Last year, the State of Martech 2022 explored the concept of Nextopia. There is evidence that many marketers are on the lookout for the next ‘shiny’ new technology. At the same time, they have failed to make the best use of their existing technologies. This isn’t a new trend, but an issue that the martech industry has suffered for a few years now.
In fact, 30% of marketers suggested they cannot fully utilise their martech, 34% still planned to buy more in the following 12 months.
Nextopia Drivers
Purchasing new software is a proposition that can be hard to resist. Vendors frequently release new software and platforms with large marketing budgets and sales teams behind them.
At the same time, marketers are continually striving to keep up with evolving technology, market and buyer trends. New technologies can be seen as a ‘quick fix’ by marketers keen to make a fast, visible impact with a solution that the business needs.
Nextopia Challenges
Whilst these drivers are understandable, the Nextopia mindset can present several challenges when executed poorly:
- Over-promising and/or under-delivering: A technology solution is over-hyped and over-sold at the start. It is often quickly underused and forgotten by the organisation as it incorporates into ‘business as usual’. This results in long-term damage to the credibility of the Marketing function.
- Opportunity cost: The focus on new technology solutions requires significant investment, in cost but also increasingly in time, from numerous stakeholders. This comes with an ‘opportunity cost’. Other projects cannot progress as planned, and other marketing activities don’t happen. Instead, the time is used for running procurement and implementation programmes on the new martech solution.
- Distraction from business challenges: Nextopia often disguises the underlying challenges faced by a marketing organisation, including unintegrated data silos, unclear processes and misaligned, unpersonalised customer journeys filled with friction. Ultimately organisations must address these challenges regardless of the legacy technology ‘stack’.
Introducing Sustainable Martech
There is definitely a better way. Sustainable martech is a mindset shift and is achieved through simplicity. For context, the average number of martech apps organisations have is 90 (Source: Chief Martec).
In the State of Martech 2022 report, 44% of marketers stated that they have marketing technology platforms which have largely gone unused.
There are green shoots to show that the situation is changing. In an exclusive preview of some of the State of Martech 2023 findings – a report that will be released in March 2023 – we can reveal that B2B2C businesses in the US, EU and UK reported the largest increase in full martech stack integration between SOM22 and SOM23 (39.0% to 48.2%). Full martech stack integration for B2C was largely unchanged between SOM22 and SOM23 (39.7% to 40.6%). B2B organisations reported a decrease in full martech stack integration between SOM22 and SOM23 (39.6% to 27.4%).
In short, marketers need to think: reduce, reuse and recycle first!
The good news is that sustainability and integration are the combined solution. They are the common dual keys to a successful marketing and martech strategy, implementation activities and data sets. The mindset is relevant to and achievable by all industries, sizes of companies and business models.
When migration or new technology makes sense
Moving one platform to another or adding a new one may be business critical. Perhaps the broader business strategy means that a single vendor or supplier is needed across sales, marketing, customer service, customer communications and other functions. Perhaps one part of the Martech Spine is simply not capable of achieving certain tasks, be it campaign capabilities, hyper-personalisation or providing useful data.
In those situations, as just two examples, it’s important to approach the idea of a platform migration or addition with eyes wide open to the costs, complexities and timelines needed. A platform is never a quick fix but an enabler and an investment in the future.
Clevertouch Marketing is Europe’s leading martech consultancy, software and services provider, the B2B Marketing Consulting partner of the year, an accredited 3-star Best Company for extraordinary levels of employee engagement, and one of the Sunday Times’ Top 100 Companies to Work for the last three years running.
Created by marketers with martech in mind, Clevertouch’s purpose is to help clients make sense of their martech investment and prove the ROI. Clevertouch pioneered the concept of ‘the martech Spine©.
The only Marketo Platinum Partner domiciled in Europe, a Salesforce Silver partner and the first strategic partner Seismic in EMEA, Clevertouch has supported over 500 blue chip and ambitious clients on their martech journey, including Aveva, Atos, Fujitsu and Shell.
