Last week, I had the opportunity to attend MarTech in San Francisco. This event brought together one thousand of the brightest marketing minds from across several industries for a two day event. The conference was jam-packed with fantastic content, featuring an impressive lineup of speakers from companies such as LinkedIn, Netflix, Coca-Cola, Kimberly-Clark, and many more.
The goal of the conference was to explore the booming world of martech. Martech is the intersection of marketing and technology. It is an amazing space with a very exciting future. At the event, you could feel the buzz in the expo hall and sense the anticipation among the attendees as sessions assembled.
Options Galore!
A common theme was the concept of choice. Marketers have an ever-expanding set of options when it comes to the technology they can add to their “marketing stack.” From marketing automation, and content management, to social media management, and customer advocacy platforms—as the martech space matures, there are almost endless marketing technology options. Cynthia Gumbert, VP Digital and New Accounts Marketing at CA Technologies, said in her presentation, that now “being a marketing consumer is like being in a candy store.”
Today, we have thousands of software solutions at our fingertips to make our jobs as marketers an enjoyable, productive journey. Because of the rapid innovation in martech, marketers can compare and contrast technologies. Having choices is empowering.
Using A Decision-making Blueprint
As a marketer, once you are faced with making choices regarding software solutions, you need to develop what is best described as a “Marketing Blueprint”. Your marketing blueprint will help you define the technologies that are absolutely necessary and which are superfluous for your marketing department and activities. According to Cynthia, the anatomy of a marketing blueprint is determined by the answers to these six questions:
1. What’s our vision for the customer experience and journey?
2. What’s the desired state of marketing tech to fill the buyer journey?
3. What pieces do we have in place and what’s left to add?
4. Are we using what we have—scope, scale, geographically, enablement?
5. Have we integrated what we have?
6. Are there duplications or unnecessary capabilities?
The question I believe is particularly important is the one regarding use. Many marketing departments have a plethora of solutions. The problem is that many marketing departments only utilize a small percentage of a software’s capability. It is important to critically assess each technology and determine whether or not it is being used to its full potential. The ultimate goal for any marketer is to have a lean marketing stack, not one with redundancies.
Published with permission.
