Enterprise marketing often feels like this strange paradox:
You’re running the right channels, doing the right things, reaching the right people — and yet the story of what it’s accomplishing never quite comes together.
The impressions are there.
The reach is there.
You see movement everywhere… except in the place the company cares about most: attribution.
It’s not because the work is wrong.
It’s because the model used to interpret the work was never built for an enterprise in the first place.
Most teams still try to measure channels as if each one independently “creates” a pipeline, as if LinkedIn, search, CTV, events, content, and outbound each deserve a neat column in Salesforce labelled Sourced.
But enterprise buying doesn’t move in straight lines.
It behaves more like weather patterns than a funnel, you don’t understand a storm by staring at a single cloud.
Enterprise GTM is a system.
And systems only make sense when you zoom out.
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Enterprise GTM Has Three Layers — Not One
Every healthy enterprise GTM motion, whether intentionally designed or accidentally assembled, is built on three layers: exposure, engagement, and activation.
Exposure
This is where marketing creates familiarity.
Buyers see LinkedIn ads during their commute, LinkedIn CTV when they’re streaming, native placements on industry publications, event promotions, POV content, videos in-feed.
Nobody converts here.
But people start recognizing your name.
Exposure sparks the conversation — nothing more, nothing less.
Engagement
This is where interest quietly reveals itself.
Not through forms, but through behavior:
returning website sessions, deeper content consumption, more people from the same account visiting the site, event attendance, 3rd-party intent, upticks in branded search, spikes in direct traffic.
Tools like Syft help you see which accounts are showing up even when individuals stay anonymous.
This is the layer most teams overlook — yet it’s the layer where demand actually forms.
Activation
This is where outbound and sales convert the quiet interest into a real conversation.
Enterprise buyers don’t lack interest — they lack time.
They don’t click “Book a Demo” from an ad because their buying process doesn’t work that way.
A targeted InMail, a consultative gift-card offer, an event invitation, a case study send, a well-timed SDR touch — these aren’t gimmicks.
They’re how you lower the cost of exploration for a buyer who is curious but busy.
Activation is what transforms latent demand into active pipeline.
Without it, exposure and engagement remain inert.
Once you see these layers clearly, the illusion that channels “aren’t working” disappears.
They are working — they’re just doing different jobs.
Where Enterprise Measurement Breaks Down
The frustration most teams feel isn’t that LinkedIn or programmatic or CTV are failing.
It’s that they’re being judged with metrics built for B2C and SMB.
Channels that create demand get measured like channels that capture demand.
And so everything looks underwhelming:
CTV: “no clicks”
LinkedIn: “no direct pipeline”
Events: “no attribution”
Programmatic: “low CTR”
Content: “soft”
Outbound: “separate”
But the truth is simple:
enterprise demand doesn’t show up in attribution — it shows up in behavior.
The question is whether you’re looking in the right place.
What the CTV Data Revealed
We recently analyzed 54 days of LinkedIn CTV data and compared daily impressions with website activity.
By traditional attribution standards, the results were meaningless: zero clicks, zero “conversions,” zero pipeline.
But when we ran correlation analysis — the kind of measurement enterprise actually requires — a very different picture emerged:
Strong correlation with total traffic (0.69)
Even stronger correlation with organic search (0.81)
Notable correlation with direct traffic (0.65)
Roughly 352 incremental sessions per 1,000 impressions
Implied cost per session: about eight cents
Lift pattern: same-day spike + sustained 7-day effect
Primary behavioral path: CTV → Brand Search → Site Visits
This is exactly how enterprise awareness works.
It doesn’t generate clicks.
It generates curiosity — and curiosity shows up as search.
Enterprise demand doesn’t emerge in platform.
It emerges around the platform.
Which means if you’re only looking at attribution, you’re measuring CTV (and LinkedIn, and programmatic, and events) through the one lens where they will always look like they’re underperforming.
Why MMM and Correlation Are Better than Attribution in Enterprise
Attribution is good at capturing bottom-funnel demand.
It was never designed to measure stimulus-response patterns in long sales cycles with multiple contacts and anonymous research behavior.
Correlation and MMM are what allow you to see the system:
whether your spend is increasing brand search
whether more accounts are showing up on the site
whether engagement patterns spike during campaigns
whether buying groups widen
whether outbound reply rates rise
whether overall demand becomes more active
Enterprise GTM isn’t a sequence of discrete touchpoints.
It’s a field of influence.
You measure fields through patterns, not click paths.
Attribution captures the moment of harvest.
MMM reveals the conditions that grew the crop.
You need both.
Pipeline Emerges When the System Connects
Once you adopt a systems lens, the pipeline story becomes obvious:
Paid creates familiarity.
Search reveals interest.
Content builds belief.
Events deepen understanding.
Outbound activates the account.
Sales converts the demand.
Pipeline isn’t the output of a channel.
It’s the output of a coordinated system, moving a buying group from unaware → aware → engaged → ready.
Enterprise GTM stops feeling chaotic the moment you stop asking each channel to prove its worth in isolation.
Enterprise GTM Isn’t Broken.
The Way We Look at It Is.
Your channels are working exactly as they should.
They’re simply being evaluated through a model that can’t see their impact.
When you measure the system — not the parts — the whole thing becomes coherent:
CTV drives search
Search drives visits
Visits drive signals
Signals fuel outbound
Outbound drives meetings
Meetings drive pipeline
The work was always working.
It just needed the right lens.