Put on your ‘marketing hat’ to drive Martech success

It is no secret that digital innovation has become a key driver of economic success for organisations over the past decade. When it comes to today’s competitive marketing landscape, the use of technology is more paramount than ever. However, marketing technology is only one component of marketing performance and whilst it can enable growth, it can also add complexity and confusion within an organisation.

A successful Martech implementation that drives growth and improves operations requires a balanced combination of all marketing levers – people, process, technology and data, because sustainable change is built on business-led technology solutions.

Marketing technology can often result in investments that are hard to harness. Whilst technology often takes centre stage, successful implementation requires both, technological capabilities and marketing leadership – and putting on a marketing hat can help to simplify the process and put things into perspective:

1. Defining what success looks like

A key element of any successful marketing initiative is a set of well-defined objectives to ensure that all steps lead toward the desired goal. Without direction and knowing what success looks like, it’s difficult to know whether the mission has been accomplished or determine the return on investment. Using the same principle, understanding the key drivers and purpose of Martech is essential to ensure individuals, teams and organisations are getting real value from it. Only clear direction and purpose will lead to results that matter and change that can be sustained for the long term.

2. Simplifying the process

Designing the right marketing stack requires visibility of every platform - its functionality, purpose and current use. Creating order by defining the role of core technologies mapped to business requirements, ensuring teams are aware what is available, and how best to use it, will not only create a transparent roadmap, but also establish internal buy in that will encourage teams to use marketing technology as an enabler of their success, both at individual and organisational level. Achieving simplicity is often one of the hardest tasks within complex organisations, but when done successfully, it leads to marketing transformation.

3. Using the power of storytelling

Storytelling in marketing has the power to inspire and motivate, and as a result drive action. Stories are a universal language that everyone can understand, with the ability to present new perspectives and influence mindsets of others. Just like using an inspiring story to drive brand awareness, creating customer journeys with a storyline in mind allows to guide the customer – the hero of the story, on their journey and understand what drives and motivates them, through personalised touchpoints that lead them to take the prosed calls to action. There is a person behind the data, and Martech can enable organisations to create and nurture long term relationships with them. This same principle applies to your internal audiences during a Martech rollout – tell stories to get people excited and educated about your Martech implementation.

4. Celebrating success

Complex initiatives are made of many elements and individual contributions that come together to achieve the end goal. Celebrating milestones and successes during a Martech rollout is critical to embrace change and motivate teams to take action, as little steps, such as having new platform champions or recognising new ideas from users can have a significant impact on successful implementation and how change is perceived. In addition, not only can celebrating success drive successful implementation, it also helps marketing teams to celebrate their own success and contribution to the organisation’s success.

At WoolfHodson we’re obsessive problem solvers united by a shared passion for delivering lasting change and value that sticks. If you would like to find out more about how we can enhance your marketing performance and improve business operations, why not contact the team today at information@woolfhodson.com.