Getting Honest About Martech’s Two Inherent Problems

Once in a while, a piece of content really hits you in the gut with reality. Acxiom’s “The Marketing Accountability Void” was truly eye-opening for me. It brought out two key challenges I see in today’s Marketing Technology (Martech) landscape:

1. Misaligned data
2. Underestimated levels of effort

Martech includes software and tools that assist in achieving marketing goals. CRM, Analytics Enhancement, Content Marketing, Customer Data Platforms, SEO, Digital Asset Management, Marketing Automation, and a host of other categories of technology are part of the martech landscape.

Martech spending has increased more than 5000% in the past ten years and from my vantage point, the ROI of that spend is not being realized nearly enough.

We constantly hear promises of “1:1 customer relationships”, “360-degree customer views”, and “most relevant next-best-actions”. However, while each tool promises to be the holy grail of marketing, each seems to divert us further from connected experiences, seamless integrations, and enhanced, actionable data sets.

The Level of Effort Problem

To be clear, tools themselves aren’t the problem. Using martech to achieve your vision, however, is not simple - and that is one of the problems nobody talks about.

My father-in-law once said, “the price of the house isn’t the cost of the house.” That is the case with martech. Licensing, hosting, configuration, and integration are the price of the tool. But the cost of the tool includes people and time. This is often overlooked when making a purchase.

If you procure and set up a new marketing automation tool, what happens next? How do you then get closer to your vision? 

The level of effort to take a martech tool from “out of the box” to “delivering results on an ongoing basis” is significant and should be talked about during the buying process.

The Data Alignment Problem

I’ll use personalization tools to illustrate this challenge. We are familiar with several web personalization suites at Phase2. They all promise the convergence of customer data with content to deliver the right experiences to the right audiences. However, the measurement mechanisms within these tools are generally not sophisticated. So, rather than use the tools themselves for reporting, they need to be integrated with a business’ analytics suite. 

Here’s where that gets challenging: the definition of common measurement metrics (such as pageviews, for example) can vary between personalization tools and analytics suites. This inconsistency means marketers are unable to understand performance and accurately account for their spend.

Acxiom states there must be a direct link between marketing dollars, business outcomes, and customer experience. With misaligned data, the process of determining how your dollars impact your business goals is vulnerable.

Problem Solving

I would like to give three pieces of advice to marketers who are suffering from either of these two challenges.

1. Assess and maximize your tech ecosystem today

Companies with 500+ employees have an average of 150-200 SaaS applications. The first step in the right direction is to invite a consultant to the table to help you map out your current digital experience landscape (CMS, CRM, Marketing Automation, CDP, Personalization, BI, etc.) and overlay it with your teams and customer journeys. 

This activity will reveal gaps and redundancies in your stack. You’ll surface opportunities to maximize tools and to cut fat. You’ll realize the level of effort you aren’t putting into delivering ROI. You may even turn up some “shelfware” - tools you have procured and do not use at all.

This process generally takes 6-12 weeks, depending on the size and complexity of your company as well as the landscape of tools you have. That means that within the confines of a single fiscal quarter, you can affect meaningful change that perpetually impacts how marketing dollars are spent and measured.

2. Standardize your metrics

A universal KPI model should be established so that you can accurately report your impact on customer experience in relation to organizational goals.

 Once a set of agreed upon definitions is in place, you then determine the source of truth for reporting on marketing dollars at all levels. With standardized metrics and one system of record, marketing teams can confidently deliver the true impact your spend has on customer experience and business objectives.

3. Strategy first, then tools

Discovering the latest in martech is fun and interesting, but don’t put the cart before the horse. 

While the promises of martech may be real, you need to assess exactly how you are going to reach that nirvana-like end state. If you don’t have a strategy to do that, scrap the idea of looking at a tool and use your time to make a plan.

As an agency that doesn’t sell its own tools, we have been implementing, integrating, and configuring martech products across the landscape for 20 years and we can help you formulate a set of questions that make you a better buyer. If you’re currently considering a new tool in your stack, I encourage you to speak with us. 

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