The Why and What of Marketing Technology
Marketing Technology (MarTech) is a broad category of tools and platforms that enhance an organization’s marketing and related business functions. MarTech tools help organizations with:
- Customer Data: Data unification, profile building, segmentation, audience intelligence, and predictive modeling
- Customer Insights & Preference Management: Customer feedback collection, consent and preference management, regulatory compliance
- Customer Experience: Personalization, omnichannel communication, interactive experiences
- Campaign Management: Planning, automation, delivery, testing, optimization, and analysis
- Content Management: Website optimization, content marketing, intelligent content classification, content intelligence
- Marketing Operations: Workflow automation, resource allocation, and collaboration tools
- Sales & Revenue Operations: Lead management, sales enablement, revenue forecasting
- Brand & PR: Social media management, reputation monitoring, influencer engagement
- Performance Measurement & Business Intelligence: Integrated analytics, attribution modeling, correlation analysis and return on investment, reporting and scorecard creation
- Audience Monetization: Ad offerings, sponsor product solutions, audience data monetization strategies
Our MarTech Expertise
Our unique expertise bridges the gap between strategic marketing vision and effective MarTech implementation. We comprehensively track the dynamic Marketing Technology landscape, focusing on high-impact, ROI-driven use cases that deliver tangible benefits for associations, educational institutions, publishers, and B2B media companies. Our deep understanding of the intricate interplay between cutting-edge marketing automation tools and industry-specific systems—including advanced data analytics platforms, robust association management software, powerful CRMs, and efficient submission and peer review systems—sets us apart. Beyond vertical-specific applications, our knowledge encompasses practical, cross-sector digital marketing innovations that drive measurable results and enhance customer engagement.
We understand that marketing technology projects are complex. Too often, organizations spend insufficient time on the marketing vision and strategy and, as a result, select the wrong tools and technologies. In addition, inadequate time is spent on supporting strategy, processes, and organizational design to ensure the successful adoption of the chosen technology. Drawing from our proprietary framework, the 12Ps of Marketing Technology ©, our services support the entire marketing technology journey from strategy to benefits realization.
MarTech Services:
We offer interconnected services to help organizations select and adopt the right technology.
Marketing Technology Capability Audit & Roadmap
We are the bridge between your strategic goals and the successful utilization of marketing technology, linking your ambition with a practical blueprint for implementation. Our framework anchors marketing technology in business value through a comprehensive process:
- Discovery: We document your organizational priorities, current marketing technology capabilities, and existing skill sets within your team.
- Use Case Identification: We identify and prioritize high-value use cases across your organization. These use cases extend beyond just the Marketing team ensuring marketing technology can meet cross-functional business needs.
- Capability Mapping: We map your strategic priorities to your current technology capability, team skills, and our proprietary capability framework, revealing critical gaps and redundancies in technology.
- Recommendations: We provide strategic advice focusing on three key areas: the technology itself, the necessary changes within the marketing team to adopt and optimize it, and the skills development required to leverage the technology effectively.
- Roadmap Development: The final output is a prioritized marketing technology roadmap that connects business value to MarTech strategy. We focus not on a single tool but on your entire technology stack (i.e., ecosystem). This roadmap outlines a clear path for implementing our recommendations and advancing use cases agilely, enabling quick value realization while progressing towards broader strategic goals.
The Marketing Technology Business Case – Size of the Prize
Investing in marketing technology is essential to keep pace with the ever-evolving digital landscape and meet rising customer experience expectations. However, organizations must approach such investments with thorough preparation and informed decision-making.
We work closely with our clients to create “Size of the Prize” business cases, helping organizations determine if additional investment in technology (and potentially human capital) is justified. Our process ensures that you have all the necessary information when planning for MarTech projects, instilling confidence in all stakeholders that they are making intelligent, data-driven decisions. By providing comprehensive analysis and clear business cases, we enable our clients to:-
- Quantify the potential return on MarTech investments
- Understand the full scope of required resources, including technology, implementation projects, and personnel
- Align MarTech initiatives with broader organizational goals
- Provide organizations with clear metrics to measure the success of the investment
Marketing Technology Vendor Selection (RFIs)
With over 14,000 marketing technology solutions available, clients need experts to guide them through the daunting selection process. Our detailed and comprehensive RFI (Request for Information) and RFP Request for Proposals) evaluations pinpoint which options will best suit a client’s needs by assessing the vendor’s functional capabilities, technical capability, and ability to meet client use cases.
Our proven RFI approach goes beyond just evaluating marketing technologies. It is designed to align solutions with your needs while setting you up for effective implementation and adoption. A well-run RFI is never just about comparing vendors. Our RFI process leverages a proprietary framework to:
- Highlight a solution’s true capabilities and limitations, ensuring alignment with your organization’s specific use cases.
- Explore how the technology fits into your existing tech ecosystem, identify gaps/redundancies, and map a holistic solution.
- Facilitate collaboration among stakeholders from various business units, enabling shared ownership and prioritization of critical requirements across multiple teams.
- Manage expectations by uncovering potential challenges. This will allow you to set realistic goals regarding the solution’s capabilities, timelines, and required resources.
- Help marketing teams understand functionalities and use case applicability – critical for successful adoption and change management.
Our impartial, cross-functional approach ensures the technology you select will meet the needs of your entire organization while positioning you for successful implementation and change management.
To learn more about MarTech Evaluations, we invite you to read our two perspective articles on the topic:
Why Evaluations (RFIs and RFPs) are Critical for Marketing Technology
Marketing Technology Implementation Support
We believe the focus for MarTech must be, first and foremost, on successful adoption. While the vendor can help with technical training and leading vendors offer advice around best practices, the real work is in the marketing team. Strategies, processes, and ways of working must evolve to capitalize on what the tech offers.
Proof of Concept and Adoption Strategy
After vendor selection, we partner with clients to advise on the strategic and organizational changes required to adopt marketing technology successfully. While it is crucial to choose future-proof technology, it is essential not to “boil the ocean” with MarTech implementations. We help sequence and prioritize use cases with the highest value. Furthermore, we are a trusted advisor to marketing, digital, and technology leadership to define and manage Proof of Concepts.
MarTech Advisory Services & Workshops
We provide advisory services at different stages in the MarTech process. Our understanding of association, education, publishing, and B2B media use cases, and the evolving MarTech landscape enables us to provide insight into MarTech visions and projects.