The evolution of MarTech

MarTech is nothing but a software/tech used by marketers to plan and execute marketing activities. It is a perfect mix of marketing and technology. From planning to execution and analysing results, to future forecasting, Martech serves as a vital tool for Marketeers. All of these happening at scale, in a multi-touchpoint, omnichannel, primarily digital environment.

A few years ago, Marketing Technology was in a stage of infancy. At that point, the MarTech industry had a total of about 150 tools and nobody had even heard of Cambridge Analytica. Adobe hadn’t bought Magento or Marketo and LinkedIn hadn’t yet joined the Microsoft family.

The MarTech industry has been democratized by the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, a software distribution model pioneered by Salesforce in 1999. This was a major turnaround as the SaaS model was an attractive alternative to expensive custom-developed CRM systems that only giant corporations could afford. There was a disruption in the Martech industry when Salesforce made their CRM available for all kind of companies, as suited for their needs. After which there was no turning back, as we saw the entry of various tools which catered to different types of companies and various marketing roles.

The rapid growth of Martech empowered marketers to automate and streamline many aspects of their day-to-day marketing activities.

Nowadays, most MarTech tools are shifting towards being software-centric, which is eventually about automating the process and saving time for marketers. Having insights on vast data about the target audience is now possible because of the Marketing Technology tools. What’s more, those insights often arrive in real-time, allowing marketers to pivot when things aren’t going as expected.

While the MarTech landscape continues to evolve, it’s not going away anytime soon. MarTech is and will continue to be, the catalyst for reaching and engaging the modern consumer.

But why is Martech so important? In today’s world managing marketing assets is an evolving, complex battle. The industry is shaken by new disruptors, technology and tightened regulation. It is very much necessary for a company to gear itself up with its marketing tools in this fast-moving world of cut-throat competition.

As the Marketing Technology landscape evolved over these years, now many companies are offering a variety of Martech solutions. In 2011 there were just 150 Martech tools in the stack but if we fast forward to today, there are around 8000+ tools on offer. You name any function and there is a Marketing tool for it as of today.

So with more than 8000 tools in the Martech stack, the marketer needs to make the right choices. He needs to have an understanding of technologies that are most fundamental to his business goals. Marketing Technology has democratized the way brands and consumers engage. To see how Martech has evolved, we have to see it from two different points of view, viz. that of the customer and the marketeer.

Customer’s POV - As the smartphone has taken over, the customer is highly connected across the globe. A customer can snap, tweet, or poke anyone, anywhere anytime. Not only that but anyone can share one’s experience online, be it good or bad, and it can resonate through the digital network across the globe.

As technology changes, customers adopt new sets of standards. Consumers pick trends and set them as standard not by vote, but with their loyalty and transaction history.

Marketeer’s POV - Before the Martech tools, marketers were left to those who knew SQL or other database languages to write a query and extract some insights. While database languages are still relevant, analytics tools help get deeper insights in real-time, allowing individuals to make the decisions that matter. If you wanted one tool to talk to another, you had to write a custom integration. But with the advent of Martech now, so many of the sales and marketing technologies that exist have plugged into automation tools that make the work easier. From scaling communications to driving data consistency, technology continues to refine the scalability of marketing.

It is thanks to Martech that now we can look at insights and data and know that people drop out of a form on some particular field, or we can see that people are clicking and getting distracted by the wrong CTA. Armed with data, we can make changes and see real results and gain efficiency by looking for holes in our funnel and find out why people aren’t converting.

As data about our customers come into our marketing stack, we can continue to refine and personalize our content. The more relevant our messages, the happier our prospects, and customers will be. The net effect of this also happens to be a higher likelihood of conversion.

Now that we know how Martech has evolved and has changed our lives over the years, let us shift our focus to what we call the MarTech Stack. A marketing technology or a Martech stack is a group of technologies that marketers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities. So what are the Martech stack essentials? To cut the long story short we can divide this into 3 parts:

1. Appeal – a set of basic yet very essential tools to kick start your campaigns
   1. Ad Tech
   2. CMS
   3. Social Media Management
   4. SEO
   5. Lead generation
   6. Webinar tool
      
   
   


2. Engage – Now that you have got a set of basic tools we need to engage with the audience and for that, we need to have the following tools in our arsenal
   1. Customer Engagement
   2. Data tools
   3. Marketing Automation
   4. Cloud services
   5. Sales tools
      
   
   


3. Analyse – these are the tools which we need very specifically to assess how our marketing investments are yielding returns
   1. Web analytics
   2. Business Intelligence
   3. Lead management
   4. Conversion rate optimization
      
   
   

The tide is changing from software islands to all-in-one solutions that empower not just tools but also teams to play nicely together. Rather than simply growing larger, tech stacks are getting smarter, more streamlined, and ultimately connected.

Whatever tools you choose for your marketing stack, just remember that the technology you choose must also connect into your strategy, not the other way around.

Always remember a good balance of tools is a key to successful Martech stack.