How BIG should your MarTech Stack Really Be?

There are usually an array of factors for B2B teams to consider when they are in the process of shortlisting and deploying different kinds of martech/salestech platforms. The constant launch and introduction of better marketing automation features and capabilities across a range of marketing-sales functions makes it more challenging for B2B teams to ensure that they not only choose the best-fit martech-salestech systems in place  to drive ROI but that they optimize use of each of those platforms.

A common mistake that B2B marketers might make in a rapidly evolving martech ecosystem is: deploying too many martech platforms that have overlapping features and capabilities.

When it comes to martech and marketing alignment, optimization can very well be driven with lean martech systems that integrate well with each other and provide a centralized/single source of truth to end users.

Which brings us to a few base questions: Why does a lean martech stack always work better for marketers? And why should marketers focus on deploying fewer martech systems today?

Take a look!

Consolidation in the Martech Market = More features within the same platforms

The MarTech ecosystem has grown over the years, the landscape now boasts of over 9000+ providers. For anyone who follows regular martech updates, seeing how quickly providers are choosing to integrate or consolidate their offering and features shows how end users are influencing change in how they want to adopt and use their martech systems.

For internal marketing ops to function more seamlessly and make it easier for large, distributed teams to have easy and instance access to the right data at the right time, fewer systems that are regularly monitored, assessed and updated to showcase more recent reports and statistics will allow teams (no matter where they are) the right insights into what’s working and what isn’t.

The more the martech used within a marketing team, the more challenging it is to ensure reports and analytics from all those platforms are not only accessed but regularly shared across the hierarchy to tighten the grip of lower performing marketing efforts and campaigns.

When choosing different kinds of martech because your marketing team may need a particular feature at a given point of time to drive certain goals, it helps to first assess the existing features your current martech already has, in order to determine whether something similar already exists or not within your current platforms.

Most known platforms today offer easy integrations that allow marketers to use what they need without necessarily installing or investing a whole other martech. This is where tech enabled marketers need to weigh in more into the choice of martech and help the rest of the marketing team find the right integrations and solutions without necessarily focusing on buying another platform, unless the platform is absolutely worth it.

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Your MarTech Has to Be Effective, Not Big: It has to help you drive your brand goals

One of the key secrets when deploying martech lies in first determining what kind of core marketing strategies a brand or team wants to pursue in the near-term or long-term. A marketing team that wants to establish a strong ABM-driven business model backed up video-marketing plans will need a different set of martech platforms that offer high end ABM capabilities and those that can help boost video marketing efforts (like Vidyard).

A brand that wants to pursue an ad-driven model will need a stronger adtech platform or adtech features within their existing martech platforms that can help track, optimize, broadcast ad campaigns across a range of digital channels for instance.

In order to ensure your marketing teams have the best-fit martech in place, it helps to first define core marketing plans for the near-term so that the right martech can be put in place to enable those particular goals and efforts.

Working Through Internal Marketing-Sales Processes Before making a Martech/Salestech Buying Decision

If marketers and sales people do not align on goals, processes and efforts, it will result in disjointed customer experiences, siloed data and also, too many martech-salestech systems.

In order to drive impactful customer experiences, marketers and salespeople need to align their data using a single source of truth: like one CRM or CDP to hold all their customer data and customer behavioral insights. This is what makes it easier for teams to then customize the reporting of these systems to identify what marketers need to do to enable sales, what sales needs to do to drive conversions, or to determine where current lags between the two teams’ vis a vis customer behaviors.

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MarTech Cost Optimization

Marketers the worldover usually have to work within budgets. A separate martech budget is typically allocated to ascertain costs of martech and to measure ROI. This is where a lot of marketers make the mistake of not assessing the impact and ROI of each of their martech investments. Did the platform or campaigns run via those platforms enable any business growth? Did it lead to conversions? Will it help to renew all your existing martech subscriptions when the time comes or invest in other platforms? These are just some of the questions that marketing leaders and especially mid-level marketers need to consider and discuss to enable better martech investments as well as cost optimization.

Fewer systems with integrated capabilities that offer a marketing team what they need to drive their project goals for the next two quarters or a year will usually always work better than multiple disjointed systems.

Making the most of lean marketing and martech

Maintaining lean martech systems as well as lean marketing teams can always boost overall ROI and also enable business efforts during economic downturns. Given the rapid layoffs being witnessed in the technology industry today, marketers who know how to do more with less while revisiting how their core marketing teams function (to also optimize hiring efforts and team tasks), can enable better win-win situations for both, the company and the team at large!

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