It isn’t quite as easy as you were led to believe.
When it comes to Marketing Technology and the supporting Marketing Technology Services that you are likely to need, there is a serious discrepancy in investment between the two. In fact, from our own recent survey looking at the state of Marketing Automation usage and adoption, 72% of marketers invest significantly more of their budget in marketing technology over the supporting services to optimise the software*.
The demo has a lot to blame for this. In the Marketing Automation space, the demo shows a great user interface and provides a simple overview of the key flagship features that will be used the most, all the while relating the software back to the customer’s business and marketing objectives and challenges. After a great demo it’s easy to believe the technology is just ‘plug and play’; a simple onboarding process and the results will just pour in. Those that have been through the process will know that there is much more to it.
Marketing Automation is much about the people, process and data than it is the technology itself, and whilst some marketers may well find the software easier to use than others, driving adoption, optimising its success and delivering marketing ROI is more complex than the demo would have you believe. It is the ‘people’ element where there is a serious underinvestment and it’s why there is such a war for Marketing Automation talent. Specialist Marketing Automation skills are highly sought after by business and head-hunters alike, and this is impacting the success of digital marketing initiatives, by either long lead times to recruit or by marketing teams being disrupted through specialist staff being poached.
So, given this, what are the options available to you? Well, we believe organisations have three options:
- Level Up your own and your team’s skills through training to gain confidence in delivering marketing technology projects inhouse. CleverTouch has developed its own comprehensive training initiative, Level Up, to ensure that marketers have sufficient marketing technology knowledge and even provide bespoke training programs to support marketers in becoming certified specialists in the platform.
- Invest in tools which simplify marketing technology, making it easier to understand and to drive adoption. Tools such as Momentum have revolutionised the email creation process to widen the use and adoption of Marketing Automation across the organisation by making building on-brand emails painless.
- Seek a complementary marketing technology partner, like CleverTouch, that can support your technology investments in a way that best suits the business rather than simply focusing on traditional creative and brand initiatives.
If you do seek 3rd party support, it’s imperative to work with a consultancy partner who truly understands Marketing Automation, has multiple platform certifications and can easily translate the technology back to achieving your marketing ambitions and objectives.
We’ve written a handy guide to provide a balanced assessment on the key challenges senior marketers are facing with the War for Talent and the three options available to them to support their Marketing Automation ambitions.
War for Marketing Automation Talent - How to Win Through Inhouse Outsourced or a Hybrid Approach to Marketing Automation
* The State of Marketing Automation Adoption and Usage, CleverTouch Consulting (2018)