The Slow Adoption of MarTech for Digital Marketing Execution [Interview]
The “2016 Digital Technology Survey” from Real Story Group recently discovered that, although 59 percent of enterprises have digital marketing strategies in place, not all of them are utilizing the proper resources for execution. Approximately 47 percent of digital marketers say that they do not have the right tools for the job.
For more insight into the findings of the report, we spoke to Kashyap Kompella, the research director at Real Story Group.
WHY DO YOU THINK MARKETERS HAVE BEEN SLOW TO ADOPT MARTECH, DESPITE THEIR INVESTMENT IN IT?
“There are two interrelated themes here. First, we are still in the early adoption stage for MarTech tools such as marketing automation. Second, even among early adopters, these tools remain underutilized. Early adopters are realizing that success does not come easy – they are facing several challenges such as high costs, tool complexity and lack of internal expertise. Also, rosy notions of ‘data as an asset’ are being replaced by a realistic assessment of what’s practically possible, given the reality of disparate data sources and systems.”
DO YOU THINK MARTECH DEVELOPERS ARE CHANGING THE WAY THEY DEVELOP SOLUTIONS TO CATER TO THEIR USERS?
“No doubt, among marketers, there is a definite preference for products that are easy to implement and simple to use. But vendors (particularly the larger marketing cloud vendors) are currently more focused on integrating different components of their solutions.
Remember that a typical marketing cloud is the result of half a dozen vendors acquired over the last few years. Also, the greater diversity of use cases a MarTech platform supports, the greater its complexity. More often than not, MarTech projects resemble the messy ERP implementation projects of yore that required armies of analysts and developers.”
WHY DO YOU THINK MARKETERS ARE NOW SPANNING THEIR DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE?
“The promise of newer MarTech tools is that you can more effectively use data. In other words, marketing is now more data-driven. It is then easy to see that a siloed approach won’t get you the maximum bang for the buck. You want to leverage data that exists in multiple repositories across the enterprise and that’s why enterprise-wide strategies are being considered.”
ARE B2B MARKETERS ADOPTING MORE MARTECH THAN B2C MARKETERS? WHY OR WHY NOT?
“The RSG survey results show that MarTech adoption and maturity curves are somewhat similar for B2B and B2C marketers. However, their focus areas are very different.
B2C marketers have traditionally been good at customer demographics and segmentation strategies. Now, they want to move the need on personalization at scale. Real-time marketing and mobile marketing use cases are also of greater interest to B2C marketers.
B2B marketers are investing in different applications, such as content marketing and account-based marketing.”
WHAT DID YOU FIND TO BE THE MOST INTERSTING FINDING IN THE REPORT?
“The RSG survey is an empirical validation of what we anecdotally see and hear from our enterprise customers – be it the middling customer satisfaction with products or current low maturity levels.
One of the findings is that there is a paucity of internal expertise – what is a bit surprising is that even large enterprises seem to face this challenge. If CMOs are going to be spending heavily on technology, then it is imperative that they pay attention to their current capabilities, benchmark themselves against best-in-class industry peers and invest in building capabilities where they may be lacking.”
You can download a free copy of the “2016 Digital Marketing Technology Survey” on the Real Story Group website.