How Martech is Killing Your Business

One of the greatest business benefits brought about by the digital age is the influx of marketing applications. While there are tons of badly built applications that cause more harm than good, there are several others that can greatly increase ROIs on marketing. However, despite the immerse benefits martech brings to a business, it’s not uncommon to find several businesses underperforming even after they’ve invested in the best martech applications in the market. This article will explore ways martech might be killing your business.

Martech and the User

“Many investments in new technology are essentially workarounds for bad behaviours or poor procedures for sharing information” [1] Most martech applications come with this very cool feature known as marketing automation. Marketing automation saves businesses time and resources that go into repetitive marketing tasks. Marketing automation is great and all but there is a tendency for some users or even business owners to just leave everything to the martech application. However, the fact is that as of 2017, no marketing software automatically does everything.

Marketing automation is great and definitely the way to go but what is overlooked is the time to set that up, and the length and breadth of the processes and strategy that has to be decided and confirmed to get a business far ahead. Some vital questions that most businesses fail to ask include: Do we have the resource to do this in house alongside all of our other ongoing responsibilities? Do we have the time to put all of this together in advance? Do we realise how much this brings to light in terms of our ENTIRE communication strategy for every segment of our database? Are we talking to the right people at the right time?... and more. The bottom line is that marketing applications always need input and careful monitoring to work at optimum levels.

Solution

We believe that training employees on the proper use of software is a great way to combat the belief that ‘the machine can do it all’. Employees must be sensitised to know that they have a huge role to play in making ANY martech application work. Another way to combat this is to outsource marketing set-up to martech focused companies that’ll work hand in hand with the internal sales and marketing department to ensure that marketing goals are reached using the most efficient means.

Well, They’re Using It

Martech is a fast evolving aspect of digital technology. Every year, better marketing innovations are brought to light. It makes sense when a business invests in martech because of its current features or benefits. Still, some business owners purchase martech applications just because their competitors are using it. In fact it’s not unusual to find a business investing in several martech applications used by different competitors. While it’s great to do a competitive analysis and find what software works best for businesses in your niche, it becomes counter-productive when your sole reason for purchasing a marketing application is because your competitors are using it. This could kill your business especially when your business isn’t equipped with the skill set to make that application work.

Solution

The motivation for purchasing business martech should never just be because the competition is buying it. Your choice might be influenced by the competition but you must endeavour to analyse software based on your own business needs before purchasing.

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We have data, it’s just not coordinated

It’s not uncommon to find an overwhelming number of martech applications in one organisation. In an effort not to be left out of the benefits of the next best martech applications, many organisations end up with too many martech applications resulting in extremely uncoordinated sales/marketing activities and data. Now you should know that the problem here isn’t investing in several martech applications, the problem is that more often than not, many organisations do not synchronise their martech applications resulting in a confused data footprint. This of course waters down sales and marketing effort and the ultimate result is low ROIs.

Solution

It’s the age of technological inventions and the latest martech applications always seem to be equipped with “everything we need”. While it can be beneficial to invest in several martech applications, it’s important that businesses learn the benefit of synchronizing their marketing software for the purpose of keeping sales and marketing activities/data coordinated.

In summary, martech is one of the greatest innovations of the digital age but if wrongly administered, can result in poor returns on marketing and sales investment. Every business owner must therefore invest time and resources in setting up a foolproof martech system that targets the right people using the right strategies.

Originally published March 15 2017, updated February 07 2018

Cloud10 Marketing are a  vendor agnostic data-driven, growth-driven, results-driven marketing agency, with years of expertise in marketing automation, growth hacking, social media, and account based marketing, specialising in b2b marketing for the emerging technology industry, as well as telecoms, hospitality, and recruitment.