According to Gartner, martech adoption will be just 33% in 2023, down from 42% in 2022 and 58% in 2020. Underutilization of martech has unintended consequences. For example, it could lead to future budget cuts based on past platform usage. Underutilization of martech can also hinder marketing process improvements.
There are many reasons why martech is underutilized. In some cases, as this landscape rapidly evolves, CMOs and other leaders may want to pursue new technologies. Many martech users may not benefit from using a particular platform. Users may also not have the proper training to use the martech platform and may not receive the support they need to learn how to use the martech platform more effectively in their daily work.
Ultimately, martech platforms must address two types of marketing problems. That is, customer-facing communication issues (e.g. personalizing emails and SMS) and internal issues (e.g. automating personalized e-mail communication to eliminate manual effort).
Marketers are deeply involved in how the marketing process works, what kinds of outputs are required, and how this may impact communication with customers. As such, they are in a strategic position to increase their use of martech tools. Here are some steps to help you optimize your martech usage.
1. Treat your marketing process like any new campaign or channel for your customers.
Choose your use case wisely. It must accurately reflect your existing marketing processes. Start with a small but representative proof of concept project. Marketers often focus on consumer-facing activities for experimentation, but overlook internal processes.
Start by choosing one process, such as segmenting your paid media campaigns or personalizing your email campaigns. Review the overlap between martech platforms and consider how these platforms can enhance your current marketing processes. Can the platform automate segmentation for paid media? Can it streamline team organization for these processes?
This is an important step that will determine the direction of your next steps. Considering the tools available from both a customer-facing and marketing process perspective opens up many opportunities to increase martech utilization. This step is often overlooked or delegated to teams outside of marketing who have less knowledge of existing marketing processes and how to improve them.
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2. Take a comprehensive look at how martech platforms fit into your current marketing processes.
Which platforms are most useful for your processes? Can they be linked to facilitate data sharing and improve marketing? Marketing teams can use this platform to enhance their work within these platforms. Is your data ready to use?
Once you have a complete picture of your martech stack and how it can help you optimize your processes, it's time to match those processes with the functionality provided by your stack. If automation of customer-facing communications can help improve your marketing processes, which martech platform will deliver it? Can you cover all channels of customer communication? Or do you need multiple platforms to cover all channels? do you need it?
By mapping processes and existing capabilities, you can highlight overlaps between different platforms (and save your organization money by removing such overlaps).
3. Define what “increased martech stack utilization” means to your company
It's not just how much you use the platform, but how it helps you enhance your current processes to achieve your business goals. Looking at platform usage out of the context of the marketing process can lead to misleading conclusions. Martech platforms use various metrics and benchmarks to define usage levels.
For example, suppose a company is aggressively increasing its customer data collection efforts. In this case, the database platform will grow over a period of time, so it is better not to use it to its full potential. However, the utilization of this same platform should be measured against the reduction in customer data ingestion and activation times.
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Can you speed up your marketing processes and achieve the same results with fewer resources? Can you also increase output when needed? These are marketing processes that can be used to better define the use of martech. This is an example of an indicator. Translate these improvements into specific metrics and KPIs and track them regularly.
5. Provide training and support for your chosen marketing process and platform
This step is critical to successfully implementing and maintaining martech improvements. Users should have access to self-service training, support tools, and colleagues for assistance. This fosters a community where employees can ask questions, share ideas, and continuously learn.
Please note that the focus of the above steps is strategic in nature and not merely technical or operational. Rather than focusing on a specific platform, this approach allows you to continue to better align your processes, increasing martech utilization while also achieving your overall business goals.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.