Marketers are quickly adding new marketing technology (martech) tools to their portfolio, according to the latest Marketing Utilization Report by marketing research firm Ascend2. The firm reported that 39% of marketers are implementing new technology quarterly, while 28% are doing so monthly and 33% are going so on a less-frequent basis.
CRM, email and marketing automation are the most effective tools, according to 53% of the marketers surveyed, while 43% said that analytics, dashboards and marketing data were most effective. More than one-third of the marketers said that experience/relationship marketing; optimisation, personalisation, testing; content management system; and social and search media marketing were the most effective channels.
However, 50% of the marketers found that the most difficult types of martech to use were apps designed for testing, personalisation and optimisation of their marketing strategies. In addition, 40% found that experience and relationship marketing was the most difficult to implement, followed by implementation of analytics, dashboards and marketing data at 39%.
Marketers said that they experienced the most challenges in utilising a martech strategy to gain a competitive advantage, attribute revenue to marketing activities, improve marketing efficiency and increase marketing ROI. However, these were among the main objectives of using martech.
The finding of the report mirrored a previous report issued by research and advisory firm Gartner. The firm had forecast that over two-thirds of CMOs would spend more on marketing in 2019 to spur innovation but that they would often not realise martech’s potential. Gartner found that in 2018, martech investment comprised 29% of marketing budgets but that CMOs only utilised 61% of martech capabilities.
