Are these five Martech mistakes holding you back?

Martech integration is a growing challenge for organisations – and it’s holding them back from creating the right customer experiences. Here are five common mistakes to avoid to ensure your tech stack works for you.

Most people have had one or two (or more!) disappointing first dates in their life. But the most disappointing are often the ones we’ve invested some time and effort (maybe even some emotions) in before we begin to see the cracks. ADMA Martech Certificate instructor and Head of Business Partnership Ecosystem, Acoustic, previously Head of Customer Experience & Analytics, Havas, Michaela Aguilar likens buying marketing technology without carefully considering the practicalities of a bad dating experience.

“On the first date, everyone is on their best behaviour, looking their best. After a couple of dates, the cracks start to show until one morning you wake up and the person seems completely different.” Michaela explains.

“When you buy Martech, you think you’ll get all this ROI. But then you have this rude awakening that you either can’t find the right people to manage it, it doesn't really integrate, or your data isn’t in order. And then you have this graveyard of test products just sitting there.”

Today, many organisations are running 60+ applications, plus digital asset and content management platforms and data sources – yet 60% of CMOs still consider their Martech stack incomplete and unable to support their growth.

With changing customer expectations, crumbling cookies, and tightening budgets, getting your Martech right is critical today. Investing in the wrong – or too many – solutions could negatively impact your customer experience, increase costs and customer churn and slow down your transformation.

But in such a complex and crowded market, knowing what tools in your Martech stack will drive real value is no easy feat. Neither is ignoring the promise of glamourous sales decks and shiny new tech.

Before you invest in the next one-stop solution, you need to get your house in order and make sure you avoid these common mistakes.

Mistake 1: Lack of marketing/IT partnership

Transformation can’t progress when marketing and IT are not in alignment.

In fact, the 7% year-on-year rise in the lack of marketing/IT alignment is one of the top roadblocks to marketing functional success, according to the CMO’s State of the CMO 2022 Report. This lack of collaboration is hindering sustainable, long-term solutions and consistent customer experiences.

And now, with new privacy legislation ahead, partnering with IT will become even more important to help you understand the implications of changes.

It’s not only marketing and IT and their relevant leaders that need to align – the ADMA board suggests six key executives also need to get on the same page.

“The CMO, CIO, and CEO are the drivers of a company’s success, but the CFO, compliance, and communications departments can also have a significant impact. Compliance, for example, ensures that a company operates ethically and within the law.”

Getting IT and relevant stakeholders involved from the beginning is one way to get alignment. Finding the right people who understand and can communicate effectively with tech will also help bridge this gap.

Mistake 2: Putting tech before customer needs

Many organisations fail to put customer needs at the heart of transformation – or identify the issues and problems they’re trying to solve before investing in tech. This often means teams will need to try to retrofit tech to solve business problems, leading to extra costs, time wasted, and frustration – and a less-than-seamless customer experience. “It doesn't matter if it's data or advertising or Martech, you have to focus on the consumer,” says Michaela.

Your tech stack is there to help you bring value to the customer – so you need to be clear on what that value is and what your customer needs are before making investment decisions.

Mistake 3: Assuming tech equals transformation

“Buying a new piece of technology isn’t transformation – it’s just an upgrade,” says ADMA Martech certificate instructor and Vice President, of Campaign Optimisation, Marketing Capability & Change, at Citi, Satya Upadhyaya.

“Simply upgrading your Hyundai to a Porsche won’t make you a better driver – in fact, it can have the opposite effect.”

He says technology alone isn’t going to solve problems – you need the right strategy and structure in place.

You should also consider:

• What value are you bringing to the customer and the brand?

• Are you connecting the customer with a continuous experience all the time?

• Can you deliver on the experiences you promised?

• Have you got your data polarity sorted out?

• Are your different data points feeding into the same place and talking the same language?

Because if these things are not happening, you’re not transforming.

Mistake 4: Not getting data in order

In his experience, Satya found that 8 out of 10 businesses operate without a data strategy or measurements in place. Individual teams often operate in silos, piecing together the data they need as they need it – a costly, time-consuming, and potentially risky approach.

With inconsistent collection and management practices, the quality of data is also likely to suffer, which can also lead to even the best tech solutions failing to enable effective personalisation.

“The value equation of data (data value = cost reduction x increased revenues x reduced risk) is very critical for the success of the market because what you feed in gets fed out. In other words, garbage in is equal to garbage out,” Satya explains.

Mistake 5: Not having the right skills

People are key to the success of any technology. If you don’t have the right people with the right skills to orchestrate the implementation and management, you’re wasting precious dollars.

In CMO’s report, 42% of participants flagged marketing operations and technology platform skills as the second biggest skills gap they have, after data and analytics.

This isn’t surprising as Martech requires a complex combination of skills. Marketing leaders need to not only be able to communicate and collaborate, understand the foundations for technology and translate marketing needs to a tech architect and vice versa – they also need to understand how the entire ecosystem works from a data, technology, and strategy perspective.

“If you don't have the building blocks of a marketing technologist, or the ability to lead that function, you are dependent on your vendors and your IT teams,” Satya shares. “What Michaela and I try to do through ADMA’s Martech Certificate, is teach marketers the theoretical concept while bringing in the practical dimensions from experts and practitioners. Joining the two together to give them that edge that helps get their organisation back on the transformation agenda.”

Investing in Martech is critical – but it’s also complex, expensive, and can take a while to draw ROI from. But you can make the right investment decision easier with ADMA’s new Martech Certificate. Learn from some of the industry’s leading practitioners, like Michaela and Satya, and navigate the convergence of data-driven marketing and technology, platforms, and systems with confidence. The first intake starts on 6 June 2023. Hurry, spots won’t last long.

Book your place today