In an industry increasingly dominated by technology, technological competence is no longer an advantage; this is a fundamental requirement for marketers of all categories to structure a Modern Marketing Stack
When we founded the Marketing Technology Industry Council, we brought together some of the best and brightest people in B2B and martech marketing with one goal: to help marketers stay on their feet Browse the biggest challenges and opportunities of today’s Martech.
The results of the Council’s first survey of nearly 300 senior marketing managers were insightful and found that B2B marketers are struggling to cope with the unprecedented growth of the martech landscape (5,381 solutions at MarTech’s last conference chairman, Scott Brinker!).
Chronic problems, such as lack of integration and even the use of many technologies for effective management, lead to poor ROI for companies of all sizes and sectors.
This Martech crisis is not resolving itself. Most marketers interviewed said they will continue to invest in marketing technologies and correctly believe that, despite the challenges, the cost of falling behind the technology curve is very high. But it also means that these challenges will grow exponentially as Martech’s inventories increase.
To address this, the Marketing Technology Council made three recommendations for creating and managing a marketing stack. Following these recommendations, marketing organizations could stop struggling with martech and eventually use it to excel in their work and structure a modern marketing stack.
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Determine sales and marketing from a single source of real data and an overall roadmap and determine your strategic priorities
The first challenge with martech, highlighted by the Marketing Technology Board survey, focused on delivering value to sales. The survey found that 70% of B2B marketers see their primary business goal is providing more sales opportunities and increasing customer acquisition and retention. However, only 12% of marketers said they considered the technologies a significant value, indicating that these technologies are not helping marketers to achieve their goals.
Despite a clear understanding of the importance of aligning sales and marketing in theory, most companies experience significant mismatches in practice. This dysfunctional relationship between sales and marketing is in itself a major obstacle to building a martech stack that shows the real value for two reasons:
- First, because, without defining their respective goals and with each other, there is likely to be a lot of disagreement about what value entails in the first place.
- Second, the fundamentals of marketing technologies that generate demand, such as marketing automation and CRM (the two most popular martech platforms according to the survey), have the right data. If sales and marketing don’t match the data they use, they can go in different directions or run over each other when they reach the wrong people.
By defining their goals together and making sure they work with the same data, Sales and Marketing can use their technologies to achieve the increasingly difficult goal of aligning Sales and Marketing.
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Marketers must strategically acquire technology to meet clear and measurable business needs and structure a Modern Marketing Stack
One of the study’s most interesting findings was marketers’ enthusiasm for martech, although they are very skeptical of its value in terms of practical ROI. For example, three of the top four tools on marketers’ shopping lists – content management, social media, and advertising – were also considered the most difficult technologies to justify spending.
The reason seems to be that marketers (correctly) understand that technology is the solution to many of their biggest business problems, but they are not really getting what they need from their martech stacks, because they are not buying the product either they don’t implement Martech correctly.
The contradiction suggests that the common perception that B2B buyers are more “rational” than consumers may not be entirely accurate, especially when considering how “rational” buyers cannot buy “too much technology” or (more notoriously) making stacks of matches without first checking to see if the different parts can be integrated – because he laments half of the marketers.
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Marketers need to buy matches that automate or speed up the repetitive and tedious elements of their work so that they can focus more on things that technology cannot, such as creating and running creative campaigns and content.
When asked how much time they spend on various marketing-related activities, marketers say they prefer creative activities, such as developing and launching a new campaign (77%) and creating and creating a new marketing program (70%). ), in long and tedious tasks, such as “developing new campaign workflows” (16%) and “managing customer data” (11%).
No surprises there. But it is a perfect indication of the types of technologies that marketers should buy. To quote Heidi Bullock, CEO and Engagio board member, “Ultimately, there is technology to improve our lives. It makes sense for marketers to ‘delegate’ repetitive and time-consuming tasks to their martech, especially when talking about activities like data management that machines can run even more efficiently.
Technologies like machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) are so popular for this reason – they allow marketers to perform these tasks more quickly and efficiently than they could do manually.
Implementing a martech strategy is a business requirement
The Council’s request for B2B companies to implement formal processes to set up their martech stacks did not come at a critical time.
And this is true for middle-class companies, as well as for small and medium-sized companies and their corporate peers (although the corporate martech crisis is even more acute, given the greater number of technologies they have on average).
Gone are the days when marketers could afford to see technology as ‘good to have or as a bonus. In 2018 and beyond, the performance of marketers in all aspects of their work will largely depend on the strength and quality of their Martech batteries.
With Martech’s rapid development, marketers who lack an adoption strategy will quickly feel overwhelmed and will not be able to keep up with the competition using technology more efficiently.