even when the customers do not remember all the details, they still remember all the experiences that made them aware of something and helped to build trust.

There is also a problem of collecting Self-Reported Attribution without analyzing the information collected or failing to engage Sales in attribution research.

The last common mistake is the search for a perfect attribution. The modern B2B buying process involves multiple touchpoints, people, and influencers. Precision in the modern environment is difficult.

It is not important to reach perfection in attribution. It is important to learn something more about the customer.

When combining software with buyer experience and Sales insights, businesses create effective attribution systems rather than just new reports.

Conclusion: The Truth Lives Between the Data and the Buyer

Today's typical B2B buyer is shaped by a variety of factors, including podcasts, referrals, thought leadership, private networks, internal meetings, and much more — none of which can be captured by analytics tools.

That is precisely why the Triangulating the Truth concept has been incorporated into the Hybrid Attribution Model. This methodology recommends combining software attribution, Self-Reported Attribution, and insights from sales discovery rather than trusting any single source of data.

Google Analytics shows where measurable engagement happened. Buyers explain why they engaged in the process. And sales discussions shed light on how the decision was made through time.

When these points of view are combined, one gets the whole picture of the customer journey.

The future of marketing attribution will not lie with companies that depend solely on a single dashboard. It will lie with companies that leverage both data and human perspective and identify the true sources of demand for the enterprise buyer.