You may be hesitating between a W-shaped and a U-shaped model, which are often compared, or moving to a data-driven algorithmic one. This article highlights where each model shines and falls short and explains why the W-shaped option may be best for B2B marketing teams.

For those looking for the TL;DR, U-shaped models may simplify the customer journey by focusing primarily on top- and bottom-of-funnel interactions for organizations with shorter sales cycles, while algorithmic models may be too complex for marketing teams working with few leads.

W-shaped models provide an attribution sweet spot for teams that need to highlight three key stages, including the all-important opportunity-creation stage along the buyer's journey, without the thousands of leads and interactions that data-driven, algorithmic models require.

This guide explains what the 30-30-30 rule is, when the W-shaped model outperforms other models, and shows you why creating a single source of truth within your CRM is essential to ensuring accurate attribution.

Why B2B Attribution Breaks Down After Lead Creation

Most single-touch models work well for simple buying journeys: a prospect clicks an ad, browses a site, and makes a purchase in a single session. Simple enough.

B2B buying isn’t that simple. Some journeys involve hundreds of touchpoints and multiple stakeholders. First-touch or last-touch attribution oversimplifies this complexity.

U-shaped attribution is a move in the right direction for B2B marketers. Assigning 40% of the credit to the first touch for lead creation, recognizing the awareness stage that brought in the lead, and another 40% to the conversion, which gives you more visibility along the buyer journey. The last 20% is spread throughout the nurturing touchpoints that carried your client through the funnel.

But the U-shaped misses mark for B2B teams that need to trace the sales qualification and deal-closure steps.

After someone downloads your whitepaper or schedules a demo. Your SDR reaches out. Discovery calls happen. Questions about technical requirements get asked, and documentation gets reviewed. Somewhere in this process, a lead becomes a genuine sales opportunity. This marks the single most valuable moment in B2B marketing because it separates tire-kickers from the genuine revenue-generating pipeline. This is the middle of the funnel moment that B2B teams need to identify to see what content, campaigns, and sales initiatives lead to a closed deal.

With a U-shaped model, you’re deciding to give less credit to the post-acquisition journey that shows which interactions lead to the final sale.

Every team needs to identify the form fill and credit the content asset, but post-lead-acquisition influences like webinars or sales reps' case studies receive little to no attribution.

U-shaped models stop watching just as the action gets interesting.

This may lead to budget cuts for key campaigns and channels that nurture qualified leads after initial qualification. As a result, marketing focuses on lead volume because that's what’s rewarded, while what looks like underfunding mid- and end-of-funnel content moves down the list of priorities. If this is the case, don’t be surprised to hear sales complaints about lead quality, which will perpetuate misalignment.

W-shaped attribution gives you visibility into this blind spot with a key third stage on the journey. With this new perspective, we can now explore how value is distributed across the entire buyer journey.

How W-Shaped Attribution Works: The 30-30-30 Split

Here’s a quick technical breakdown. The model evenly distributes 30% of the credit across three key stages of the buyer journey, and the remaining 10% divided among supporting touchpoints.

The Three Stages That Define Pipeline Quality And Value

First Touch (30%): This is where top-of-funnel awareness is captured, through LinkedIn ads, organic search, or a referral link. Whether you’re drawing leads with an outbound or inbound strategy, this is where they first come into contact with you.

Lead Creation/ Opportunity  (30%): The stage finally identifies the lead via a newsletter signup, content download, webinar registration, or demo request. This touchpoint pulls someone into your CRM as a lead.

Opportunity Creation (30%): The sales qualification moment. The SDR qualifies the lead with a discovery call that confirms fit. Potential deal value is assigned to the pipeline, and you’re focused on moving the prospect from a marketing lead to a sales opportunity that converts. This usually happens after a sales conversation.

Nurturing Touchpoints (10%): Every interaction between peaks that nurtures your deal to revenue, such as email sequences, retargeting ads, additional content downloads, website content interactions, and events, shares the remaining credit.

Revenue Attribution in Practice

For a €50,000 deal under W-shaped attribution:

• €15,000 goes to LinkedIn Ads (first website visit).
• €15,000 to the ROI Calculator (lead creation through gated tool)
• €15,000 goes to the email reply to an email nurturing campaign (opportunity created after demo request in the reply).
• €5,000 split across five email touchpoints (€1,000 each for nurturing content)

Last-touch attribution for the same deal assigns all €50,000 to the final interaction, such as a direct visit or sales email. Earlier LinkedIn campaigns and the webinar are not credited.

When comparing the same deal scenario with a U-shaped model, your attribution ends at the ROI calculator, and your marketing-led nurturing campaign doesn’t get credit for the demo request and the consequent deal creation in your CRM.

W-shaped attribution provides a better representation of the path the qualified pipeline takes before it closes. It helps B2B teams move past the frenzy of lead generation and shines a light on the touchpoints that turn MQLs into SQLs and eventually into paying customers.

W-Shaped vs Other Attribution Models: A Comparative Table

Different attribution models fit different sales cycles. Here’s a table that gives you a quick look at which models are best suited to which team setups.

Asking The Sales Team Question

Here's the decisive factor: Does your company have a lengthy sales cycle from lead conversion to deal creation that involves salespeople who qualify leads before becoming opportunities?

If so, W-shaped attribution provides the insights you need to see which campaign or channel led to opportunity creation that was evaluated and logged by a salesperson in your CRM.

If that’s not the case, and the vast majority, if not all, your paying customers moved from created lead to new user without a sales interaction, a U-shaped model will save you the added complexity and more accurately represent your sales cycle.

Product-led SaaS companies with self-serve software that allow users to move from trial to a plan upgrade and pay without contact won’t see any need for a W-shaped model.

Why W-Shaped Attribution Must Live in Your CRM

Opportunity creation happens in your CRM after a sales call, and a human decision is then logged in Salesforce or HubSpot, outside web analytics.

Google Analytics 4 tracks what visitors are doing on your site by capturing web events such as page views, clicks, form submissions, and scroll depth. But GA4 can’t see W-shaped’s third peak.

The Data Pipeline Problem

Finding an efficient means of sending CRM conversion data back to GA4 has been a tough task for teams. Sending CRM data to GA4 through Measurement Protocol or BigQuery exports requires technical expertise and ongoing maintenance that most teams can’t justify.

Even when added, data stitching lags behind. Pipeline stages change in real time, but export jobs run on schedules. By the time CRM data reaches analytics, it may be outdated.

The CRM-Native Advantage

With CRM-native attribution, opportunities are created instantly. No exports. No pipelines. Marketing and sales see the same data from one source of truth.

CRM-native attribution solves another problem: tracking pre-lead touchpoints that GA4 misses.

Standard CRM reporting tracks only post-lead interactions. Most prospects interact several times before filling out a form. Whether they are reading blog posts, clicking LinkedIn ads, comparing competitors, all these activities matter.

Proper multi-touch attribution ties anonymous sessions to CRM records. When someone converts, their browsing history is placed in their contact record so the first touch becomes visible, even if it occurred before lead creation.

This needs attribution tech that integrates web tracking and CRM data. Solutions for Salesforce or HubSpot handle this natively, since they’re built around the CRM model totally—not retrofitted from web analytics.

Real-World Example: Discovering Hidden Pipeline Value

A B2B software company ran Google Ads, LinkedIn, and content campaigns. Their last-touch report credited 75% of revenue to "Direct" or "Organic Search." Paid campaigns seemed inefficient, and the CFO questioned the ad spend.

Switching to W-shaped attribution revealed a different picture entirely.

LinkedIn Ads, previously credited with minimal revenue, claimed 28 percent attribution under the new model. These campaigns introduced prospects to the brand (first touch), even though they later converted through other channels.

The monthly solution webinar earned 34% of opportunity-creation credit. Last-touch reporting ignored this, since demo requests usually came via follow-up email rather than directly from the webinar.

W-shaped attribution proved it was their highest-performing pipeline generator. Instead of reducing investment, leadership expanded the webinar calendar. To transform your own pipeline insights and ensure every critical touchpoint receives credit, consider auditing your attribution model today. Take the first step towards accurate, pipeline-focused measurement.

Same data. Completely different story. The attribution model you choose determines which story you tell and which decisions follow.

W-Shaped Attribution in a Privacy-First Environment

The third-party cookies that every digital marketer has relied upon one way or another are quickly disappearing. Browser restrictions, despite Chrome’s now-infamous change of plans, have removed cookies altogether. As privacy regulations expand, marketing teams are, rightly so, trying to future-proof for a world without cookies.

Luckily, W-shaped attribution fares better than most models in this new reality. Here's why.

The opportunity creation touchpoint is inherently first-party data. When your SDR creates an opportunity record in Salesforce, that action occurs within your own system. No cookies involved. No cross-site tracking required. The CRM event happens regardless of browser privacy settings.

First-party data also powers the other peaks when attribution runs server-side. Logged-in users can be tracked across sessions without relying on third-party cookies. Form submissions create authenticated relationships. Email interactions are tied to known contacts.

The privacy advantage of CRM-native attribution becomes clearer as regulations evolve. GDPR and CCPA require consent for tracking. Attribution that stays within the customer's explicit relationship with your brand operates on firmer legal ground than cross-site behavioral tracking.

Companies investing in server-side tracking and first-party data strategies position themselves for sustainable attribution. Those still dependent on third-party pixels face increasing headwinds.

When W-Shaped Attribution Isn't the Right Choice

No attribution model fits every situation. Understanding limitations helps you make better decisions.

E-commerce and impulse purchases: When sales cycles run under 2 weeks and transactions are completed in a single session, W-shaped attribution adds unnecessary complexity. The opportunity stage doesn't meaningfully exist. Simpler models, such as last-touch or time-decay, often prove more practical.

Pure product-led growth: If users progress from signup to paid subscription without sales involvement, you lack the qualification event that defines W-shaped's third peak. U-shaped attribution captures what matters because lead creation and purchasing happen through the same self-service flow.

Limited technical infrastructure: W-shaped attribution requires CRM integration to function properly. If your company still manages marketing data in spreadsheets or uses disconnected point solutions, building toward simpler attribution models first makes sense. Crawl before you walk.

W-shaped isn't the final destination either. As attribution maturity grows, Full-Path models extend the framework by adding a fourth peak at closed-won. This assigns 22.5 percent credit to each major stage: first touch, lead creation, opportunity creation, and customer close. The evolution acknowledges that sales activities after opportunity creation also influence deal outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is W-shaped attribution?

W-shaped attribution is a multi-touch model that assigns 30 percent of revenue credit to three key moments: first touch, lead creation, and opportunity creation. The remaining 10 percent is distributed across supporting touchpoints. Designed for B2B companies with sales teams, it tracks marketing's impact on pipeline generation rather than just lead volume.

Can I configure W-shaped attribution in Google Analytics 4?

Not natively. GA4 tracks web events, but cannot see CRM pipeline stages. The third peak of W-shaped attribution (opportunity creation) typically occurs after a sales call rather than on your website. Surfacing this data in GA4 requires sending CRM information through Measurement Protocol or BigQuery. Most B2B teams find it simpler to run attribution directly within Salesforce or HubSpot.

How does W-shaped differ from U-shaped attribution?

U-shaped attribution assigns 40 percent credit to first touch, 40 percent to lead creation, and 20 percent to middle touches. W-shaped adds a third major touchpoint at the opportunity creation stage (30 percent each for the three stages, 10 percent for the rest). The key difference: W-shaped recognizes the sales team's contribution to qualifying leads and moving them into the pipeline.

When should I use Full-Path instead of W-shaped?

Use Full-Path attribution (22.5 percent across four stages) when you want to credit the closed-won moment. W-shaped stops at opportunity creation. Full-Path extends the model by adding customer close as a fourth peak. This gives sales activities during the deal cycle the same weight as early marketing touchpoints.

Does W-shaped attribution work with short sales cycles?

Generally not well. When your sales cycle is under two weeks or operates purely through self-service, lead and opportunity creation often happen simultaneously. The distinct stages that W-shaped measures collapse into single events. Simpler models, such as U-shaped or linear, provide similar insights with less complexity.

Moving Forward with Pipeline Attribution

Attribution model selection comes down to one question: What are you trying to optimize?

If you care only about lead volume, simpler models suffice. If you need to prove marketing's impact on qualified pipeline and revenue, W-shaped attribution provides visibility that first-touch and last-touch can't deliver.

The 30-30-30 rule captures what B2B buying journeys look like in practice. Prospects discover your brand through one channel, convert through another, and progress to opportunity through a third. Each stage matters. Each deserves credit.

Making this work requires attribution that lives in the same place as your pipeline. Web analytics tools weren't built for CRM stages. They excel at measuring website behavior but go blind when prospects move to sales conversations. CRM-native attribution bridges that gap.

The data already exists in your systems. You're tracking touchpoints. You're recording opportunities. W-shaped attribution connects these dots into a coherent story of how marketing generates a pipeline. Not guesses about which campaigns might work. Evidence of which campaigns do.

‍