Marketing is undergoing a dynamic revolution as it is being transformed by technology. This is leading to the conforming development of the marketing profession. It is opening new opportunities for the new generation marketers - demanding distinctively new skill sets and specializations.
Martech is now reforming marketing team structures that evidently incorporate marketing technologists as mainstream marketing profession.
With the recent advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and similar subsets; modern marketers are using their martech skills to combine marketing technology to marketing as a whole – to formulate marketing models that ease the painful monotonous processes – resulting in complex marketing technology.
Understanding the New Age Marketing Profession
Marketing technology is no longer treated as a separate department under IT. Rather it has found it’s right place within marketing with a team encompassing people who are highly skilled in handling operations, logistics and strategizing that is required to succeed with martech.
Marketing technologists calculate the potential benefits and pitfalls in complex martech implementations.
After all, even a machine needs to be run to enact automation; with directive specialization, emphasizing and intending towards the step taken forward.
In 2012, Gartner predicted that CMOs would be spending more money on IT than their CIO counterparts. Fast forward in 2017, Gartner confirmed the prediction is now true and is set to scale from here.
MarTech now has come a long way and the MarTech profession has crossed into the mainstream.
- In fact, in 74% of the enterprise organizations, marketing technology is dealt with by the traditional marketing team.
- In 26% of all enterprise organizations – evidently stated to be a very common scenario - marketing technology is handled by a professionally re-elected leader and his-lead a team.
Marketing technology is now a conventional marketing profession as companies are more than willing to invest its resources and correlate to advanced martech for the betterment of the business.
Revolutionizing the Workforce: A Fresh Approach
Classical thinking of an organization follows various cross-functional and team-centric than leader-oriented approaches for task completion and meeting deadlines. This reduces dedicated creativity that can be achieved otherwise, the reason being the diversified roles played by these teammates.
On the other hand, an exclusive team adept in marketing technology is promising enough to get better and efficient results as their major point of convergence revolves around the concept and the concept itself, mainstreaming marketing as a profession.
So, what are the set of skills required to make an effective team of marketing technology experts? One of the most exciting things about seeking marketing technologists is to revamp the skills one should seek in an individual - that must blend with the new marketing tools coming in, into the organization.
Below are a few skills for your reference:
- Tech-Friendly
Technology plays a vital role in our day-to-day lives as practitioners of the marketing profession. It helps us brisk the process and simplify by reducing the manual effort.
- Affluent Data Science Skills & Content Expertise
To market your product, you need to be well-versed with who your audience is. A brief thesis of the same needs to be done by collecting and utilizing data science skills. This is followed by forming crisp and relevant content that a customer would engage with - the ultimate pillar of branding and image-building for a product/service.
- Visualizing & Observant
Trends have been changing drastically. People employ well with picturized content than written content, which has altered the means of marketing. Hence, a marketing technologist is expected to be highly observant and able to read between the lines - such that it creates an impact.
- Design Thinkers
There is a sharp need for proficient design thinkers who can help solve structured problems and use critical reasoning to offer a fresh perspective to any given scenario, making beneficial interpretations and strategies.
Martech was Once Shadow IT
Even though it may now seem obvious but martech teams being independent or part of marketing teams wasn’t true just a few years back. Just a years ago any significant technology effort not run primarily by the IT department was inconceivable in most enterprise circles. The glass ceiling has now been broken.
Marketing technologists are now deciding, implementing and managing complex martech stacks, all with or without the help of IT teams. We’ve crossed a big threshold, and it’s a one-way door. This is just the start and we will see the ongoing democratization of marketing technology ahead.
MarTech Brings Solid Results
The marketing profession has embraced marketing technologists not because marketing technology makes lives easier but because it delivers tangibles results. Almost 1/4 of enterprises in USA with over $500 million in annual revenues have a dedicated MarTech leader and team.
Gartner also points out that enterprise marketing teams that run their own marketing technology stack with a dedicated martech leader are much more effective. That’s an acknowledgment to the hard work put in by marketing technologists in ensuring MarTech adoption continues to scale.
Bridging Marketing and IT
Needless to say, in this new environment, the CMO and the CIO must collaborate closely. Marketing and IT will continue to collaborate in most of the enterprises.
Marketing will lead in evaluation, deployment, management, and the upgradation of martech investments as evident from the chart below:
Marketing will also take the primary responsibility for managing martech and will no longer depend on the IT department, as was the case, in the past.
The Growth of Martech
Marketing technology budgets will continue to grow with no imminent signs of slowing in the near future.
Marketing technology budget now accounts for a whopping 29% of the total marketing expense budget. MarTech is now the single largest area of investment when it comes to marketing resources and programs.
New age marketers need new skills and the tenacity to manage complex martech implementations.
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