When trying to understand the impact of their marketing activities, many B2B marketing professionals eventually reach the point of needing to decide between buying or building a marketing attribution platform. Let me preface this by saying: I’ve been there. Four years ago, while I was still working at a different company that develops a BI tool, I encountered Daniel, the co-founder, and CEO of InfiniGrow. Back then, the B2B marketing attribution space was in its infancy, and frankly, I was skeptical. All platforms I saw, including the InfiniGrow platform in its early stages, weren’t quite what they are today. Needless to say, I wasn’t convinced.
The allure of building it ourselves was strong. We had our own BI tool at hand, so my marketing data analyst and I embarked on a valiant quest to build our own touchpoint attribution system. It took a solid four months of wrestling with data sources, building models, and patching things together.
In the end, it was a classic case of sunk costs. We launched it with a flourish, but after a few weeks of novelty, it became an underused relic. Maintaining a custom platform requires constant attention, and once my analyst and I moved on, it fell by the wayside. All that time, effort, and database expenditure went to waste.
4 years later. InfiniGrow has truly cracked the code of B2B attribution (hint: it hinges on understanding and fixing messy CRM data as well as bringing together disparate and fragmented data). If InfiniGrow would have been then what it is today, the decision would have been a no-brainer: I’d go with the “buy” option in a heartbeat.
So, why am I sharing this war story? Because for many B2B organizations, the decision between building a custom revenue marketing platform and purchasing a solution like InfiniGrow is a critical one. Let’s delve into the details.
The Build vs. Buy Conundrum
Building a custom platform might seem like the right move, but there are hidden costs to consider:
- Slow Burn to ROI: Developing your own platform takes time. A lot of time. While your competitors are reaping the benefits of data-driven marketing, you’ll be stuck playing catch-up.
- Resource Drain: Maintaining a custom platform is a constant battle. IT and data teams get bogged down, their attention diverted from core marketing initiatives.
- Data Dilemmas: B2B marketing hinges on clean, unified data. Building a platform often means wrestling with fragmented information from various sources like CRMs and ad platforms. This data wrangling can lead to inaccurate insights and hinder decision making.
- Limited Growth: Custom platforms often lack the scalability to accommodate growth. Upgrading becomes a complex and expensive endeavor.
- Static Insights: Static reports are the norm with custom platforms. Generating new reports or modifying existing ones requires IT intervention, hindering marketing agility.
- Reinventing the Wheel: Building your own platform means missing out on the wealth of knowledge and best practices that established solutions like InfiniGrow incorporate.
- High and Unpredictable Costs: Building your own solution incurs direct costs such as BI tools and databases, as well as indirect costs such as human efforts. Additionally, there are unpredictable ongoing costs.
Why BI Tools Don’t Cut It
While BI tools like Tableau or Looker might seem like a viable alternative, they only offer a piece of the puzzle (data visualization). The heavy lifting of data unification, mapping, structuring, and cleaning remains a manual burden.
The Buy Advantage
The buy option offers a compelling alternative:
- Faster Results: With InfiniGrow, you’re up and running quickly, eliminating the lengthy development process. This frees your team to focus on strategic marketing initiatives.
- Empowered Marketing Teams: InfiniGrow is user-friendly and requires minimal IT support. Your marketing team gains the autonomy to generate reports and uncover insights without relying on overburdened IT resources.
- Data Done Right: InfiniGrow integrates seamlessly with various ad networks, marketing tools and CRMs, providing a unified view of your marketing performance. No more data wrestling or waiting for IT to generate reports.
- Scalability for Growth: InfiniGrow is designed to scale with your organization. Self-service reporting and dynamic dashboards empower your team to adapt and explore data on the fly.
- Actionable Insights: Our reports and dashboards are dynamic, allowing for deeper dives into your data. Plus, InfiniGrow’s AI-powered question-based feature helps you unearth hidden insights.
- Best Practices Built-In: InfiniGrow leverages industry expertise to provide features and insights tailored to B2B marketing success.
- Lower and Predictable Costs: Buying a solution is ultimately cheaper than building your own because you pay for the platform itself rather than for BI tools, databases, and human efforts. Additionally, the costs are predictable and based on your agreement with the vendor (hopefully InfiniGrow).
The Takeaway
In conclusion, the journey from skeptic to believer underscores the critical decision many B2B organizations face: whether to build a custom marketing attribution platform or opt for a solution like InfiniGrow. My personal experience vividly illustrates the hidden costs and challenges of building internally, from slow ROI to resource drain and limited scalability. InfiniGrow, with its refined approach to B2B attribution, emerges as a compelling alternative, offering faster results, empowered marketing teams, seamless data integration, scalability for growth, actionable insights, and built-in best practices. Ultimately, the choice between building and buying is not merely about technology but about maximizing efficiency and effectiveness in driving marketing success.
