It’s a question that has been posed to marketing teams by executive leadership since the dawn of marketing.
“Which of these things actually drove revenue?”
It’s the question that separates confident marketing leaders from those scrambling through spreadsheets.
Marketing attribution is the process of identifying which marketing touchpoints influence a conversion, so teams can understand ROI and improve decision-making.
Marketing attribution used to mean simple last-click tracking. Now your prospects interact with job boards, ChatGPT and other AI tools, LinkedIn ads, email nurture sequences, webinars, recorded demos, and word-of-mouth referrals before ever converting, and that’s just a few examples.
For talent and HR tech companies, the complexity can often double: you’re tracking both client acquisition AND candidate attraction, often through entirely different channels.
While every marketing team knows that attribution matters, too many struggle with actually having the systems, data integration, and bandwidth to make it work. That’s where this guide comes in.
What You Will Learn:
- What Is Marketing Attribution?
- Why Marketing Attribution Is So Important
- What Are The Challenges With Marketing Attribution and How To Overcome Them
- How To Build an Attribution System Starting Today
- Takeaways: Real Talk About ROI and Attribution
What Is Marketing Attribution?
Marketing attribution is the process of identifying the marketing touchpoints that a person goes through that contribute to a conversion. Marketing touchpoints can be anything, like emails, an AI-generated summary at the top of a Google search, social media posts, blogs, ads, videos, etc. If it’s something a person consumes about your brand, it counts. A conversion can be someone buying the product, signing up for a newsletter, applying for a job, etc. Ultimately, it is whatever the goal of a company’s marketing is.
Overall, there are two main models of attribution: single-touch or multi-touch.
Single-touch models attribute a conversion to one marketing touchpoint in the journey. The most common single-touch models are: first-touch attribution and last-touch attribution.
First-touch attribution gives full credit for a conversion to whatever the first touchpoint was.
Last-touch attribution gives full credit for a conversion to whatever the last touchpoint was.
Let’s say a prospect discovered your company through a LinkedIn ad about your latest healthcare hiring trends report, joined a webinar that you hosted that dived further into that report, received a nurture email, and then saw a retargeting ad before reaching out about their own hiring needs.
In a first-touch attribution model, LinkedIn would get the credit.
In a last-touch attribution model, the retargeting ad would get the credit.
Multi-touch models, on the other hand, give credit to all of the marketing touchpoints in a person’s journey.
Linear multi-touch attribution gives equal credit to all of the touchpoints.
Time-decay attribution gives more credit to the later touchpoints closer to conversion.
U-shaped/Position-based attribution gives heavier credit to the first and last touches, with anything in between splitting equal credit.
Which one is right for you? It depends! For most teams, multi-touch attribution models provide more relevant data, but some teams focus on single-touch, as that’s what they have the resources to do. The chart below goes into more detail about which one might be best for you depending on your marketing efforts.
The HR tech and staffing industries face a unique attribution challenge: you’re not just tracking client acquisition. You’re tracking candidate attraction, too. A staffing firm might run separate campaigns to drive more client companies and another to find qualified candidates, each with its own conversion goals. Some companies use different attribution models for each side of the business; others use the same model but track different conversion events. Either way can work. What matters most is having attribution plans in place for both.
Why Marketing Attribution Is So Important
You can’t know if something is working if you don’t track it. When marketing teams skip over attribution as a critical part of their process, you lose out on the data that helps you understand your ROI (return on investment). But it’s not just that…
Budget Accountability
63% of CMOs recently reported increased scrutiny over marketing budgets from CFOs. That’s not surprising. Executive leadership, like CFOs, CEOs, and more, want to see proof that the budget is being used effectively and results are coming from the work.
Competitive Advantage
Having stronger attribution means that you can see what is working for your audience and pivot in real-time. For example, if your attribution data shows that candidates who attend your “Resume Workshop” webinars are more likely to complete applications and more likely to accept placements, you can double down on that content while other firms are still trying to figure out their strategy.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
Marketing attribution proves the impact that marketing has on the pipeline. You can understand what channels are driving the most qualified leads, where content creation is reaching the right people, and more. When you can show sales that the newly-closed deal originated from a download of that hiring trends report you released two months ago, sales (and your leadership team) will start to view marketing as a revenue-driver, rather than a cost-center.
Essentially, marketing attribution is so critical because it allows you to make your marketing better and drive growth. And isn’t that always the goal?
What Are the Challenges in Marketing Attribution?
Marketing attribution is important, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Data Fragmentation
Chiefmartec’s State of Martech Report 2025 shared that the marketing technology world has a whopping 15,384 solutions. When it comes to individual marketing teams, it’s not uncommon to have 15 – 20+ different tools. And talent companies often exceed that. You’ve got your ATS (Bullhorn, Workday, etc.), CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.), marketing automation (Marketo, Pardot, etc.), website analytics (Google Analytics), job boards (Indeed, LinkedIn, etc.), email platforms, and paid ad accounts—all living in silos.
Manual reporting becomes a nightmare. You’re exporting CSVs, reconciling data in spreadsheets, and still can’t define where a lead came from.
You need to connect the data between your ATS, CRM, and marketing automation so you can eliminate data fragmentation concerns.
Privacy Regulations
Privacy regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, and new state laws, have changed online activity tracking forever, and rightfully so. Building trust with candidates and clients means respecting their data privacy, even if it makes attribution harder.
Hard to Trace Referral Sources
Then there’s the so-called “dark” sources problem: social media impressions, private Slack shares, word-of-mouth, AI chatbots, PR and earned media, and more. These touchpoints matter, but they’re often much harder to track.
AI, in particular, is becoming a major source of brand visibility for companies. Some reports claim that upwards of 90% of B2B buyers are already using generative AI, and as AI usage becomes more widespread, it will become even more crucial to the buyer journey.
The solution isn’t stressing about perfect tracking. Instead, focus on building systems that pair quantitative data with qualitative insights and always remind yourself that something is better than nothing.
Non-Linear Buyer Journeys
Chelsea Warren, HubSpot Consultant and marketing strategist, shared, “With the multi-touch integrated campaigns that are so important today, it’s just impossible to track absolutely every step someone has taken.” After all, B2B buyers typically have numerous touchpoints with brands over a long period of time before making a decision. And it’s rarely a straight line.
A prospect might:
- See your LinkedIn ad in January
- Download a whitepaper in March
- Ignore your emails for 4 months
- Attend your conference booth in August
- Request a demo in October
- Sign on the dotted line in December…after three more stakeholders got involved.
Or in the case of staffing firms, ClearlyRated’s Inside the Mind of a Staffing Buyer report found that 65% of buyers start their search with a list of firms they already know, a “Day One” list. A whopping 93% of buyers end up partnering with a firm on that list. That means that your prospects are noticing every time you show on their LinkedIn feed or at that industry conference, and locking away your name for the future.
Linear attribution models can struggle with this reality. That’s why understanding your specific buyer journey is critical before choosing an attribution model.
Resource Constraints
Marketing teams are often lean. It can vary across industries, but it’s not uncommon to have teams of less than 10 people. Many smaller companies have marketing teams of one, supplemented by agency or freelance support.
When you’re stretched thin, specialized skills like marketing operations and data analytics often get deprioritized. And here’s the paradox: you need attribution data to justify headcount and budget, but you need headcount and budget to build attribution.
The “Set It and Forget It” Problem
Teams will build models that will sit for 2 – 3 years without being updated or audited. Tech stacks will evolve, but no one will question how reporting is done. Or campaigns will kick off without clear tracking in place. Thanks to marketing’s need to move quickly, attribution often falls victim to the “set it and forget it” problem. Simply by investing in keeping attribution models up to date, you’re going to be ahead of the game.
“All in all, attribution is less about cold, hard, indisputable facts. It’s more about finding the right direction,” Chelsea shared. “You might be chasing siloed data sources or privacy regulations that make it feel nearly impossible to perfect your attribution, but it’s not hopeless. You just need to build the system that best supports your marketing goals.”
How To Build a Modern Attribution System for Staffing & HR Tech Firms
Audit What You’ve Got
Before you can fix attribution, you need to understand what’s actually happening in your marketing right now. Not what you think is happening, but what reality reveals.
We recommend auditing your existing marketing efforts against your business goals. We love working with clients on this part of the process. Our 360° Marketing Evaluation helps teams get the roadmap they need. It can be really helpful to bring in an expert third-party to get an unbiased, accurate look at your marketing. But if you’re looking for a DIY method, we ask questions like:
- Do you have the team members and structure you need to reach your goals? Are there any skills gaps?
- What current campaigns are driving growth? Which ones aren’t hitting milestones?
- What technology are you using? Are you using it effectively? Is your team trained on it?
- What are your team’s goals? Are they aligned with the overall business goals?
Get Your Tech Stack In Order
Some core components of a talent company’s marketing tech stack include an analytics platform (like Google Analytics), a CRM (like HubSpot), an ATS, a website platform, and a marketing automation tool.
Now that you’ve done an audit, you know what your goals are, which means that you need to focus your technology on the tools that will most serve your goals. Consider:
- What functionality does each tool have? Does it serve every task we need it to do or are there any gaps that would need to be filled?
- Is the tool easy to use? Can all of the team use it?
- Are your tools able to speak to each other? (More on that in the next step!)
- Will this tool help us reach our goals?
Connect Your Data Sources
When you’ve got your technology in order, you need to make sure that your data is integrated. This will likely be the most time-intensive portion of your attribution building because it will require support from IT, operations, marketing, and executive leadership.
And if your team is lacking in resources, this is where tools like ATS Sync could come in. Rather than trying to juggle multiple custom integrations, you get a single unified connection between your tools and the personal tech support to keep it working for you.
Define Your Attribution Models
When choosing between single-touch and multi-touch attribution models, align your choice with your business reality.
For most B2B companies with longer sales cycles (like staffing firms and HR tech providers), multi-touch attribution provides more accurate insight into the customer journey than single-touch models. It acknowledges that a demo request didn’t happen in a vacuum—it happened because of the webinar they attended, the case study they read, and the email sequence that nurtured them.
|
Attribution Model |
Description |
Best For |
|
First-Touch |
Gives full credit to the first interaction that introduced someone to your brand. |
Brand awareness or top-of-funnel campaigns. |
|
Last-Touch |
Gives full credit to the final interaction before conversion. |
Conversion and performance tracking. |
|
Linear |
Distributes equal credit to every touchpoint. |
Balanced B2B journeys and cross-channel collaboration. |
|
Time-Decay |
Assigns increasing credit to touchpoints closer to the conversion. |
Long sales cycles and remarketing efforts. |
|
U-Shaped or Position-Based |
Prioritizes the first and last interactions, giving the remaining credit among middle touches. |
Complex buyer journeys with multiple interactions. |
There’s no universal “right” model. You may need:
- Different models for client vs. candidate acquisition
- Custom hybrid models that weight certain touchpoints (like demos) more heavily
- Separate models for different product lines or service tiers.
The goal isn’t perfection—it’s accuracy that drives better decisions.
Ensure Team Alignment and Ownership
Through all of these steps, marketing, sales, and leadership teams should be working together to ensure alignment throughout the process. Assign tasks to review the attribution data and models and ensure they are still aligned with business goals, and ensure that everyone is equipped to find and understand the data.
When working with leaders, remember that they need to feel confident that the team is equipped to do what needs to be done to succeed. It can be valuable to bring in marketing operations support if this is something that is outside of your team’s wheelhouse. That doesn’t mean you just need more budget. It means you need support for revenue enablement: an investment worth making.
Balance Technology with Human Insight
Decision-making is a complex and nuanced process. Attribution can tell you the “what”, but it doesn’t always share the “why”. Chelsea put it succinctly, “You can’t track free will.” Gathering qualitative feedback from sales teams and customer insights can help you understand the context behind the data.
This is also where you can capture the untrackable: word-of-mouth referrals, offline conversations at conferences, and introductions from existing clients. You can also add “How did you hear about us?” into your contact forms with specific options so that qualitative data can fill in the story that data can’t tell on its own.
Real Talk: Attribution Isn’t Perfect
Attribution is incredibly valuable and a cornerstone of a successful marketing strategy. But it isn’t perfect. It’s a journey that requires consistent care and optimization. So here’s what you need to know as you start this journey:
Set Realistic Expectations
You don’t need perfect attribution on day one. And honestly, you may never have perfect attribution. But nothing will delay you more than paralysis by analysis. At a certain point, you just have to start. Even if that means starting messy. Work on tracking the channels you already know drive the most results, and then iterate over time. As with all marketing, it’s a matter of strategizing, starting, learning, and adjusting.
Set Yourself Up for Quick Wins
Attribution doesn’t need to feel like an insurmountable challenge. You can make a few changes today to get set on the right track.
- Start using UTM parameters consistently across campaigns. You can use a simple spreadsheet to keep your URLs in order. Not sure how to use UTMs? This guide from HubSpot can help.
- Add “How did you hear about us?” questions to your contact forms. Provide specific options to select from.
- Gather whatever data you can monthly and look for patterns. Share those patterns in a deck or a spreadsheet. You don’t need a fancy dashboard; you just need insight.
- Schedule sync meetings between sales and marketing to talk through lead quality, sources, and pipeline health so everyone stays aligned.
These aren’t perfect solutions, but they build momentum.
The Compound Effect Is Real
Even small improvements in attribution can lead to better decisions around more efficient spending (both of time and budget), and when you get more efficient, you often get better results.
Key Takeaways: What You Need to Know About Marketing Attribution
Getting marketing attribution right means navigating fragmented and siloed tech stacks, privacy concerns, complex buyer journeys, and limited resources, all while proving ROI to executives.
But without attribution, you’re going to get lost. You can’t optimize your time or effort, justify your budget, or make strategic decisions because you don’t know what channels are actually driving revenue and growth.
By starting with auditing where you’re at, then connecting your data sources, implementing consistent tracking, and iterating over time, you’ll see progress.
Just remember: Perfect attribution isn’t the goal, actionable insights are.
Ready To Get Started?
Our 360° Marketing Evaluation assesses everything about your marketing to create a clear roadmap tailored to your goals, so you know exactly where your growth is coming from and can deliver the ROI reporting you need.
Marketing Attribution FAQs
The Basics of Marketing Attribution
What is marketing attribution?
Marketing attribution is the process of identifying which marketing touchpoints influence a conversion, so teams can understand ROI and improve decision-making.
What are the main types of marketing attribution models?
The main types of marketing attribution models are single-touch and multi-touch attribution. Within those, there are first-touch attribution, last-touch attribution, linear multi-touch attribution, time decay multi-touch attribution, u-shaped multi-touch attribution, and more.
What is the difference between a single-touch and multi-touch attribution?
Single-touch attribution models attribute a conversion to one marketing touchpoint in the journey, often the first or last touchpoint. Multi-touch attribution models give a varying amount of credit to all of the marketing touchpoints in a person’s journey.
What is the best attribution model for staffing and HR tech companies?
Multi-touch attribution models are more effective for understanding the full buyer journey, but the best attribution model varies depending on the marketing that is being done and the goals of a particular effort.
Challenges of Marketing Attribution
What are the biggest challenges in marketing attribution?
Data fragmentation or siloed data sources, privacy regulations, difficult-to-trace referral sources, non-linear buyer journeys, resource constraints, and simply forgetting to review an attribution model are some of the main challenges when it comes to getting marketing attribution right.
What if my team doesn’t have the resources for complex attribution?
That’s okay! There are simple things that teams can do to begin their attribution journey.
- Start using UTM parameters consistently across campaigns.
- Add “How did you hear about us?” questions to your contact forms.
- Gather whatever data you can monthly and look for patterns.
- Schedule sync meetings between sales and marketing to talk through lead quality, sources, and pipeline health so everyone stays aligned.
The most important thing to do is to start, even if that means starting messy.
How can Staffing, Talent, and HR tech marketers measure ROI if data is fragmented?
Unifying technology wherever possible will help connect data. Tools like ATS Sync help you connect the data between your ATS, CRM, and marketing automation, which can help unite your data and ensure that you can see a full journey from click to close.
Building Attribution Systems
How should I start building a marketing attribution system?
With any marketing effort, it’s important to audit where you are realistically. Do you have the team in place that can set up attribution, or is there expertise you need to bring in? Reviewing your tech stack and connecting your data sources will ensure that you have data flowing correctly. Then, choose the attribution model that works best for understanding your buyer journey. Make sure your teams (sales, marketing, and operations) are aligned and feel ownership throughout the process so you can pair the data from your attribution work with the human insight that only your team has.
How often should I update my attribution model?
Review your attribution model at least quarterly so it stays aligned with your goals and your buyers’ journeys.
Is perfect attribution possible?
No. Given data privacy and simply impossible to track referrals (like word-of-mouth), it’s impossible to get 100% perfect attribution. But something is always better than nothing.