In the modern world of B2B marketing, there are now more technology options available than ever before. Everyone wants a piece of the lucrative marketing technology pie and as such the industry has grown bloated and is now officially, oversaturated.
With so much choice, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for interested parties to find the best vendor for their needs. The decision is a bigger challenge than ever before! Before you make that all important final choice, you need to understand the inherent limitations many marketing technology solutions offer.
Some have legacy integration restrictions, while others limit future integration opportunities. And when a buyer is in the market for a marketing technology solution, they don’t want to buy into restrictions. Unfortunately, vendors with eyes bigger that their stomach are doing everything they can to encourage commitment and raising barriers to limit the diversity of the marketing tech stack is one way to drive such single-minded investment.
In order to find the Marketing Technology vendor that best meets your needs, you require structured evaluation criteria. This needs to take into account not only what you need, but also what skills you possess to actually use the technologies. Many of these vendors who are so eager to ‘help’ only sell the tools, and do not sell the specialist skills to use them. In many instances, once the sale is made, the buyer is often left relying on external agencies to help them use the technology. To build a criteria that really takes into consideration your needs, you need to make the most of the data at your fingertips to really understand what capabilities you’re looking to gain. Beyond that you need to consider how each vendor’s solution can be expanded upon, whether it offers the flexibility to build further in the future. These considerations are integral to your decision making and help you understand what it is your looking to achieve.
Unfortunately, many companies build their marketing tech stack and spend more time acquiring new systems than managing the ones they already have. Like a spoilt child, they’re often so enamored by the latest thing, they forget their last ‘superstar purchase’ and before you know it, their tech stack has multiple vendors, some of which integrate, others which work in siloes. The puzzle becomes immensely complex, inefficient and expensive!
The best marketing tech stacks are customer centric. With a view on customer needs, purchases should be easier to justify. But more importantly, buyers should have a better understanding of what the platform is supposed to do and determine whether the skills are present within the company to make that capability a reality.