This would be laughable if it wasn’t quite so common.
In our recent research on Marketing Automation Adoption and Usage, 48% of organisations plan to increase their investment in marketing technology over the next 12 months*. This is really no surprise, since CMOs and Marketing Directors are being actively encouraged to purchase more and more marketing technology, especially with the industry hype around AI, predictive and ABM, among others. Building out the MarTech stack is a top priority for many.
However, marketing technology is more complex than the salesperson’s demo will have you believe— this is especially true with Marketing Automation.
The demo is always geared in the Marketing Automation vendors favour, but it isn’t just a plug and play technology. While the tool may be ‘easy to use’, it is the changes to process, people and data that lie at the heart of a digital transformation project.
With the rapid growth of marketing technology adoption, it’s no wonder that 77% of marketers feel that they’re unable to keep up with this rate of advancement**. The increase in marketing technology spend is causing a real problem for CMOs. Much like headache tablets, taking more and more will supposedly help, but in fact it’s making things a lot worse.
More marketing technology investment—without the specialisms to keep up with the pace of adoption—will only continue to widen the skills gap and the war for talent in the market today. Organisations cannot just burden their teams with more and more technology and expect them to do their day job too. It is unrealistic and unfair.
It is important to remember that acquiring new marketing technology is just a tactic. The strategic element of marketing technology acquisition is aligning a suitable structure to support the technology and then improve marketing’s capability and the customer experience over time.
To achieve this, you have three options available:
- Level Up skills and increase training resources to deliver marketing technology projects inhouse.
- Invest in tools which simplify marketing technology, such as CleverTouch Momentum.
Seek a complementary marketing technology partner to support your technology investments the way your business needs it, and not one focused on traditional creative.
