The martech landscape has grown exponentially in the last 10 years, with the software now available exceeding 8000. This has gone up from just 150 in 2010, and is set to continue on this trajectory as we rely more and more on the digital in our day to day lives. This has led to a feeding frenzy of over-implemented, under-utilised, and unnecessary martech platforms.
As a result of this, Marketing is struggling to articulate the benefits of all this technology back into the business, and, even when they can, does the business really care? The role of Marketing is to translate what marketing technology can do for the business and for the benefit of the customer, in simple business terms. But the martech landscape has become far too complex. That’s why one of our core principles at Clevertouch is to Simplify marketing technology and help the marketer articulate its business purpose.
We believe that Marketing need to take a checkpoint on all their current marketing technology and evaluate those that are truly relevant. The fundamental strategy behind this is the Martech Spine; our methodology that comprises just the technology a Marketing department needs in order to meet most of its’ business objectives. The Spine centres around the idea that there are 4-6 core technologies that are way more important than the other 7,994 in the landscape. These operate within a Spine like structure, transferring information between one another seamlessly so that it matches a) the customer journey and b) to the information flow between departments, from the website CMS and Marketing Automation platform owned by Marketing, through to Sales in their CRM. Many CMOs will be successful if they fully integrate the Martech Spine before adding shinier and more tactical technologies.
When you are evaluating your new marketing technology purchases, you need to ask yourself this key question:
Will this simplify our marketing technology environment, or will it help us translate our martech strategy to the business in a simple manner?
If the answer is no, then further evaluation will be required to ensure its truly solving a challenge that affects the wider business.
The digital world is becoming increasingly cluttered with more and more technologies, and we believe that in order to make the most of your martech investment, you need to reduce or simplify the number of platforms you have in your marketing technology environment.
The Chinese philosopher Confucius and Steve Jobs have some famous quotes on simplification – it is clearly more difficult to keep things simple, but the results are far greater than operating in complexity. This thinking can be applied to marketing technology too, and it is why it is one of our 3 core consulting principles.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it is worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” — Steve Jobs
