Despite the explosion of data to be collected, marketers are still struggling to feed their MarTech tools with reliable data.Â
Technology stack: the causes of marketers' trial and error...
Today, nearly 30% of marketing budgets are dedicated to MarTech, with solutions designed to accelerate (or automate) the execution of certain redundant tasks and/or streamline decision-making by favoring the exploitation of data over intuition.
With sales of just over $245 billion, the MarTech market reflects the unbridled digitalization of marketing. According to a study by Emergen Research, sales in this sector are set to increase 27-fold by 2030. There are several reasons for this dithyrambic performance:
- Managers are becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities presented by a good technology stack,
- The importance of "customer knowledge", all the more so in a context of upheaval in purchasing behavior,
- The arrival of a digital-savvy generation in decision-making positions. According to a PYMNTS x i2c study, millennials are now responsible for 75% of purchasing decisions,
- The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated the pace of digital transformation.
Added to these reasons is a less flattering observation: marketing teams are demonstrating technological over-consumption. Indeed, a MarTech Series study points to a (very) high turnover in technological tools, and 67% of marketers concede that they will have replaced at least one "core" marketing solution by 2020. Marketing automation tools (24%), emailing platforms (23%), business intelligence tools (19% ) and data analysis solutions (17%) are particularly concerned.
This technological trial-and-error can be partly explained by the absence of a coherent approach that thinks in terms of a "stack" rather than individual tools for each task or mission.Â
But there's another oddity: data gaps, both at corporate and professional level, and not just on the marketing side.
Multiple tools and data silos: a vicious circle
According to a study carried out by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), 61% of marketers say they don't have the data they need to feed the MarTech tools at their disposal. Paradoxically, 53% of marketers surveyed explain that the volume of data to be collected has increased significantly over the last 12 months. The problem is therefore more qualitative and organizational:
- 45% of companies have their data scattered across several media
- " Technological solutions must be better integrated, and tools must be able to relyon a solid base of quality, interconnected data," reads the D&B study.
- The decision-makers who have performed best in 2021 are those who have increased their investments in data and analytics, with a focus on Data Quality and Data Governance
- According to an Openrise study detailed here, poor-quality data is one of the leading causes of ABM campaign failure.
In short, the lack of data unification means that it is not possible to build a coherent technological stack and multiply the synergies between the various tools. Dun & Bradstreet sees this as a vicious circle, as the multiplicity of tools(10 on average) accentuates redundancy, inefficiency and data silos. According to the study, 79% of decision-makers have had to merge several platforms in the last three years, with a major impact on :
- Data completeness (39%)
- Data structure (34%)
- Cleanliness and quality of data governance (32%).
Technological overconsumption, or the tendency to blame the tool
In the intensely competitive MarTech market, publishers are vying with each other to win market share, both through R&D efforts and particularly aggressive marketing campaigns.
Marketed solutions promise dithyrambic results, and decision-makers' expectations can easily tend towards the unrealistic and fanciful. The turnover of MarTech tools bears witness toa definitedissatisfaction, and technological over-consumption suggests that decision-makers are blaming the tool and its technical features, overlooking the many other factors that may explain this under-performance:
- Technology stacks built without any real 360° thinking (technology before strategy)
- Thinking in micro-tasks: a tool for every link in the value chain
- A lack of Data (or unreliable data) to feed MarTech tools.
To find out more...
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