The importance of Martech
Colin Lewis, CMO of OpenJawTechnologies, starts his article on “Martech from a marketing specialist’s perspective” very strikingly: “Beware of letting the tail wag the dog: technology is integral to modern marketing but tools are no replacement for strategy”. We like this very much, so we took a closer look at the article.
Everyone who works in marketing today is concerned with marketing technology (Martech), because digital technology is technology-based by nature. The customer and his use of digital – and especially mobile – devices is one of the driving forces behind this change.
For those who think that Martech is a fad or does not apply to consumer brands, it is worth looking at the forces that have come together to create this unstoppable machine.
- Amazon AWS’s cloud computing infrastructure has enabled technically oriented companies to scale easily and cost-effectively.
- Inexpensive or nearly free open source software can now provide the building blocks of the most important martech tools – even data management platforms (DMPs) or marketing automation platforms like Mautic.
- Low cost and the democratization of start-ups means that for just a few thousand euros you can be a new martech provider using cloud computing and open source technology.
- The use of distributed (often open source) computing enables large-scale aggregation and processing of data that can support advanced analysis, including machine learning and predictive analytics, such as Hadoop.
Examples of adoption
The big martech players are getting bigger and bigger, so the stock markets are looking forward to a rosy future. Just a few examples:
- Adobe acquired cloud marketing software company Marketo and e-commerce platform Magento in 2018 and committed to grow its multi-billion dollar business by 20% year over year (we reported).
- Salesforce now had 80,000 employees at its annual Dreamforce conference, and recently announced the acquisition of Tableau for $15.7 billion (we reported)
Also note that Martech is not just software that marketers use. As Chiefmartec.com editor Scott Brinker points out: “It is also software that you create: Web apps, widgets, Facebook apps, iPhone apps, Android apps, and interactive ads are now part of marketing.”
Challenges
With technology now accounting for a growing portion of the marketing budget, marketers really need to understand how Martech tools work. Then there’s the challenge of choice: How do we choose from over 7,000 vendors, ranging from CRM platforms to content management, marketing automation, and specialized social media tools? (see article on 2019 Martech Landscape)
So how do we navigate marketers through the complexities of a “fragmented and confusing digital marketing landscape,” as Gartner so aptly put it?
Before you dive into Martech, you should be aware
- Marketing and IT departments need to come together
- Question: Buying/renting or building/programming yourself?
- Question: When to buy/rent: All-in One or Best of Breed?
- Generously plan costs for adjustments/integration
- A rather hidden challenge: orchestration of the technology (regarding data models, business logic, efficiency of processes)
The final concept is then that of a “marketing stack”. This is basically a collection of all the technologies you use in marketing (marketing automation, social media management, content management, CRM, advertising, SEO etc.).
There are wonderful visualization examples of this – as the annual Stackie Award of the Martech Conference proves. (see article Stackie-Award)
However, there is no blueprint for the technology landscapes – too different are
- the processes and business models
- the data models
- solutions already in use
- whether B2B or B2C
- and of course the budgets
In other words, the “best” marketing technology is not necessarily the best for your business.
Conclusion:
Let’s go back to Colin Lewis’ opening quote: “Technology is integral to modern marketing but tools are no replacement for strategy.” The tools have an executive character – and are intended to realize what you have defined in your strategy.
We can only agree to this – and offer you our services! In the jungle of Martech tools we have a very good overview and can assess which solutions you can use to implement your strategy. Just ask us, we are happy to be there for you. Send us a mail.
Picture: Martech today
Note: This is a machine translation. It is neither 100% complete nor 100% correct. We can therefore not guarantee the result.
