Making Money On-line: 10 Surprising Statistics About Marketing Technology

Thursday, 3 March 2016

10 Surprising Statistics About Marketing Technology

With the hot sector of marketing technology becoming better defined, insights are emerging from those using it - and the results are mixed. This blog explores the figures.

When your life revolves around marketing technology - creating it, implementing it, making sure people get the most from it - it’s a sobering thought that many people aren’t seeing its benefits yet. (An outcome much in evidence in the pages of Digital Doughnut’s Transforming Marketing Technology report this summer.)

Marketing technology benefits: hiding in plain sight

As marketing technologists, we can’t ignore these figures. Nor should we. Seeing the world from the customer’s perspective - including the risks of a bad implementation, or poor employee adoption - helps us become better

Let’s give ourselves that reality check with 10 surprising statistics about marketing technology.

1) 66% of those investing in marketing technology don’t have a clearly defined budget.

That is nearly two-thirds of those investing in marketing technology. This is more important than it sounds. If marketing technology’s costs are split informally within departmental budgets without guidance, it’s less likely those technologies will have clear champions within the organisation, and their benefits will take longer to emerge. Budget holders are only human, after all.

2) Only 33% have a defined budget when it comes to implementing marketing technology.

So should you be in the one-third? Yes because a defined budget carries with it defined outcomes, like projections for ROI. A defined budget means people have a stake in making marketing technology work hard for them and driving real results.

3) Only 8% felt marketing technology had been implemented well.

It gets worse. With the best will in the world, there isn’t much “bad” software out there any more. Many technologies are out of the box solutions, so unhappiness lies in how it was rolled out across the organisation.

4) 40% did not think technology had been implemented even partially well, while 52% only thought it had been ‘good in parts’.

To put this into context it means that a whopping 92% of people did not feel that marketing technology had been implemented well. This information suggests it’s worth paying a lot of attention to how you get people on board. Answering their concerns, understanding their needs, providing demos and demonstrating the return on investment and personal benefit. The good news: a little engagement here goes a long way.

5) 40% of people were unconvinced of marketing technology’s benefits.

The sentiment exists for many of the same reasons listed above, making it vitally important that, as above, you get people on board and demonstrate the benefits of the technology.

6) 50% use marketing technology for delivering and analysing emails.

Delivering e-CRM emails and analysing the results are big uses of marketing technology, but what’s surprising is that many companies use it for little else. This is another reason why the benefits of marketing technology are so rarely felt - its capabilities are rarely maximised by users.

7) Only 40% of companies are using marketing technology for hot and current topics.
Even more shocking is that hot topics like social media (both publishing and monitoring) were quoted by barely 40%. For today’s marketer, that’s a huge opportunity to miss out on - as the social sphere grows, so can results.

8) Only 30% of companies are going full tilt in the content marketing arena.
70% of companies aren’t maximising their marketing capabilities with the use of technology. Sending deep, targeted, messaging to prospects and customers can be made easier when companies utilise the tools availability.

9) 31% of companies are using marketing technology for campaign management.

And the most surprising statistic of them all:

10) A mere 10% of companies are using marketing technology for improving the customer experience as a whole.

Perhaps in there, you can see the idea for bringing everybody in your organisation on board. Because delivering a smooth, connected customer experience across all departments is positive for everyone

It means Sales get more leads, because every opportunity is picked up. It means Marketing drives up engagement levels, because they can make the conversation with the customer more personal. Joining the dots of the whole customer experience also flags up areas where operational processes can be re-engineered. And because of increased knowledge, every campaign and CRM programme wins higher responses.

That’s the real goal of marketing technology. Not numbers, not reports. not even single-version-of-the-truth databases (although they’re vital). But something much more human: building the ideal relationship between company and customer

Takeaways