When success is defined by the final interaction before a deal closes, teams naturally gravitate toward tactics that appear closest to revenue. Branded search, retargeting ads, and late-stage email campaigns rise to the top because they’re easy to connect to conversion. They look efficient. They feel safe.
But those tactics rarely explain why a buyer chose one company over another.
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What is last-click attribution?
Last-click attribution is a model that gives all the credit for a conversion to the last interaction a customer had before they completed the desired action — clicking an ad, opening an email, or visiting a website. It’s the default in most analytics tools, and it’s how many marketing teams still report performance.
The appeal is obvious: it’s simple, easy to explain, and produces clean-looking dashboards. But simplicity comes at a cost.
The problem with last-click in B2B
In B2B, most decisions are made long before a form fill or demo request. Buyers form opinions through repeated exposure — content they trust, brands they recognise, ideas that resonate. By the time last-click channels show up, the decision is often already made.
Last-click attribution can’t see that earlier influence. It treats demand as something captured at the finish line, not something built over time. As a result, teams underinvest in the work that actually shapes perception: thought leadership, community presence, long-form content, and consistent brand visibility.
Over time, this creates a dangerous imbalance. Marketing appears more efficient while real demand creation slows. Pipelines become harder to fill, and teams respond by doubling down on the same late-stage tactics that caused the issue in the first place.
An example
A potential customer first discovers your company through a LinkedIn post from your CEO. Over the next few weeks, they read two blog posts and listen to a podcast episode featuring your head of product. When they’re finally ready to evaluate solutions, they Google your brand name, click a paid search ad, and book a demo.
Last-click attribution gives all the credit to the Google ad. The content, the podcast, the LinkedIn post — none of it registers. Your team sees paid search as the growth engine, when it was really just the last stop on a longer journey.
What to measure instead
Last-click attribution doesn’t tell you what drove growth. It tells you what happened to be present at the end. For teams serious about long-term impact, measuring influence — not just proximity to conversion — is the only way forward.
Consider supplementing or replacing last-click with:
- Self-reported attribution — ask customers directly how they heard about you
- Multi-touch attribution — distribute credit across all touchpoints in the journey
- Marketing mix modelling — use statistical models to estimate the impact of each channel
- Pipeline influence reports — track which content and channels touched deals before they closed
If you’re responsible for explaining marketing performance to leadership, shifting the conversation from last-click to influence will give you a more honest (and more useful) picture of what’s actually working.