Chief marketing officers are increasingly adding marketing technology or platforms to their organizations' list of digital investments; however, a handful of common mistakes might be holding some organizations back from getting their money's worth.
Duke University marketing professor Carl Mela outlined some of the benefits of MarTech investments for marketing firms as well as easy blunders that can occur in an Aug. 11 Duke University report.
Here are three mistakes CMOs make when investing in MarTech:
1. Marketers tend to focus too much on a specific application rather than the strategic goals that are driving the need for these apps and technology.
2. Decision makers will take tech recommendations from colleagues at other companies or select vendors that are customers. Choosing one piece in isolation within the martech stack often doesn't work because there are too many dependencies on the technologies to work together and communicate at scale.
3. Don't collect data from customers or patients just for data sake; make sure you have a goal of supporting a certain image so you don't wind up with data clutter.
Here are three best practices to avoid MarTech mistakes:
1. Have a clear vision of how marketing technology can help try to understand how to reduce time from initial contact to sale, how to reach more customers, how to do it at greater margins and lower cost and how to scale the influence of the organization.
2. Think about marketing technology internally in the same way as plans for marketing externally. Ensure the good or service that is being marketed is attentive to people's needs.
3. Plan for training employees who are going to be using the technologies. Senior managers and lead users must be behind the new technologies to get the rest of staff on board.
"With almost every innovation, some people are lead adopters – and they tend to be very influential," Mr. Mela said. "That positive word of mouth can inspire those who are slower to adopt."