5 Big Benefits of Evaluating Your Marketing Technology (Martech)

According to Statista, there were 9,932 martech solutions available to marketers in 2022, which is kind of amazing when you consider that in 2011, there were just 150 martech tools available. As martech continues to proliferate, so do the complexities of making everything work together in perfect harmony.

While many marketers have grown out of the shiny-object phase of adding every new tool that comes along to their stack, most are still not getting the value out of their technology investment that they hoped for. In fact, Gartner found that a mere 42 percent of marketers feel they are getting a solid ROI from their martech investment. What is perhaps most troubling about this figure—other than the fact that the overwhelming majority (58%) of marketers are disappointed in their martech ROI— is that just two years ago the number of marketers who felt they were getting the full value from their investment was 58 percent. That’s a 16 percent drop in martech happiness.

So what’s a savvy marketer to do in order to join the 42 percent working their stack like a boss? Evaluate your martech on a regular basis, or at least annually, and do some serious spring cleaning. In the event you need some motivation to get honest with your team and department about what’s working and what’s not, we’ve outlined five benefits of giving your stack the once-over!

Benefit #1 – Evaluating your martech enables you to identify gaps and overlaps.

According to a survey by Chiefmartec.com, the average enterprise uses 91 marketing cloud services—that’s nearly 100 tools, people! Naturally, having a cluster of tools this size often results in a fragmented marketing tech stack, wherein data silos are formed, integrations are cobbled together and engaging in account-based marketing becomes more of a dream than a reality.

As you begin evaluating your marketing tech stack, your first priority should be to identify gaps and overlaps in the solutions you have. Getting honest about what you want, what you need, and what you really don’t need will enable you to achieve a number of worthwhile goals, including:

• Consolidating marketing technologies
• Streamlining marketing operations
• Reducing costs
• Improving ROI

Benefit #2 – Evaluating your martech enables you to optimize marketing efforts.

As you evaluate your stack, ask yourself: am I able to do what I want to do the way I want to do it? For example, the way most marketers are able to personalize cross-channel campaigns and see their performance reach lofty heights all boils down to one thing—automation. This begs the question, are your tools flexible enough to allow you to automate various processes, or are they of a certain age and needing to retire from your stack? A study by Salesforce found that 67 percent of marketing leaders use marketing automation, and 21 percent plan to use it in the future. If your marketing stack is outdated or ill-suited to your business needs, it can hinder your efforts, goals, performance, etc. Knowing which tools are able to adapt to your needs will help you quickly decide what to keep and what to toss. More importantly, it will enable you to automate (and therefore optimize) much of your marketing processes.

Benefit #3 – Evaluating your martech enables you to improve data analytics.

Data analytics is critical for any business that wants to make informed decisions. According to a survey by Dresner Advisory Services, 87 percent of organizations consider data analytics a strategic priority. However, if your tech stack doesn’t integrate well or doesn’t have the necessary analytics tools, it can be challenging to collect and analyze data effectively. Evaluating your tech stack allows you to identify which tools are necessary for effective data analysis and which ones are redundant. This information can help you improve your data collection and analysis processes, giving you valuable insights into your marketing efforts.

Benefit #4 – Evaluating your martech enables you to enhance the customer experience (CX).

According to a survey by Adobe, 74 percent of customers expect a consistent experience across all touchpoints. Accomplishing this feat means everything in your martech stack needs to be as well-connected as a politician, and twice as smooth. Obviously you invested in your marketing technology solutions to enhance your CX, but if they are poorly integrated, it can cause your customers to have a bumpy ride on their buying journey. As you evaluate your tech stack, be ruthless about removing technologies that create chaos on the road to an excellent customer experience. After all, it doesn’t matter how wonderful a particular tool is in performing services your department likes if it inadvertently puts a roadblock between you and your customers.

Benefit #5 – Evaluating your martech enables you to increase ROI.

Remember back at the beginning of this blog when we talked about the 42 percent of marketers killing it when it comes to getting a solid ROI on their martech investment? Well, one of their big secrets in being this amazeballs is that they regularly evaluate what’s working and what’s not, and get rid of the things that are sandbagging their department’s performance. While it can be tough to cut something from your lineup that you’ve sunk a lot of budget into, it’s better to acknowledge martech purchase mistakes and remove them, than to continue trying to make something work that simply doesn’t. As you evaluate your tech stack, don’t be afraid to rock the boat and eliminate popular and highly recommended technologies that are not contributing to your ROI. Just because something works well for the latest marketing wunderkind, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a mass-producer for your team.

Regularly evaluating your marketing tech stack is critical to your business’s ability to remain competitive. Benefits you should reap from this practice, include:

1. Identifying tech gaps and overlaps
2. Optimizing marketing’s efforts
3. Improving data analytics
4. Enhancing CX
5. Increasing the ROI of your martech

Of course, if you would like a stealth team of brand-agnostic, martech guru’s to evaluate your marketing tech stack for you, let’s talk. At Sureshot, we excel in empowering marketers to get more from their martech.