How Marketers May Assist Increase Martech Utilization

According to Gartner, martech utilization fell to 33% in 2023, down from 42% in 2022 and 58% in 2020. Underutilization of martech results in unforeseen consequences. For example, it may result in future budget cuts depending on previous platform utilization. Inadequate use of martech might also impede the advancement of marketing processes.

There are several reasons why martech is underutilized. As the landscape moves rapidly, CMOs and other leaders may wish to investigate new technology. Many martech users may not profit from utilizing a specific platform. Users may also not be properly taught to utilize martech platforms, nor will they receive the essential support to learn how to use them more effectively in their daily work.

Finally, martech systems must handle two categories of marketing concerns: customer-facing communication issues (for example, tailoring emails or SMS) and internal obstacles (for example, automating personalized email communication to reduce manual effort).

Marketers are in a unique position to help boost the usage of martech products since they are intimately familiar with how marketing processes work, what types of outputs are necessary, and how this may impact customer-facing communication. Here are some ways to assist you maximize martech utilization.

1. Approach your marketing operations as any new customer-facing campaign or channel.

Select your use cases wisely. They should appropriately mirror the current marketing processes. Begin with a modest, but representative proof-of-concept project. Often, marketers focus on consumer-facing activities for experimentation while ignoring internal procedures.

Begin by selecting a single process, such as segmenting paid advertising ads or tailoring email marketing. Check for overlap across your martech platforms and consider how these platforms can improve your present marketing operations. Can platforms automate paid media segmentation? Can they streamline the team organization for these processes?

This is an important stage that will establish the tone for the subsequent steps. Examining your available tools from both a customer-facing and marketing process perspective will reveal numerous chances to improve martech utilization. This stage is sometimes forgotten or delegated to departments outside of marketing, who may be less educated about current marketing processes and how they might be improved.

2. Examine how martech platforms integrate with your existing marketing procedures.

Which systems are the most effective for your processes? Can they be linked to make data exchange and marketing more efficient? Are marketing teams ready to use this data to improve their work across multiple platforms?

Once you have a comprehensive understanding of your martech stack and how it might help you optimize operations, it is time to align these processes with the capabilities available in the stack. If automating customer-facing communication will help enhance marketing operations, which martech platform does so? Can it include all forms of customer communication? Or does the organization require more than one platform to manage all channels?

By mapping processes and current features, you can identify redundancies between platforms (and help your business save money by deleting them).

3. Define what ‘enhanced martech stack utilization’ implies for your organization.

It’s not only about how much of the platform you use, but also how it improves your present processes to help you achieve your business objectives. Looking at platform utilization in isolation from marketing operations can lead to false findings. Martech platforms identify their utilization levels using a variety of measures and benchmarks.

Assume a corporation is actively growing its customer data collecting activities. In that situation, it is best not to fully utilize the database platform because it will grow over time. However, the same platform use should be evaluated in terms of reducing the time required for client data ingestion and activation.

4. Examine the analytics to see how well you’re using your martech solutions to improve marketing processes.

Can you make your marketing process faster, accomplish the same results with fewer resources, or even increase output when necessary? These are some marketing process metrics that might help define martech use. Turn these improvements into precise measures and KPIs that can be tracked on a regular basis.

5. Provide training and support for the selected marketing procedures and platforms.

This step is critical to successfully implementing and maintaining martech advancements. Users should have access to self-service training, support tools, and peer assistance. This builds a community in which employees can ask questions, exchange ideas, and keep learning.

It is important to note that the processes outlined above are strategic in nature, rather than technical or operational. Instead of focusing on individual platforms, this approach allows you to continue to improve your processes to increase martech use while still fulfilling broader business goals.