There are more than 5,000 martech solutions available today, a nearly 40% increase in just a year (Chief Marketing Technologist Blog).
Tomorrow, there will be more. The next day, more.
For many chief marketing officers and CEOs alike, this constantly growing landscape can leave many feeling like they are behind, like they are missing out on opportunities and channels for success.
And the truth is:
You will fall behind with marketing technology.
Technology currently evolves faster than the capability of any human being. That will not change in the near future. Even if you are an early adopter, there is no way you can adopt all the new martech solutions entering the marketplace today — nor should you. Accept that you will not keep up with the technology.
Instead, focus on the current marketing technologies you have in place.
You have already invested in technology solutions. You have already worked – or are neck-deep in embedding – these martech solutions into your business framework. Rather than investing in new technologies that would disrupt what headway your team has been making, consider how you could invest in your people to learn how to use the tools more effectively and efficiently. Consider adjusting your annual marketing meetings to quarterly marketing meetings, where you look at metrics and decide whether or not the tools are doing their job — and the people using them are able to do theirs.
When you consider new technology, look at it through a lens of value to the client.
New martech solutions can promise you the world. Ease. Increased this. Inflated that. Better, better, better.
As a B2B leader, you have a responsibility to best serve your clients. Ask yourself, will this new marketing technology help me reach my clients right where they are? Will it better serve them? Will it help my team better serve them?
And remember, if you are a marketing executive, your clients are both the end customer as well as internal teams, like sales.
Embrace what works but leave room for experimenting.
If your marketing technology is not broken, why fix it?
The fact is, your business might change. Your target market’s business might change. Human behavior is constantly evolving. And sometimes, there is a technology that can make things easier, better, more valuable. You will not know unless you try.
Consider implementing an 80/20 strategy. Put 80% of your budget toward tools you know work to connect you to your audience, while you can use 20% of your budget to experiment with new promising, yet riskier, technologies.
As long as you focus on best serving your target audience — and forget about falling behind with martech solutions — you will better be able to reach your company’s goals.
