64% of Companies Have Invested Heavily in Martech Over the Past 12 Months

New research suggests that marketers looking to streamline their tactics and improve ROI are turning to martech to achieve their objectives.

Squiz recently surveyed more than 600 senior marketers from the U.S., UK, and Australia for the “State of Marketing Technology 2017.” The majority (64 percent) of respondents said that their companies have invested heavily in marketing technology over the past 12 months.

About 33 percent of respondents stated that they were adding to their existing marketing technology stack, while 31 percent said they were starting off with no martech at all. Nearly 27 percent claimed that they had added at least “a little” to their marketing technology stack over the last 12 months.

“The growth in spend on platforms is not something new to the ‘State of Marketing Technology’ survey and our previous editions have followed its growth,” wrote the authors of the report. “2016 saw increased investment in platforms such as CMS (83 percent) and CRM (62 percent), but this is the first year that we’ve seen significant increases, globally.”

Early Innovators and Investors of Martech

At the end of 2016, marketers shared their views on how they expected their organizations to invest in martech with Walker Sands. In the “State of Marketing Technology 2017,” about 70 percent stated that they predicted their companies to increase their martech budgets in 2017. At the time, 48 percent said their businesses were either innovators or early adopters of martech.

“Nearly half (48 percent) of marketers have some form of best-of-breed solution (whether integrated or not), and only 21 percent have adopted single-vendor suites,” said Sarah Hale, account director at Walker Sands. “The seeming turnover with social media management and other solutions (see below) indicates that the space may become more complex and crowded.”