In today’s fast-paced digital world, staying ahead in marketing means leveraging martech effectively. However, in a complex and overcrowded marketplace, there are a number of common pitfalls that marketers often encounter. Luke Crickmore, Martech Practice Lead at Algomarketing shares the 10 most common along with actionable tips to help you avoid them.

Data silos:

Every business has data silos, with some having far more than others. These occur when information is isolated within different systems, delaying a unified view of customer interactions. This happens when new technology is bought to fill an immediate need, without any long-term vision of how it could be fully leveraged. When buying or inheriting new technology, be sure to dedicate time to creating a vision and roadmap for that technology. This helps drive platform accountability and integration. By integrating data across platforms, marketers can achieve comprehensive insights, leading to more effective campaigns, all delivered within budget.

Lack of strategy:

Often martech platforms and processes are implemented at the point that the platform is purchased, and then forgotten about. The strategy is so often to implement the new shiny system to meet your target of implementing the new shiny system! Aligning martech tools with business objectives and creating a roadmap for implementation, along with post-live processes and support will drive platform adoption, create champions within the business, and lead to more effective marketing.

Too much martech:

With over 14,000 different tools in the martech landscape, there is a lot to choose from. What’s more, martech is often purchased to fill an immediate need, or because a leader has used it in a previous role, without auditing the martech suite already available. Having an overabundance of tools can overwhelm teams, cost more in training and onboarding, and reduce overall efficiency and creativity. Marketing leaders are often surprised at the results they achieve with a far simpler, but fully integrated stack, enabling marketers to produce more effective campaigns. Some features may be lost but it often becomes easier to understand your campaign effectiveness, ROI and which channels are having the most impact for your business.

Data overwhelm:

With more martech available than ever before, there is an overabundance of data being collected. Much of this is never looked at or used to derive insights that drive action. Auditing the data you have, and the value that it can bring is imperative to helping prioritize how and when it should be used for insight generation. AI can now make this easier than ever, supporting fast and efficient data categorization and understanding, and advanced visualization tools to make your data accessible to new stakeholder groups, supporting more of your people to make data-driven decisions.

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Lack of skills, resources and training:

The rapid evolution of martech requires continuous development of new skills for marketers. A much deeper understanding of data is needed today, and the ability to adopt new technology at pace, while also being a brand creative. Investing in training and development ensures marketing teams are equipped with the necessary skills. When hiring new talent, look for those with skills across data, tech & creative marketing, and then hold on to these people. Partnering with consultancy firms such as Algomarketing can provide additional expertise to fill any gaps, helping organizations maximize their martech investments and stay ahead of technological advancements.

Inability to track ROI:

ROI is an unspoken word for so many marketing teams because no matter how hard they try, they aren’t able to integrate all of their platforms together to be able to measure it! Simplifying the stack makes this easier. Implementing robust processes that enable teams to track spend vs outcome across the entire marketing lifecycle often requires multiple teams to work together to gain an accurate picture of ROI. At Algomarketing, we’ve found the clients who are most effective at this are those where the CMO or CRO has this agreed as one of their KPIs.

Technology challenges:

Martech solutions often fall into one of two categories, simple to use but only produce simple outcomes, or complex to use, but able to produce highly personalized experiences. Decision makers can be burned by complicated technology, and choose to migrate to a simpler platform, to then find their marketers aren’t able to achieve the same level of fidelity that they could before. Most technology platforms are not the problem here, it’s the support and the team structure that surrounds them that needs to change. Investing in technical architects that can translate marketing requirements into reality, while educating the marketing team on the features that they are not leveraging is often key when using more complex platforms. Most businesses would rather that than invest in a platform that can’t keep up with the competition.

No single view of the customer:

A fragmented customer view can lead to inconsistent messaging, over communication and a bad customer experience. Consumers today expect personalized experiences whenever they engage with your brand, regardless of what platform. A customer data platform (CDP) will enable a marketing team to integrate data from various touch points into a single view. This unified approach enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty by delivering relevant interactions consistently across multiple channels.

Lack of targeting & segmentation:

Effective marketing relies on precise targeting and segmentation. Many teams today do not effectively segment their audiences, leading to overcommunication or static and stale experiences for the end user. Advanced martech tools enable detailed customer segmentation based on behavior and preferences. One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is to workshop personas which you can then tailor content for. This approach ensures marketing messages resonate with specific audience segments, improving engagement and conversion rates through the sales funnel.

Platform governance:

Lack of proper governance can lead to inconsistent platform usage and data mismanagement. Establishing clear governance policies ensures that martech tools are used effectively and data is managed responsibly. Regular audits and updates to governance frameworks can maintain system integrity and optimize performance.

Avoiding these martech pitfalls can significantly enhance marketing performance by ensuring the tools are optimized to deliver personalized experiences, make data-driven decisions, and streamline operations. Given the vast number of platforms marketers use daily, data often becomes siloed, leading to manual extraction processes or over-targeting of audiences.

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