Let’s just say it: most marketing attribution is guesswork dressed up in graphs. And the longer we pretend it’s gospel, the more we smother the very things that make marketing work: originality, timing, and human behavior.

We’ve become spreadsheet junkies. Somewhere along the line, we decided taste was less trustworthy than a traffic source chart. Now nothing ships without attribution tags and a meeting to decode the “data story.”

In the process, we’ve optimized the life out of our messaging.

Attribution has its place — sure. But most businesses lean on it like a crutch. Instead of building brand, trust, or memory, they just throw more budget at whatever their last-click report says “worked.”

Last-Click Attribution? More Like Last-Click Delusion

Let’s start with the obvious: last-click tells you what someone did right before converting. That’s it. It doesn’t tell you how they discovered you, when trust was built, or why they chose you over the competition.

But businesses still bet the farm on it.

Why? Because it’s easy to measure. And because it usually credits — you guessed it — Google. People Google your brand, click an ad, and boom — your dashboard screams “Google is our best channel!”

No surprise: Google loves that narrative. But the truth is, you’re paying for a click you likely would’ve gotten anyway.

So what happens? Brand campaigns get cut. Awareness efforts get scrapped. And your pipeline starts to quietly suffocate.

Want Better Insight? Try Asking Real People

There’s one dead-simple way to cut through the attribution noise: ask your customers.

“How did you hear about us?” works wonders. You don’t need a fancy attribution model to get real answers — just trust what people tell you.

It’s not perfect. Memory is fuzzy. But people generally remember the thing that made them pay attention. And that’s what matters.

Run it once a quarter. Ask for two weeks. Turn it off. Then go look at what actually shows up in the responses. You’ll see the real story.

Just Because You Can’t Track It Doesn’t Mean It Didn’t Work

Some of the most effective marketing doesn’t show up in your analytics dashboard. Podcasts. Billboards. Word of mouth. Email forwards. A LinkedIn post that stuck in someone’s brain two months ago.

But because they’re hard to measure, they get ignored.

The problem? You start starving the very things that generate interest in the first place. Then you wonder why your cost-per-click is going up, your lead quality is going down, and your funnel feels dry.

Performance marketing only works when there’s demand to capture. You can’t harvest what you didn’t plant.

Here’s How to Use Attribution Without Letting It Run the Show

This isn’t a call to throw out your data. It’s a call to put it in its proper place. Here’s how:

• Use last-click to optimize, not to decide your entire strategy.

• Ask “How did you hear about us?” and actually look at the answers.

• Ignore multi-touch models unless you’ve got enterprise-level traffic and resources.

• Media Mix Modeling (MMM) is solid — but only if you’ve got the budget and impressions to make it worthwhile.

• Trust your instincts. Creative resonance, emotional impact, and brand affinity don’t show up in a spreadsheet.

Focus Less on Tracking, More on Connecting

Marketing isn’t just about attribution. It’s about connection. Influence. Timing. Showing up in the right place with the right message — over and over again.

If you’re obsessing over whether the contact form came from paid search or organic, you might be missing the bigger picture: why did they choose you at all?

That’s the real question. And when you answer that, your entire strategy gets better.

Want Real Results? Let’s Talk.

📩 Contact JBR Marketing for a free PPC audit. We’ll show you exactly how your current campaigns are performing — and where Google’s automation might be costing you leads.

You don’t need a robot to run your marketing. You need a team that knows how to turn ad spend into actual booked jobs. That’s what we do.