How many marketing tools do you use? And, how many marketing tools do you think you need? In certain situations, more is not always better. Having more is not always the solution. In fact in Marketing, more disparate marketing tools mean more trouble for the marketers using it. Let's see why.
Let’s consider this report published by VentureBeat. In this survey, marketers reveal how many marketing automation platforms their organizations use. Marketing automation’s success as a marketing tool has led to so many people adopting it in the past couple of years.
However, the most surprising part of this survey is that almost half of the companies surveyed are using more than one marketing automation platform. A whopping 24% of these companies are using 2 marketing automation platforms while 12% are using three, 7.5% are using four, and a certain 3% are using more than nine.
To me, it’s more of a shock than surprise. The very idea of using three or four marketing automation platforms is wild.
In fact, if you dig deeper, you will see that 43% of the companies think that it is somewhat important to keep the number of marketing automation systems in limit.
What's Happening Here?
I have a pretty good guess of what might be happening here. Since consumers are evolving, organizations need marketing tools to survive. Now, most organizations believe that if they invest in a high number of marketing tools they will achieve success.
But that’s a very crude way of thinking. Just because you are spending money on multiple marketing tools does not guarantee results. Moreover, a tool like marketing automation requires a lot of research, training as well as resources.
Is it even possible for organizations implementing multiple marketing automation tools to train their staff for every single platform? I don’t think so. As a result their performance diminishes.
It’s a known fact that marketing automation can only succeed if you implement it properly and train your staff to use it. It is impossible for the same staff to learn how multiple marketing automation tools work in a short period of time. In addition to that, it is a difficult task at the same time.
The end result is that the ROI and profits suffer. Employee morale is down and no one has a clue about what is happening. Disparate marketing tools thus do more harm than good.
What Happens to the Data?
Organisations which have multiple disparate marketing tools are at a disadvantage. Each of these tools capture a lot of data for the company. But, it's almost impossible to stitch the data together and make sense of it.
Custom integrations do help to a large extent but still fall short of expectations. If you use MailChimp for email marketing, HootSuite of social media monitoring, Unbounce for building landing pages and so on, just imagine the data these tools capture and you have no way to stich it together.
The biggest problem with disparate marketing tools, apart from data collection is to track the user's behavior across marketing channels. How on earth would you know the same customer opened your email and also retweeted your content and then filled up a form on a landing page, if the data is captured on multiple disparate marketing tools.
The solution is an integrated all-in-one robust marketing automation system.
Buying Marketing Automation is not the Solution
Some marketers believe that marketing automation platforms solve their Marketing woes. They are partly right. But, the truth is, they will have to know how to implement it correctly in order to flourish. Just buying a tool does not cut it. Marketing automation or any other marketing tool is not a robot.
You will have to take control of it, in order to achieve success. The question that you need to ask yourself is: Do I need marketing automation in the first place?
If yes, then think about how many you need. I don’t think you would need more than one. Even if you need more than one, you should have concrete reasons as to why you need so. Otherwise it will just be a waste of your marketing tech budget.
Buy What You Need, Not What You Want
Most organizations purchase marketing tools because they want it. But do they really need it? Many a times, the answer is no. Building a sophisticated MarTech stack by purchasing multiple marketing tools is not the answer.
What you need to understand is that these solutions are expensive. Not only that, each and every solution operates in its own way. And, you need to train your staff accordingly. Trying them out one after one after purchasing is not how you go about it.
Chalk out your goals. Figure out what it is that your company exactly needs and which platform can complement that need. You will see that you do not actually need more than one or two marketing technologies.
Coordination is Not Easy
Even if a company is using multiple marketing automation tools, they need to coordinate their efforts. Really large enterprises might need more than one marketing platform. But if all their efforts are not coordinated, then the end result is not up to the mark.
In the long-term, operating in silos like this might prove to be detrimental. You will have no visibility into your organization’s marketing performance and integration might prove to be hell. Budgets will deplete quickly and profits will soon vanish into thin air.
Bottom Line
Use your marketing budget prudently. Buy marketing tools that your company needs. And, if you implement them correctly, that will be more than enough. Use some of your budget to train your staff or to rope in experts.
But do not rush into to buy another marketing tool. That might not always help. I know how difficult it is to choose the right set of marketing tools for your company and derive benefit of it.
Need help in auditing your MarTech stack? Book a free consultation here by sending your company details to [email protected]