Building a Sophisticated Approach to Adtech and Martech
The selection, integration, management and deployment of a marketer’s Data & Technology is a key pillar to a marketer’s journey to sophistication. Now more than ever there is a requirement to remove wastage and increase interoperability between technologies within your martech/adtech stack. Successful and sophisticated marketing is not achieved by the data & technology alone, but if the technology is poorly supported then no amount of organisational or process-driven change will help drive marketing effectiveness.
The Martech ecosystem is however heavily complex, it can be a huge advantage to an organisation to know when to put additional tech on top of an integrated stack, and when to improve and make more efficient the throughput of incumbent technologies. Oftentimes the technologies overlap in your stack. Many organisations have a constant dilemma in determining whether to build, partner or even buy data and tech solutions, which can leave many in a perpetual state of decision paralysis.
The Core Martech focus should therefore be to both cut, change or improve current investments that are not providing suitable return, while determining the best additional technology to help support current and future business challenges. This can be achieved by:
- Auditing your current stack – cut spend on features or products that aren’t delivering benefit or value, and remove duplication. Identify gaps in your stack and determine if they can be fulfilled with development of current tech; if not, then longer term technologies are required.
- Re-align the martech stack behind a set of common objectives – siloed teams focus on optimising what are often very specific metrics or KPIs – ensure everyone is working to the same definition of success.
- Ensuring you are getting the maximum value out of the assets you do have – data, tech and people. Audit whether the investment ratios in each area are correct.
- Looking at a longer-term view of your ideal stack, what is required, when it could be delivered, and by when can we see a positive return on investment. Be visionary rather than reactive with your Martech stack. Martech teams should not be spending the majority of their time ‘putting out fires’.
With the current pace of technology in addition to changeable times, the need for your martech stack to have adaptability and flexibility is key for your organisation, a rigid and poorly integrated martech stack will hinder process and prevent you from innovating at speed.
Martech stacks often fail to provide an end-to-end flow in order to make the most sense of the overall stack. Whether the majority of an advertiser’s tech stack is operating on a single platform (Adobe, Salesforce, Google etc.), or a sophisticated set of standalone technologies- integration, flexibility, velocity (the speed at which data moves) and adaptability will support and drive a successful omnichannel approach to marketing. A martech stack should ideally be developed into a martech architecture, drawing out the flow of data from one technology to the next and further aligning the world of business intelligence with marketing. As the majority of tech vendors will have some form of data output, it is equally important to understand where this data should flow, how well it integrates and harmonises with other data sources, and how quickly it needs to be moved through the process.
The technology should be an enabler of the strategy, it is not a strategy in itself. It should be architected and designed alongside skilled resources and well-designed processes. It should also be omnichannel, with no distinction between marketing and advertising. Alignment between an adtech stack and martech stack is critical to ensure customers are not receiving different messages and content within a brand’s own content, as well as off it.
Commonplace within martech stacks, is a requirement to embed the technology without the adequate people and processes in place. Without the right ratio of investment into people and process, then it is highly likely that the technology will fail to produce the returns.
Don’t rely on the word of the martech vendors alone. They will have strong sales-teams who can provide the benefits that their technology can drive, but they have no vested interest in warning you of the limitation of the technology. In fact, it is likely that other trusted advisors may have a vested interest to sell a particular product or platform. The marketer must therefore take responsibility to provide:
- Due diligence on the true value that a new martech platform will offer,
- Understanding of vendor tech current and future limitations
- The resource required to deploy, implement and integrate the technology into current stack
- The resource required to maintain and operate the product.
With a sophisticated approach embedded in the martech stack, a marketer can allow data and technology to help break down business problems or help to achieve business objectives. The martech ecosystem is constantly in flux and is a complex landscape, but those who create the most sophisticated marketing communications have their technology and data in harmony with the rest of their operations.