What is MARTECH?
Last Updated: August 2020
Is MarTech simply another industry buzzword? Perhaps not. The industry trend, technology advancement and growing adoption says it’s here to stay. Remember, a few years back, us digital markters had this question about content marketing. Is it just another overhyped buzzword? Today, content marketing is stronger than ever. Expect MarTech to be the same and even more.
So what is MarTech and how is it different from AdTech? We know AdTech are advertising platforms such as Adwords, Adroll, Tapad and the various DMPs (Data Management Platform) and DSPs (Demand Side Platform), which are built to help marketers target digital audience to see advertisements. The technology is heavily based on browser cookies and prominently all about TOFU (Top of the funnel) with reference to the digital sales conversion funnel. MarTech on the other hand, refers to marketing technologies that were developed to support core marketing functions, spanning across TOFU, MOFU and BOFU.
In other words, AdTech supports the marketers’ discovery and acquisition efforts. And MarTech supports retention and customer experience. If your marketing plan includes CRM (customer relationship management) strategies, membership programs, and predictive analytics, think MarTech.
There are currently over 3,500 MarTech solutions worldwide (and this is from a mere 150 in 2011), let’s pick out a few examples.
Example of MARTECH platforms.
Email Marketing: MailChimp! GetResponse and Constant Contact.
Customer Experience: Salesforce, SugarCRM and VTiger.
Web Experience Management: WordPress! Joomla and OpenText.
Ecommerce Platforms: WooCommerce! Presta Shop and Shopify.
Lean Team Management: ScrumDesk, Trello! and ZenHub.
Business Intelligence: SAP, Oracle and datalicious.
Referral Program Platforms: Merkle, Amplifinity and Buzz Points.
Content Marketing: Zemanta! Curata and Contently.
Search Engine Optimization: SEOMoz! Yoast and SEMRush.
Why MARTECH?
One of the key benefits of integrating MarTech into your marketing strategy and team operations, is the ability to seamlessly merge the world of day-to-day operations with marketing data insights. In the old world, marketing operations and marketing insights or data analytics may have been disconnected. The result? A working team that is not able to quickly and easily give themselves daily feedback loops to gauge the effectiveness of what they are doing every day. Additionally, delays in strategic and long term sales and marketing planning due to the horrendous efforts needed to collect and merge marketing data points from the sales team, customer relations team, project management team, and so forth.
MarTech equips your team with the benefits of marketing automation and is potentially one of the keys to moving from the traditional marketing framework, to digital framework, to becoming an agile digital marketing team.
This MARTECH STACK by Microsoft is a really good reference on how to integrate and map your customer journey to the relevant technologies.
The MARTECH Challenge!
So if MarTech is mega beneficial and we see new tools and companies exponentially appearing over the past few years, why do many CMOs raise concerns over adoption of MarTech? The challenge isn’t really the technology itself. The challenge is a human challenge. We’re at a very fragile moment in time when new technological advancement means the operators of these new technologies need to have the hard-skills to be able to utilize these tools. Using the tools itself is already a challenge for the digital workforce, understanding how the digital sphere is developing, can pose to be an even bigger challenge.
So called the MarTech law!
Then what is the winning combination for successful marketing technology integration? The correct marketing technology, implemented by a Marketing Technologist and a tech-savvy digital marketing team to maintain. If you’re not sure where to start, but you feel the lack of technology support is limiting your marketing and sales performance, feel free to talk to any of our Digital Marketing Technologist and Digital Marketing Enablers for a preliminary audit and plan.