What Martech and Burgers Have In Common

Ah, marketing technology. We were promised it will solve all our marketing woes.

“Quantify the revenue impact of your marketing” they say.

“Truly understand who your customers are!” she exclaims.

“You’re going to fall behind if you don’t invest in this piece of technology” he insists.

It’s no wonder marketers are getting martech FOMO (a.k.a “fear of missing out” for the uninitiated). I mean seriously, who wants to fall behind?

To add to the mounting pressures for marketers, there is also an explosion of martech vendors, causing even more distress. As of April 2019, there is a whopping 7,040 different martech solutions out there. Compare that to 5 years ago with around 1,000.

Number of martech vendors from 2011 – 2019. Source: https://chiefmartec.com

The reality is that for most marketers, martech is causing more stress than it is in relieving it. So to help, we’ve put together the perfect recipe for your organisation to follow because deploying tech is like assembling a burger… you need to have the right elements to make a delicious stack…also everyone loves burgers.

STEP ONE: Perfect that juicy ‘strategy pattie’

Let’s be honest, that juicy pattie is the star of the show. Your strategy should also be the star when it comes to deploying new technology. No one wants to eat a soggy lettuce burger.

We’ve worked with clients who have made massive investments into new software, and when they bring us in to begin mapping out their internal workflows onto the tool, we were met with blank faces.

This has led to a tough decision to put the technology project on hold to get back to the basics of establishing a strong strategy.

But we get it. There are thousands of tools out there that are promising to do amazing things to your marketing workflows. But consider this:

If you don’t know what you want to learn about your customers, you’re going to be overwhelmed with a screen of meaningless data.

If you don’t have a clear view of who your customers are,  you won’t know which touch point of your customer’s journey to automate.

If your team doesn’t know what your vision is, they won’t understand why you’re implementing the new tech and won’t use it.

You get the idea. Put that juicy strategy pattie at the centre of your next tech project.

STEP TWO: Slap on that crispy ‘feedback lettuce’

The key to the feedback lettuce is timeliness, as great feedback is timely. If you let it sit too long, it tends to wither into a slice of translucent mess. Great feedback culture drives success across all aspects of your organisation, including your tech. It’s what adds that satisfying crunch.

We’ve worked with enough organisations to see a common feedback gap emerge time and time again with – yep you guessed it – sales and marketing teams.

In an ideal world, marketing should be speaking with sales to understand the customer journey beyond the conversion and the sales team should be speaking with marketing about what a quality lead looks like.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Unfortunately not.

Our work with feedback coach, Georgia Murch, has shown us that if conversations are difficult, such as telling the marketing team that they’re sending in sh*t leads, we naturally tend to avoid the conversation. This is what creates organisational silos and your tool will never succeed if there are silos.

Begin breaking down those silos. Put your teams in a room and start a healthy dialogue about what’s working and what’s not. Be timely though, we all know what happens to lettuce that’s been left out too long.

STEP THREE: Flame grill that ‘process bacon’.

We’ve seen organisations get really excited about a new tool that promises it can do it all.

Manage your team’s workflow? Check!

Complete transparency on leads? Check!

Send personalised emails? Check!

Complete marketing automation? Check!

Artificial intelligence on your customers? Check!

You may get so bamboozled with all the features that when you get halfway through the implementation, you realise that it doesn’t integrate with your core accounting software and you’re then forced back to importing and exporting spreadsheets again.

This might happen in the third or fourth degree, such as your core accounting software needs to integrate with your event software which needs to integrate into your CRM which needs to then integrate to your automation tool. So really grill that ‘process bacon’ and identify any major risks in integrating the new tool with your existing systems.

STEP FOUR: Slather on that secret ‘people sauce’

Your people are your secret sauce, so don’t forget to bring them along with you on your tech journey.

We see this happen more and more where  IT departments become less and less suited to scope marketing technology. Don’t get me wrong, IT departments should definitely play a role in scoping the tech, but only marketers know what they need from a martech tool.

We’ve had clients who have had a single department implement an organisational-wide piece of software without ever understanding the requirements of the rest of the org. Four years down the track and this software has not been used whilst other teams are finding workarounds to avoid it! Not to mention it’s costing them thousands of dollars a month to upkeep.

Avoid making this expensive mistake and include your people on your journey. Invite them to the demonstrations, have them meet the vendors or let them test the tool themselves. This helps them understand the tool and what you’re trying to achieve.

STEP FIVE: Finish with the ‘toasty tech buns’

That’s right, your tech should be the toasty buns with your strategy, processes and people right in the centre. If you have the perfect ingredients there, you can be sure that no matter what tech bun you choose, you will be aligned for success.

So remember, technology is not the first step to digital transformation. Digital transformation starts with your strategy, processes and people… and the technology unites them.

If you’re as hungry as I am right now, why not give me a shout and we can grab a burger and chat about your martech stack strategy.