Rule 2: Give Your Marketing Team Final Say Over Their Tools
Welcome back to MarTech2020: 5 Rules for Managing Your Technology and Strategy series! So far, we’ve taken a look at today’s marketing technology stack and the average MarTech used by companies annually. In this blog we’ll be taking a look at “Rule 2: Give the Marketing Team Final Say Over Their Tools”.
Think of the MarTech stack as an extension of the marketing team. The team can only operate efficiently if its stack is built to be efficient in the first place. We asked how many MarTech tools our respondents used each month, and the answers closely mirror the number of tools in their technology stacks (Figure 5). This shows disciplined investment in only the tools the marketing team really needs.
Efficient marketers are not wasting time and money to chase the latest technology; they’re building tech stacks to do exactly what they need to do in the way they need to do it. They recognize that there’s just not room for technologies they aren’t regularly using.
You can’t build that kind of marketing machine if another department is selecting the parts. When asked which departments are responsible for procurement and oversight of marketing technology, the most common responses were the marketing department and marketing operations teams (Figure 6).
The IT department (which sometimes controls a company’s entire technology investment) comes in as only the third most influential party and has a say in only 35% of the MarTech decisions. Keep in mind that this chart asked respondents to select all the departments that play a role, so IT only has a say in 35% of cases, which doesn’t mean its say outweighs the marketing department in any of those.
While it’s important to exercise discipline in building your tech stack, it’s equally important to know how to manage the tools you put into it. Marketers are not only building their own tech stacks but managing them as well. Taking on this responsibility is essential to your success as a marketing leader in 2020, providing yet another reason to keep your tech stack at a manageable size.
Check back next week for Rule 3, “Take Advantage of Technologies That Support More Than One Channel” or click here to read the full report now. And, if you’re ready to see how we can help you strategize your MarTech stack, contact us today.
