Getting your Martech right is a business imperative

With over 10,000 Martech tools and platforms on offer, how do you know what’s right for you? It all starts with a clear framework.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of the Martech ecosystem, you’re not alone. Gartner found that it is one of the top three impediments to making the most of marketing technology. Martech guru, Scott Brinker links a 15% drop in Martech utilisation year on year with the increasing complexity of the tech stack outpacing people’s ability to get value out of it. It’s no surprise then that Martech integration and poor implementation concerns are up 15% year-on-year to 21%.

  An ineffective Martech stack could cost you your customers

Transforming your Martech could increase your return on marketing investment by 20% to 40%. But the imperative to get it right doesn’t end at ROI – getting it wrong could mean losing   your  customers.

  “No one can afford not to look at their data and Martech, especially once Google cookies     are  gone,” says ADMA Martech Certificate instructor and Head of Business Partnership Ecosystem, Acoustic, previously Head of Customer Experience & Analytics, Havas, Michaela Aguilar.

“Rather than looking at ROI, you need to look at the impact an ineffective Martech stack would have on your customers. If you don’t get it right, it’ll either be very expensive or very difficult to retain your customers and create brand loyalty.”

If your Martech stack is underperforming, it could impact your customers in a number of ways.

Inconsistent customer experience

Consistent brands will always come out on top. Customers start building trust with a brand when they know what to expect, so organisations need to make sure that they can meet those expectations consistently to keep building that trust.

“It’s the McDonald’s secret,” Michaela shares. “You always know what you’re going to get. You know what the chips look like, you know what drinks they have, you know what the apple pie will taste like.”

That’s why the customer is the most important component of Martech, according to Michaela.

Poor – or too sophisticated – personalisation

Personalisation matters more than ever to customers – 71% expect personalised interactions and get frustrated when it doesn’t happen.

“Often technology creates this expectation that something amazing will happen if you share your information and preferences with a brand. But when brands don’t deliver on this promise, it’s disappointing.”

Too much personalisation can also become an issue for customers, as was the case for Shoes of Prey. Although customers said they wanted personalised products, what they really wanted was inspiration and an easy and simple shopping experience.

Making Martech work for you

So how do make sure you build the right Martech stack? Use a framework and upskill yourself and your teams, says ADMA Martech certificate instructor and Vice President, Campaign Optimisation, Marketing Capability & Change, at Citi, Satya Upadhyaya.

“You need to have a clear step-by-step framework to understand the various elements of Martech. One that breaks these down from buying and operationalising to the experience design, and customer communication and execution,” Satya explains.

First you need to understand the buying process. This includes:

• Identifying what you need to buy

• Going to the vendors with a Request for Proposal (RPF) and Request for Information (RFI)

• Getting the stack in house.

“Once you've got the stack, it's all about how do you operationalise it,” Satya explains. “That looks at the change management, training, linking it with other legacy systems you have – what you need, what you don't need, duplication and sunsetting systems.”

Then you need to think about how to lubricate the engine for the future. Consider how you will:

• Create economies of scale

• Do things better / simpler / faster

• Get consistency and standardisation across the whole ecosystem.

“Marketing leaders should be looking at these three different areas, and nurturing their people’s skill sets across them all,” suggests Satya.

In an environment that’s constantly changing, marketers need to think about how they can set the organisation up to cope with the ongoing change.

“From a technology point of view, that means can you identify what parts of your technologies are must haves and here to stay, what you can plug in, what should be replaced or serves a particular purpose for a set timeframe,” Michaela shares.

“And with all the privacy laws changing, you also need to make a risk assessment about what technology is risky and where is the data held, and will it expose me?”

Making sense of the complexity

If you want to be able to navigate this increasingly complex ecosystem, you can learn directly from Michaela and Satya during the ADMA Martech Certificate.

The 10-week virtual course will enable you to:

• Understand the landscape

• Run a meaningful tech audit

• Understand the buying process and make informed decisions

• Implement and operationalise the technology

• Create and manage a team to execute automation and personalisation.

Packed with practical examples and guest lectures from expert practitioners, this course will give you the skills and confidence to build a scalable and effective Martech stack that will accelerate transformation – and set you up for a thriving future.

First intake starts 8 August 2023. Hurry, spots will fill fast. Book your place today.