Paradox of Choice

The MarTech landscape and available tools continue to grow at a phenomenal pace. Brands are struggling to find the right stack due to a variety of reasons -

It is possible that the technologies that might be optimal from an efficiency or scalability point of view may not necessarily be the ones that provide the best-connected customer experience. With so many tools, brands need to understand this very important trade-off. Trying to build an ecosystem without an overall strategy could lead to a MarTech overload, with a plethora of tools, but only a few being utilized to its potential.

Different organizations are at different levels of

maturity in their MarTech journey, and it is imperative for them to understand their current maturity through the lens of multiple areas like Customer Strategy, Analytics, Data, Campaigns, Digital, Technology and so on. From creating a unified Customer Single View, leveraging dark data, converting unstructured data into a structured form, creating an automated platform for campaign intelligence, and leveraging digital insights real-time, there are plenty of things to be done. Getting into each of these areas at a micro level enables marketers to get a realistic assessment of where they stand and understand their strength areas and gaps.

Beware of the Shiny Object Syndrome

With a myriad of MarTech tools available, it is easy to get tempted to go ahead with a tool that seems good in solving one specific problem. A common mistake is to invest in a set of individual siloed tools that an organization tries to get to work together that ultimately results in a mess. While innovation is a key driver for success in this space, the pressure to innovate can sometime lead to falling in the trap of the latest hype. Constant organizational changes could also lead to new decision makers looking for a new magic wand to steer the company to the next level.

While there could be more such reasons for falling in the trap of the “Shiny Object Syndrome”, the result is almost always a disparate set of high valued tools not integrated with each other with overlapping features and limited features being understood and used. While it may not be difficult to find “any” tool that solves the immediate business problem, it is imperative to select the “right” stack that is aligned to the strategy and which fits the budget.