As martech eats up more and more of marketing budgets, marketers are having trouble finding the right technology to achieve their martech strategy goals.
A pair of studies by OnBrand, Bynder and PointSource, which surveyed US and UK executives in February of this year, revealed that rising customer expectations are leaving many brand marketers struggling to keep up.
“The two-fold challenge facing marketers today is how to deliver relevant and consistent customer experiences across all channels, while filtering through the clutter of the rapidly evolving marketing technology landscape,” OnBrand’s report reads.
OnBrand found that 90 percent of its respondents marked “identifying the right technologies to serve as an extension of our brand” as a top challenge for their martech strategy. Likewise, 57 percent of PointSource’s respondents claimed that they are unsatisfied with at least one of the martech platforms they use.
Finding the correct martech stack was also found to be the most widespread obstacle for marketers, with 20 percent of respondents listing it as their greatest challenge going into 2018. Finding the proper martech strategy induced more anxiety in marketers than even securing a high enough budget (17 percent), adapting to changing consumer behaviors (15 percent) and even ensuring brand safety (10 percent).
OnBrand suggests two reasons for this struggle, the first of which is the sheer volume of martech platforms coming to market and vying for marketer attention: Brinker’s Martech supergraphic has grown by 40 percent just over the last year alone, accounting for almost 7,000 different firms.
Second, OnBrand’s report indicated the relative lack of experience marketers have in keeping track of the martech stack.
“Most organizations are still at an early stage in the marketing maturity curve and the task of navigating the marketing tech landscape is a daunting one,” the report reads.
PointSource’s study found a similar trend: companies younger than ten years old were 15 percent more likely to be dissatisfied with their current martech strategy.
The authors of PointSource’s report seemed to be downright baffled at the behavior of marketers with their martech strategy.
“Decision makers are not investing in the solutions they’ve identified as most valuable. Even their understanding of what’s valuable can be called into question,” the report reads. “Getting dizzy? So are we.”
Both analyst groups indicate that the way out of such a technology quagmire is investment internally, either in specialists or employee expertise. According to OnBrand, 53 percent of marketers plan to hire additional tech talent in the next year.
“The best preparation for digital transformation holistically considers how technology will impact every pocket of an organization,” PointSource’s study asserts. “To get started, companies should prioritize the two areas say would build their confidence most—education and culture.”
