Martech Is Pivotal in the $100 Billion Spent on Digital Marketing

The future of marketing is digital. Admittedly, that won’t come as a surprise to most marketers.

Yet, as I pointed in “Is Martech Growing Too Fast For Its Own Good?”,Opens a new window studies and surveys show that the majority of companies are struggling to incorporate effectively these new digital marketing technologies in their operations.

And now that a recent studyOpens a new window has estimated that global spending on digital marketing is already just shy of $100 billion, the need for marketers to embrace as well as understand new developments in martech stands at the forefront of our profession as the technology becomes increasingly central to what we do.

The promise of these new services and technologies continues to evolve with innovative ways to better target and capture growing digital audiences.Opens a new window It’s up to companies’ marketing departments to identify those tools are and how they can best be integrated into their own systems and processes.

Complacence is not an option. Spending on digital marketing grew by 44% last year in the US, and 99% of marketers that responded to one nationally-based study said they plan to spend more on “at least one” digital marketing channel in the next year.

Meanwhile, in its recently published CMO Report 2018, Nielsen revealed that 82% of marketers intend to invest larger portions of their overall ad budget on digital, with an average increase of 49% headed for digital marketing.

While boosting investment in one or two digital marketing channels doesn’t necessarily signal a general industry-wide transformation, it certainly implies a widespread understanding by nearly all marketers that they must “go digital,” especially as the spending power of younger, digital-native consumers growsOpens a new window .

The ROI dilemma

In my research, I noticed a recurring theme in the findings of the newest reports and surveys on martech growth and spending: Despite general consensus that marketers are more than ever focused on digital channels and martech, the industry as a whole is still hesitant to go “all in” with these new services and technologies.

The majority of marketing departments may be spending more on digital – and plan to continue doing so – but only a quarter of marketers say they are confident they can measure ROI on digital. That inability to quantify return on digital campaigns has led one-fifth of industry professionals actually to cut back on their digital ad spend.

And that’s an issue.

The technologies and services they question can provide the answers and clarity that executives are looking for in terms of return. In other words, effectively leveraging the right digital tech will drive revenue growth and provide the tools to measure ROI.

The sooner marketers accept this, the sooner they can capitalize on the most relevant digital solutions available to them.

Martech and the gift of data

Though many marketing teams are moving slowly to incorporate martech, evidence abounds of an industry in the midst of its digital “come-to-Jesus” moment.

Sure, it’s been common knowledge for several years that digital marketing software is beginning to drive market growth, offering enhanced accessibility, various cost benefits and automation efficiencies – matched by decreasing IT investment requirements.

Nevertheless, that realization hasn’t yet convinced many executives at the C-suite level to open their wallets for their marketing departments to explore such digital channels.

Over the last 12 months, however, the game is changing thanks to developments in martech tools that offer in-depth web analytics, improved automation and e-mail software, and enhanced CRM systems.

Ultimately, these new technologies can gather and analyze vast amounts of information on consumer behavior and preferences in order to personalize, measure and boost digital marketing campaigns and overall operations. Crucially, this is the type of data – especially related to real-time audience and customer analyticsOpens a new window – that can be used to gauge ROI.

It could be argued that this growing industry understanding is, in large part, guiding brands to spend on average a quarter of their budgets on martech.

Unsurprisingly, the technologies getting the most attention and investment can create and measure those key marketing metrics: While martech in e-mail and social media are the most likely channels companies plan to explore in the coming year, the use of martech for analytics, measurement and insights experienced the biggest year-on-year uptick among US companies.

Indeed, data has become the crucial piece in the martech puzzle – as the sector has begun to acknowledge.

To be effective in today’s digital landscape, a marketer must but be a martech advocate, and make clear to decision-making CMOs and executives that they need to take these services and solutions seriously.

In short, martech isn’t the future of marketing. It’s here, and now.