Why you need hands on marketing operation experience to find value in your Martech

One of the crucial elements within a marketing team is to have resources with hands-on experience of MarTech, and who are on the ball when it comes to the latest marketing technology available.

When MarTech projects do not have this critical business-led input, they can often struggle to deliver the return on investment intended, or they will lack in fitness-for-purpose. The ‘user-centred’ approach is essential to success.

A secondary, but equally important experience to have in your marketing team is the know-how amongst the team to help negotiate on existing MarTech software contracts – whether that is in collaboration with a procurement business partner, IT partner or in a smaller marketing team this may be handled solely by an individual – however this experience is key to ensure you can help your business save money, but also pick up key points – for example the cost of a service/solution when usage or volumes scale and setting of key targets.

With tech vendors more eager than ever to retain existing customers and secure new ones, the MarTech landscape can appear vast and daunting for busy marketeers looking to buy into the right tech for their marketing stack.

So how can the best MarTech deals be secured?

Tony Byrne, founder of the technology analyst firm Real Story Group, which evaluates MarTech and CX technologies, believes it starts from the top of an organisation, and was quoted as saying in Rodric Bradford’s article in MarTech Today:

“We work primarily with global 2000 companies, and 99% of our subscribers think they are behind in technology; that point of view matters, and desperation can seep into your contract negotiations with vendors, it is not a new story, just one that has been accelerated a lot more during the time of COVID… Many large corporate enterprises end up throwing money at a vendor instead of solving specific problems”

Technology agnostic marketing specialists, whether internal or external, who have worked in daily operations positions for a long period of time, make great negotiators for MarTech contracts. They have deep knowledge of knowing how to use internal stakeholders to objectively review proposals, and identify how they fit into budgets, operations, and both the existing and proposed MarTech stack. They help avoid overspend and can take a long-term view of what a company wants and needs from its marketing technology.

Team6ix’s Neil McCutcheon, previously spent a long period of time at Christies, managing their Production Tech and their MarTech, and has subsequently dealt with a lot of vendors:

“Over the years I have found that the success or failure of any MarTech project invariably comes down to the experience and understanding of MarTech within the team. A high level of internal stakeholder buy-in and engagement is critical, not only through the build and implementation phases but also, importantly, post-launch.

It’s imperative for any business that they are confident their MarTech stack, not only offers a return on the investment, but also that it remains fully fit-for-purpose both today and for the future strategy of the business”

It is important for marketeers to realise that it is never too late to negotiate when it comes to MarTech – you can use competitor pricing in discussions with current vendors, and if needed shorten contracts to improve your negotiations. 

One increasingly popular way we to negotiate wth MarTech vendors, and in parallel ensure the success of a MarTech program is using the ‘Pilot Approach’ – while this approach is not new in itself, and many have been doing it for decades -the reason it has been done previously is more associated with pure system/technology success than commercial negotiation.

It is now quite common to find this approach being used as a go / no-go gateway to projects on both the commercial and implementation level. This approach ensures that both the provider (vendor) and the purchaser (client) have some skin in the game and are committed, but it does not finalise that commitment until the pilot is completed.

Pilot programs offer ‘real-world’ scenarios to the participants and go beyond the traditional approaches of testing and user acceptance – they force the vendor to make good on promises of the value that their technology can (and will) deliver. At the same time, they keep the customer focused on exactly what problems they need to solve early – the Must Haves! as we might say. And it does not take significant effort to organise a set of key performance indicators / success factors by which the pilot will be measured on, and a group of willing participants.

Another secondary benefit of the Pilot approach is that both vendor and customer get to know each other much more quickly, because many of the functions, processes and key individuals who will be involved in a full implementation, come together in the pilot – and therefore both good and not so good areas come to the surface far more quickly.

As Tony Byrne rightly suggests, there are many steps to successful MarTech negotiation that go way beyond initial implementation – and carrying out pilots is one of those, which we feel is an important one on many levels.

Tony also cites the need to check-in regularly and continuously measure both the performance and costs of any MarTech. We agree with this approach, and furthermore it is fundamental that any MarTech rolled out at scale, is underpinned by regular fitness and sentiment measurement within the organisation.

We see a lot of effort often goes into initial negotiations with a vendor, with high expectations and very specific deliverables agreed. However quite often there is little consideration for on-going bi-yearly or yearly success measurement of MarTech.

Implementing a regular User Sentiment/Fitness program is a powerful tool with which to further negotiate with a vendor, and equally to collaborate and ensure you are getting the best on-going value from the vendor of the technology.  Most SaaS MarTech vendors commit to on-going improvements and enhancements to their technology, whether through regular release updates, integrations, partner eco-systems, or specific features for you – however a simple measure of the success of your MarTech on both a commercial and operational level is that you should be getting more value from the MarTech as time goes on – exponentially, rather than diminishing value.

There is vastly wide choice of MarTech available today at any one point in time for you and your company’s needs. If you have already implemented a MarTech solution in the last 5 years, the chances are that you have already gone through much of the change, alignment and organisation that is required to adopt technology and set yourself up for success – therefore if your current MarTech solution[s] are not delivering for you on a commercial or operational level, it is likely there is another vendor who can help you in the market today, and to change early and decidedly – may prove a better option.

Just remember that if current marketing technologies are not helping your business meet its goals, reassessing and renegotiating contracts with vendors should be a priority for you.