Without a clear strategy behind martech adoption, most marketing tech stacks are about to topple over. Peter O’Neill, Analyst for B2B Marketing, speaks with Shane Redding, Managing Director of Think Direct, about our recent industry analysis.
Rampant digital transformation in the business world has raised two distinct challenges for marketing leaders. Firstly, they have to adjust to communicating to their market through new digital channels. Secondly, they must adopt a realm of new technologies to support new business processes. The question is, have they been confusing these objectives and buying the wrong, or too much, martech?
B2B Marketing’s recent report, How is marketing’s technology stacking up? examines just this subject. Our survey of over 300 B2B marketers from companies of all sizes, small and large, and across all industries reveals their current and future martech plans. We asked about B2B marketer’s martech budgets, their view of their tech stack’s efficacy and their major challenges. The results were discouraging.
We asked Shane Redding, Managing Director of Think Direct, a consultant and trainer in B2B martech, to share her thoughts on three key findings:
Only 13% of respondents consider their martech stack to be good enough
It’s no surprise that the majority of responders describe their stack as inadequate for their needs, but also recognise the importance in investing for the future. This trend of taking stock today, evaluating the martech stack against current and future requirements is leading companies to slim down and remove tools that are not adding value, or are simply underused,” says Shane.
The biggest issue with martech is the lack of staff and skills to fully-use the software
“The survey revealed what we all know, that the biggest pain point is finding and retaining skilled resource to deploy martech to its maximum effectiveness. I believe this will continue to fuel the growth in outsourcing to agencies who have invested in tools that clients want to test and learn from on campaigns, without having to commit to bringing them in-house at the start.”
Most stack elements are siloed and not integrated within marketing, let alone to the rest of the company
“It’s perhaps surprising that the majority are only now developing a formal strategy for their martech requirements,” says Shane. “I predict many will simplify their stack, investing more in the core spine, with more emphasis on tools that not only improve efficiency and effectiveness, but also enhance the customer experience.”
Why are our martech stacks in such disarray?
A sense of urgency around digital marketing has created a sort of arms race, where much of the technology was being acquired tactically and in response to promises, not strategy.
If anything, this scenario has even been exacerbated by a renowned and often celebrated churn in marketing executive job positions, leading to a wind of martech change every time a new CMO or Marketing director is installed and they promote their favourite software partners.
The industry’s disjointed are largely a result of:
- Rapid adoption of martech without due consideration of necessary process changes and resource planning (trained staff)
- A stack approach, collecting shiny new objects to fill out a highly schematic and theoretical architecture without first considering specific business objectives and having a plan
- Rogue and individual SaaS subscripting to a plethora of discrete marketing apps
- Allowing vendors to diagnose problems and believing their solution prescriptions blindly.
“The vendors that make it as easy as possible to install, learn and improve on their platforms will win market share over those that rest on their laurels – even if they are the incumbent category market leader. It’s possible this trend will go further with vendors insourcing more talent to their top enterprise accounts, rather than relying on trusted partners to do this. I see that many enterprise sales are slowed by capacity issues in the vendor ecosystems, with implementation partners being able to cherry pick the business they want to work on.”
