The single biggest gap in most B2B demand gen orgs is not creative. It is not targeting. It is measurement. Specifically, the inability to connect what marketing is spending to what sales is closing, across a deal cycle that lasts the better part of a year.
Devon Shaw at LinkedIn called out three tools as must-haves. I would have called them table stakes, except that most demand gen teams are not using them correctly, or at all.
The first is CRM sync. This sounds obvious, but the gap between "we have a CRM" and "our CRM is synced in a way that lets us actually trace marketing influence on closed deals" is enormous in most orgs. CRM sync connects first-party behavioral data, who engaged with what and when, to the deal record. Without it, you are measuring marketing in one system and revenue in another and wondering why the attribution looks thin.
The second is the Conversions API. The cookie is largely gone. If you are still relying on pixel-based tracking as your primary attribution method, you are systematically undercounting conversions and over-attributing to the last touchpoint that happened to fire before the cookie expired. The Conversions API passes event data server-side, which is both more accurate and more durable. This is not optional infrastructure anymore.
The third is company intelligence. This is the one most teams have not fully operationalized. Most B2B measurement is individual-level: this person clicked, this person filled out a form. But B2B buying happens at the account level, and most of the people influencing a deal never touch your website directly. Company intelligence gives you a view of what is happening at the company level based on your organic and paid presence combined. When you turn this on, you typically find exponentially more conversions and influence than your individual-level tracking was showing.
Put all three together and you can actually answer the question the CFO is asking. You can show what the 211-day journey looked like, where marketing was present, which account signals preceded pipeline creation, and what the attribution looks like beyond the final click.
Most demand gen teams are measuring the last 15 minutes of a seven-month process. These three tools let you measure the whole thing.
If you want to see what that looks like in a real account, happy to walk through it. Scott.