After I published The Lamppost Problem blog recently, some people asked: “This sounds great, but how do I actually build this?”

Fair question. Knowing what to measure is one thing. Building and implementing the infrastructure to measure it properly is another entirely.

It’s not exciting or sexy, but these are the steps I have taken in the past. Strap in!

Before You Start: Get Aligned

Most marketing leaders inherit a measurement disaster and immediately try to fix everything. Don’t.

Get agreement upfront on what marketing is going to contribute. This sounds obvious, but marketing teams often build sophisticated measurement for metrics leadership didn’t care about. Ask sales, finance, and leadership: “What metrics would actually influence your decisions about marketing investment?” Their answers tell you what to prioritise. Everything else is vanity.

Settle the “influence vs source” debate early. If sales thinks you’re counting marketing-sourced pipeline while you’re reporting influenced, you’ll have credibility problems from day one. Agree upfront what you’re measuring and why.

Here’s a simple definitions template to get everyone aligned:

Term	Definition	Owner
Lead	Contact who submits a form with business email	Marketing
MQL	Lead matching ICP criteria + engagement threshold	Marketing
SQL	MQL accepted by sales after initial outreach	Sales
Opportunity	SQL with confirmed budget and timeline	Sales
Marketing-sourced	First touch was a marketing activity	Marketing
Marketing-influenced	Any marketing touch before opportunity created	Marketing
CAC	Total marketing spend ÷ new customers (incl. salaries, tools, agency fees)	Finance

Get sales and finance to sign off. Refer back to it when debates arise. Update it quarterly.

Be realistic about the ramp. You can’t flip a switch and hit numbers overnight. Tell leadership: “Months 1-3 are about building infrastructure and baselines. Months 4-6 are when we start optimising. Expect ugly data initially – that’s the point.” Setting this expectation prevents the “why isn’t this working yet” conversations and stops you putting undue pressure on yourself and your team.

Consider your maturity stage:

Stage	Focus	Attribution approach	Success looks like
Pre-revenue / Early	Prove marketing can generate pipeline	First-touch is fine	“Marketing contributed to these deals”
Growth (£1-10M ARR)	Optimise spend across channels	Multi-touch matters	“Channel X outperforms Y by 3x”
Scale (£10M+ ARR)	Efficiency and incrementality	Controlled experiments	“This spend is additive”

Don’t build scale-up infrastructure for a start-up problem.

Weeks 1-2: The Audit (But Don’t Get Stuck Here)

Map the stack. Document every tool – what it measures, who uses it, whether anyone trusts the data.

Find the disconnect. Talk to sales and finance about how they interpret your metrics. You may discover “MQL” meant three different things to three different teams. No wonder nobody trusts the numbers.

The trap: Marketing teams get into trouble for being in perpetual audit mode. Bring people in early. Show them what you’ve learned and how it’s informing next steps. An audit that leads nowhere destroys credibility faster than no audit at all.

Weeks 3-4: Fix the Basics

Before implementing sophisticated attribution, make sure fundamental tracking works.

Standardise UTM parameters. If this isn’t consistent, nothing else matters. Teams that spend six figures on attribution platforms whilst running campaigns with broken UTMs are not prioritising effectively. Garbage in, garbage out.

Here’s a UTM structure that scales:

Parameter	Value
utm_source	platform (linkedin, google, email)
utm_medium	channel type (paid, organic, newsletter)
utm_campaign	yyyy-qq-campaign-name (2024-q1-brand-awareness)
utm_content	audience or creative variant (cmo-persona, version-a)
utm_term	keyword (for paid search only)

Example: 

?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign=2024-q4-pipeline-push&utm_content=ciso-persona

Document this. Share it with everyone who launches campaigns. Audit weekly – one forgotten parameter breaks your data. But don’t let perfect taxonomy delay launches. Better to launch with good-enough tracking than delay campaigns. Fix it in flight.

Fix form tracking and CRM integrations. Half your attribution problems come from here. Every form submission should capture source, medium, and campaign automatically.

Pick one source of truth for each metric:

Metric	Source of truth
Pipeline and revenue	CRM
Campaign performance	Marketing automation
Website behaviour	Analytics platform
Spend	Finance system

Get leadership to agree. Document it. Reference it when people question the numbers.

Make someone own data quality. Not as their whole job, but explicitly accountable. Otherwise it’s everyone’s problem and nobody’s priority.

Month 2: Build Attribution

Start simple. First-touch and last-touch. Everyone understands these. Build trust before adding complexity. Simple attribution that people trust beats sophisticated attribution that people question.

Then add multi-touch if needed. Keep it explainable:

Touch	Weight	Rationale
First touch	30%	Created the relationship
Key middle touches	40%	Moved the deal forward
Last touch	30%	Conversion point

The percentages matter less than being able to explain the logic to a CEO in 30 seconds.

Beware the attribution platform sales pitch. Vendors promise magic but the reality is platforms only work if fundamentals are solid. They amplify good data; they can’t fix bad data.

Month 3: Make It Predictive

Track velocity. When you can show marketing-engaged opportunities close 20% faster, you’re providing strategic insight, not just reporting.

Build the forecast. This is where you shift from reporting what happened to recommending what to do next.

Example forecast language for different scenarios:

On track: “Based on current pipeline velocity and historical conversion rates, we’re tracking to £2.1M against our £2M Q4 target. Confidence is high if we maintain current top-of-funnel volume.”

Behind target: “We’re currently tracking 15% below Q4 target. Based on our conversion rates, we need either £500K more top-of-funnel by end of month, or we shift budget to accelerate mid-stage deals. Given stage conversion rates, I recommend the latter.”

Identifying problems: “Webinar leads are converting to SQL at 2% versus 8% from referrals. We’re generating volume but not quality. Recommend shifting £20K from webinars to partner co-marketing next quarter.”

Create one dashboard. Not five dashboards nobody looks at – one dashboard everyone trusts.

The metrics that belong on your leadership dashboard:

Metric	Why it matters	Update
Marketing-influenced pipeline vs target	Shows overall contribution	Weekly
Marketing-sourced pipeline vs target	Shows direct generation	Weekly
Lead-to-customer conversion by source	Shows quality, not just volume	Monthly
CAC by channel	Shows efficiency	Monthly
Deal velocity (marketing-touched vs not)	Proves acceleration value	Monthly
Pipeline forecast for next quarter	Shows predictive value	Weekly

Watch for “measurement theatre” – fancy reports that don’t inform decisions. If nobody’s using it, stop producing it.

Throughout: Take People on the Journey

Be transparent. Share the mess. Show sales and leadership the gaps you’re finding. “Here’s what’s broken, here’s our fix, here’s when you’ll see improvement.” This builds trust faster than pretending you’ve got it sorted.

Create a 30-60-90 scorecard. Show progress visually:

Milestone	Status	Target date
UTM parameters standardised	✓ Complete	Day 30
CRM integration fixed	In progress	Day 45
Definitions agreed with sales	✓ Complete	Day 30
First-touch attribution live	In progress	Day 60
Single dashboard launched	Not started	Day 75
Multi-touch model live	Not started	Day 90
First quarterly forecast	Not started	Day 90

Leadership loves seeing momentum, even if the end state isn’t reached.

Celebrate small wins publicly. First clean attribution report? Share it. First accurate forecast? Share it. You’re building credibility incrementally – make progress visible.

Train the team, not just yourself. If only you understand the methodology, you’ve built a single point of failure. Document everything.

Realistic Timeline

Month	Focus	Credibility milestone
1	Learning and fixing basics	“We understand what’s broken”
2	Basic attribution working	“We can show contribution to pipeline”
3	Multi-touch live	“We can show what’s working and what isn’t”
6	Historical data enables forecasting	“We can predict next quarter”
12	Measurement trusted for decisions	“Leadership uses our data for strategy”

This assumes reasonable foundations. Complete disasters take longer.

Summary

The goal isn’t measurement for its own sake. It’s earning the credibility that lets you drive strategic decisions.

When you can walk into a board meeting and say “based on our data, we should shift investment from channel A to channel B” – and people actually listen – you’ve changed how marketing gets treated.

That doesn’t happen through sophisticated tools. It happens through alignment, transparency, and disciplined implementation of measurement people can understand and trust.

Godspeed.