Untangling the Martech Mess – How to Better Align Marketing & IT

Almost 10 years ago, I heard a statement that has stuck with me ever since:

“Technology IS the key differentiator for brands; it drives experience, service and marketing capability”.

Those words were spoken by Andy Lark (when he was CMO at the Commonwealth Bank) and still hold true today. Except, nearly a decade later, we still haven’t nailed it. For some of us, not at all.

Here are a few scary facts for you:

• Martech now accounts for a quarter of all marketing spend.
• Marketers are buying more technology – but using less of it. According to Gartner, we’re now only using around 42% of our martech capabilities!
• During last year’s spending boom, CMOs were almost out-spending CIOs on technology.
• More than half of marketers are unable to prove ROI on their technology purchases.

How did we get here?

Mess #1 – Martech Sprawl

Marketing technology has proliferated to the point where almost all companies — even the smallest ones — use multiple systems.

In just 12 years, the martech landscape has grown from 150 tools to over 11,000. That’s faster than any of us can hope to keep pace with. Simply knowing what tools are available is tricky, let alone understanding if and how they can integrate with our existing tech stacks and drive growth. It is in this environment many marketers spent big (with some of us now unwinding those investments for simpler, more affordable solutions).

Mess #2 – The Experience Wave

Then came the ‘experience wave’. The integration of back and front office tools, combined with rapid mobile adoption, meant suddenly our customers expected us to be able to provide what they want, when they wanted it, via any device (but not in an annoying way or by asking too many questions).

We weren’t marketing anymore – we’re now creating ‘customer experiences’ (CX) with rest of the organisation expecting us to deliver ‘seamless’ experiences overnight – yet, funnily enough, with the same budgets as before. Cue a FOMO buying frenzy as marketers sought out new technologies that promised to turn huge legacy data sets into the fuel for personalised experiences.

Despite the concept of customer experience dating back to the 70s, Forbes announced last year that we are officially entering the ‘Platinum Age of CX’.

Mess #3 – Time to Pay Up

On top of all this, we’re now smack-bang in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis – CEOs and CFOs around the country are starting to notice that marketing has been spending big on technology, with little to show for it. Sixty-seven per cent of CFOs believe the last three years’ digital spending has not met enterprise expectations.

Our marketing technology spending decisions haven’t delivered the ROI we’d hoped… and the rest of the business has noticed.

Mess #4 – The IT vs Marketing Chasm

The relationship between IT and marketing has always been a delicate issue. But with technology becoming the key differentiating enabler for brands, there’s more confusion than ever before over:

• Who owns CX?
• Who manages customer data?
• Who should be responsible for buying digital technologies?
• And, if the answer is marketing, then who’s responsible when the technology fails or doesn’t deliver?

In some situations, CIOs are finding, to their dismay, that marketing is purchasing and managing some platforms without IT’s knowledge or support.

CMOs aren’t CIOs. We need the authority to make decisions about the tools needed to deliver business goals – but we lack the crucial platform and vendor management skills to do so effectively. And while going behind IT’s back is not the answer, IT need to step up and be more responsive to marketing’s need.

What next?

It’s time to reshape our view of the IT & Marketing relationship.

Instead of seeing IT as a gatekeeper, standing in the way of our ability to achieve revenue and growth goals, IT offers one of our best routes out of the martech mess we find ourselves today.

Getting Back on Board with the CIO / CTO

Here are six ways we can improve the operational relationship between IT and marketing – and make better martech decisions:

1.Share your vision, strategy & planning.

This is a two-way street. For IT to become the trusted advisor to marketing, take the marketing or customer strategy and develop a technology vision or roadmap that enables it. Even better, develop it in conjunction with your marketing colleagues.

2. IT should accept that the online of old is not DIGITAL.

That it is now a complex value chain of marketing practices, technology, partners, psychology, and uncertainty. Develop an understanding for Marketing’s operational realities and adjust your thinking accordingly.

3. Marketing should invest in IT.

We have established that marketing is a platform or technology enabled practice, that technology can be the key marketing differentiator. On this basis, marketing should add technology capability to their marketing quiver, and invest in IT like they do their other disciplines – or risk being at the whim of the self-interests of external partners.

4. Technology is an enabler.

The real game to solve lies in people and processes. So, shift your combined efforts to focus here. We need to rethink our operating model, rhythms and practices to succeed in this new technology enabled world.

5. Adapt agile practices across both IT AND marketing.

Aligned operating rhythms and practices will bring multiple benefits to both teams; reducing un-necessary admin work; massively increasing focused inter-team interactions, and providing for shorter, iterative deliverables. Note: Adapt, not adopt – Marketing operations & IT are not the same. Whilst agile for IT is well established, the book for Marketing is still being written. My friends at Navigate Agile are pioneers in this space.

6. Change with the times.

Consider new roles that help translate and broker the relationship as it evolves over time, from Martech business advisors in IT to Marketing technologist in Marketing. A step further, some big brands are re-introducing the role of Chief Customer Officer –specifically re-designed to help bridge the IT/marketing gap (and the remit to make decisions that can facilitate both).

Gartner provides us with a useful example for how functional alignment can be achieved between Marketing and IT through the application of a Marketing Operations or Marketing Technology Office. Fig. 1 below.

Fixing the Source of the Martech Mess

The relationship between IT and Marketing is too important to be left as it is. The old structure of two disparate teams with opposite objectives – one back-office supplier, the other front-office customer – no longer works.

Fixing the martech mess means forming a hybrid partnership; where interactions intermingle and overlap, where the boundaries between both teams blur. While each core discipline will remain (marketing knows marketing and IT knows IT), it’s time to work together for better customer outcomes. That’s what everyone’s role boils down to, after all.