How to Track Content Attribution with HubSpot

TL;DR:

• Hubspot vs GA4 when it comes to B2B marketing. Which one should you use for attribution?
• Setting up content attribution for Hubspot's Original Source Fields.
• Why you should add self-reported attribution fields to your forms and how to use them to help report on content influenced revenue.

Content is one of the best long-term strategies for lowering CAC and getting qualified prospects through the door. Historically, though, companies struggle to tie content to revenue.

With content attribution, you can report on tracking the impact of different content pieces on the overall success of marketing campaigns and revenue. But why do you need it?

2023 saw a lot of layoffs, especially in the B2B marketing space. There was also a complete decrease in return on ad spend in the past year.

Marketing teams are in a place where they need to quantifiably show how content has pushed prospects down the funnel toward conversions. Hypergrowth content engines are powering the fastest-growing companies, and their ability to attribute where to focus resources has compounded this impact.

Luckily, a tool like HubSpot (paired with a bit of creativity from you) can help you tie individual content efforts to revenue. By the end of this post, you will be able to give leadership the full picture of how content is impacting the top line.

HubSpot vs GA4

In GA4, a non-technical marketing team can set up conversion events and report on those for a high-level overview of content-influenced conversions.

We have an article on tying content to revenue in GA4 if you're interested — and here's a video rundown by our CEO, Parthi.

So, why HubSpot over GA4?

GA4 reporting is helpful for a general overview, but it falls short in two ways:

1. there's very little indication of what happens before or after the conversion event. A lot of it may even happen offline like a closed deal in a sales-led motion.
2. Pairing the marketing website with the application data becomes difficult, especially when a prospect continues through the pipeline after different sessions

On the other hand, HubSpot connects marketing and sales through an integrated CRM. That means you can see the entire "lifecycle" of a closed deal as it moves from marketing to sales, from first touch to final call.

Suppose someone views an article on your blog. If tracked, that session is logged anonymously into HubSpot until a conversion happens. Once they fill out a form the Hubspot pixel attributes any old and new traffic to the contact profile. All the way through to deal closed. You can see exactly how your content influenced that deal, which is just a game changer for marketers. If it was tracked...

For example, here's a history of touchpoints we saw on a demo request:

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Using the HubSpot CRM, you can immediately prove:

• how many deals your content has influenced
• how much content-influenced revenue you've generated
• how much of the pipeline your content has generated

With HubSpot data source properties, you can either manually add or set up a workflow to automate deal source based on the primary contacts original source to track the original source of a deal. We'll look at tracking content-generated pipeline and content-influenced revenue on closed won.

How to Track Content Attribution in HubSpot with Original Source

Step 1: Tracking Content-Generated Pipeline

HubSpot lets you create incredibly specific custom dashboards so that you can report on:

• deals influenced by content (i.e., a content touchpoint along the way)
• net new deals generated by marketing (i.e., content as a last touchpoint)

* note: Hubspot offers various pre-built attribution report templates based on content title, but this includes email titles and page titles which becomes extremely messy.

To set up a report on first-touch content-influenced deals:

1. Navigate to Reports → Create Report → Build Custom Report

‎2. In the Primary Source data field, select "Deals." Hit "Next."

3. In the Data Source search bar on the left, enter "source"

4. Click "+" or drag and drop "Original Source type", "Original Source data 1" and "Original Source Data 2" into the Fields section

5. Drag "Original Source Type" into the X Axis and "Closed deal amount" into the Y axis

To set up a report on marketing-generated deals:

1. Follow the same steps above, except replace "Original source type" with "Latest source type", which you can find by typing "Latest source" into the data source search bar.

You can also compare original vs latest sources by inputting either source into the "Compare by" field.

Step 2: Tracking Content-Influenced Revenue Closed Won

To do this:

1. Create a custom report like we did above
2. Replace "Closed deal amount" with "Closed deal amount in home/company currency"

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Why You Should Add Self-Reported Attribution to HubSpot Reports

You already have so much more data at your fingertips using HubSpot's Original Source properties than if you used GA4, but you can take it a step further.

As you can tell, the "Original Source" and "Drill Down 1/2" properties give us broad information and sometimes fail to tell us exactly what we need to know, and they arent editable.

For example, you may get data for "Offline Sources," but how are you supposed to know what those were?

You need to find out if content drove that revenue, and maybe even exactly which piece or else you're shooting in the dark.

To do this, it's important to add an individual self-reported attribution single-line text field to your signup and demo conversion forms. This may mean some manual decoding is necessary, but the payback is an order of magnitude better, especially when paired with filters like [last page seen has ever been/contained any of].

How to Add Self-Reported Attribution in HubSpot

Step 1: Creating Alternative Fields / Properties

1. Navigate to Reports → Create Report → Build Custom Report
2. In the Primary Source data field, select "Deals"
3. Hit "Next"

Now, I search and create a set of alternative fields called Marketing Source/Drill Down 1,2.

Here I create a multiselect for Marketing Source and Drill Down 1, and I create a text field for Drill Down 2.

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Step 2: Creating Self Reported Attribution Properties

I then add a required field [self-reported attribution sign up] and [self-reported attribution demo] — separately.

You won't want to mix these. Someone's intent at signup versus a demo is totally different, as is the engagement.

Step 3: Filtering Content Clusters

I then navigate to lists and build filters for content clusters that focus on a similar keyword or theme.

I'll use the field [Last Page Seen] and use the filter [Has ever contained any]

Now, I choose all of the possible domain slugs that happened during a specific time period. Name the list appropriately including this time period.

Step 4: Defining Marketing Sources

Here you can create new lists called "Content Signups" and "Content Demo Requests," filtering by:

• the type of form submission
• overlaying the content lists
• decided upon Marketing Source data

This is done to understand exactly who has visited what content, and to follow the journey of the primary account that becomes an opportunity to build a report. Here's what it looks like.

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There is an even more sophisticated way of building a bespoke system with Snowflake, Segment, Census, Metabase, and a little manual work in Google Sheets. If you're interested in hearing about that, reach out and we will write another post soon covering it.

The best part about this setup is that you can make your own definitions for source, and the multi-selects provide some guardrails to keep the CRM clean. The single-line text field allows customized inputs to incorporate things that you find from referral links and self-reported data.

I like to add a few keywords referencing their self-reported search query or content piece.

Stay consistent in naming here for better reporting. If it was a blog about Sending SMS, don’t enter one as “SMS blog” and the other as “Blog about SMS.”

Nurture Your Entire Marketing Ecosystem, Quantifiable and Unquantifiable

In the process of writing this article, I received my weekly insights from the How to SaaS Newsletter courtesy of Shiv Narayanan. He gave me a valuable reminder: while attribution is crucial for all the reasons we've stated in this article, it's also dangerous to become too fixated on it.

It becomes all too easy to neglect the marketing streams that contribute more subtly. That's your brand-building tactics, your content that doesn't always drive a demo.

These still play a role in creating an environment in which your prospects feel secure in moving forward with your business, whether right now or months later.

Marketing is a holistic effort.

"Use data and attribution models to help you triangulate the truth. From there, just have some trust in the environment that you've created for your customers. " — Shiv Narayanan - How To SaaS

Use HubSpot To Help Prove the Value of Content to the Bottom Line

The surest way to prove the value of content marketing to the overall business is to link it to incoming revenue. HubSpot makes that possible, and helps you present that value to leadership. This is extremely important, especially when things are tough.

It's also important not to lose sight of the full picture. Marketing creates an environment that facilitates the transition from prospect to buyer. From there, you can measure the impact.

We're always thinking of how we can provide value to our readers with our content. Check out our blog for more, or get marketing insights in your inbox twice a month by subscribing to our newsletter.