Why Marketers Are Still Guessing What’s Driving Pipeline

Marketing’s job has changed faster than the way most organizations invest in it. Marketers are now expected to operate as a revenue function—not just a demand-generation one—which means every channel, every campaign, and every dollar needs to justify its place in the mix.  

Madison Logic’s latest research with The Harris Poll confirms just how deeply this shift has taken hold: 85% of marketers agree that modern marketing is no longer about producing compelling creative, but about proving every dollar of ROI. 

That level of consensus suggests marketing has fully embraced its revenue mandate. The harder question is whether the way marketing invests—and the way it measures success—has evolved alongside it. 

The answer is less encouraging. Forty-eight percent of marketers admit they’re still guessing which activities influence purchasing decisions. 

That uncertainty isn’t simply an attribution challenge. It reflects a deeper misalignment between the outcomes marketing is expected to prove and the channels and measurement systems many teams still rely on. 

This Is a Strategy Problem, Not a Measurement Problem 

It’s tempting to file the 48% stat under “we need better attribution tooling” and move on. But that framing lets the real issue off the hook. 

When marketing is accountable for pipeline, the honest response to widespread guessing isn’t a new dashboard but a hard look at where the money is actually going. Our research suggests the guessing isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s happening because the channels marketers invest in most heavily are the same ones that make it hardest to prove influence on purchasing decisions. 

Consider the mismatch: 

• 87% of marketers say social media receives their largest investment for driving pipeline conversion, even though it’s among the channels least equipped to demonstrate how it influences pipeline progression. 

• Only 15% are investing meaningfully in content syndication, and 14% in programmatic—the two channels best suited to deliver account-level engagement signals and buying-group visibility. 

Investment is concentrated in channels that are difficult to connect to buying-group progression, while channels designed to surface account-level engagement receive comparatively little attention. The result is predictable: marketers are expected to prove influence with tools that provide only part of the picture. 

Guessing Has a Cost Beyond Bad Reporting 

The cost of guessing extends far beyond reporting accuracy. It shapes whether marketing can prove its contribution to revenue—and whether future investment is justified. Two additional findings from our research make that clear: 

• 90% of marketers agree that teams unable to clearly demonstrate business impact will struggle to justify their budgets going forward. 

• 84% say gaining visibility into how buying groups engage across channels is a top priority for the next 12 months—an admission that most organizations don’t have this visibility today. 

Put those together with the 48% guessing figure, and the picture is stark: marketers know the accountability bar has risen, their current systems can’t clear it, and fixing it is urgent. The challenge is one of alignment: Marketing is expected to prove revenue impact, but many channel strategies and measurement systems were never designed to produce that evidence. 

Why the Guessing Happens: The Buying Group Gap 

Even with the right strategy, B2B buying is difficult to measure because purchase decisions rarely come from a single individual. B2B purchases are made by committees, not one person clicking through a funnel. According to Forrester, most enterprise deals now involve 13 internal members and nine external influencers, each engaging with different content, on different channels, at different times. 

Most measurement frameworks are still built around the individual lead. They can tell you who filled out a form or downloaded a whitepaper, but B2B buying rarely unfolds that neatly. Content gets forwarded internally. Resources are shared over Slack, Teams, email, or in meetings. Multiple stakeholders engage anonymously or across different devices before ever identifying themselves. The result is an incomplete picture of how a buying group is actually moving toward a decision. 

That doesn’t mean buying-group behavior is impossible to understand. It means marketers need measurement approaches that piece together account engagement across channels, rather than relying on isolated lead activity to tell the whole story. 

Closing the Gap Starts with the Investment Strategy 

If nearly half of marketers are guessing, the fix isn’t a better guess—it’s better inputs. That means: 

1. Auditing channel investment against actual pipeline evidence, not against what feels familiar or easy to report on. 

1. Rebalancing spend toward channels built for account-level signal—content syndication, programmatic, and other tactics that surface who is engaging, at what account, at what stage—rather than channels optimized for reach and engagement alone. 

1. Building the infrastructure to see buying groups, not just leads through identity resolution and multi-touch, account-level attribution that can connect activity across stakeholders to a single buying motion. 

None of this means abandoning brand-building or the channels that create awareness. It means being honest about which channels can answer the question marketing is now being asked to answer: what actually influenced this purchase? 

Turning Guesswork into Evidence 

The challenge isn’t convincing marketers that revenue matters. They’ve already embraced that expectation. The next step is building a channel strategy and measurement approach that can show how buying groups actually move toward a decision.  

Closing that gap starts with seeing engagement at the account level rather than through isolated touchpoints. That’s the problem Pipeline Insights is built to solve—giving marketers a clearer read on account progression, engagement trends, and pipeline momentum across the full buyer journey, rather than isolated attribution data points. 

Paired with ML ABM Web Analytics and High Value Engagements (HVE), that visibility extends further, surfacing the specific behaviors that signal real buying intent within an account. Not just activity, but the kind of engagement that actually correlates with a deal moving forward. Together, these tools give marketing teams a way to replace guesswork with a clear, evidence-based view of what’s actually driving pipeline. 

Speak to one of our experts today to learn how Madison Logic can help to make a deliberate shift toward a channel and measurement infrastructure that can finally turn guessing into evidence. 

Survey Methodology: This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Madison Logic from May 1–11, 2026, among 313 adults ages 18 and older employed full-time at the director level or higher, holding decision-making responsibility for marketing, advertising, communications, public relations, or social media at their company. The data is accurate to within +/- 6.7 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. All results are reported in aggregate. Percentages may not total 100% due to rounding or multi-select questions.