Research shows that businesses make up to three billion decisions annually and a recent survey by Gartner reported that 65% of decisions are more complex (involving more stakeholders or choices) than they were two years ago.

Many businesses today, and the marketers that serve them, need better insight to bridge the gap between massive amounts of data and business decisions. Only 24% of companies say they are “data-driven,” whereas others face missed opportunities, inefficiencies, and increased business risks. The average S&P company loses $250 million annually due to poor decision-making.

Decision intelligence is a framework that bridges the gap between insights and decisions. It empowers organizations to make better, consistent, and data-driven decisions. Leaders and teams can make informed decisions at every level of the company!

What is decision intelligence?

Decision intelligence (DI) is an evolving discipline that combines data, analysis, AI, automation, and experience to make better decisions. DI helps guide decision-makers with actionable insights using optimization, simulation, and decision-analysis techniques.

In contrast to traditional decision-making approaches, which rely heavily on intuition and experience, DI incorporates methodical, analytical, and data-driven approaches.

The focus of DI is not just on the technology but on how it augments human decision-making processes. It is a multidisciplinary field drawing on expertise from various arenas, including computer science, statistics, psychology, economics, and business.

According to Dr. Loren Pratt, chief science officer and co-founder of DI software provider Quantellia, and author of “How Decision Intelligence Connects Data, Actions, and Outcomes for a Better World,” another key concept of DI is designing decisions like organizations design homes, buildings, and airplanes — by creating a blueprint first.

Much like a blueprint, a decision design helps align everyone involved in that decision — including stakeholders — around its rationale. She found that by treating decisions like a design problem, you can bring many design best practices to bear, such as ideation, documentation, rendering, refinement, QA, and design thinking.

In 2019, Google’s first Chief Decision Officer, Cassie Kozyrkov, established a new decision intelligence engineering discipline to augment data science with behavioral science, economics, and managerial science to focus on the next business advantage beyond the data.

Intelligent decisions are designed, simulated, automated, monitored, and tuned. 

Dig deeper: Why data-driven decision-making is the foundation of successful CX

What decision intelligence is not

Decision science. Decision science has usually been associated with the qualitative side of data. DS is the overarching term, while “decision intelligence” is the operational side. 

Strategic intelligence. Broadly, strategic intelligence means using BI insights to drive and support strategy. We also call this market intelligence which provides businesses with current industry trends and makes sense of consumer behavior to navigate a future course of action.

Calculated decisions. Not every output or recommendation is a decision, Kozyrkov says. In decision analysis terminology, a decision is only made after an irrevocable allocation of resources takes place. If you can change your mind for free, no decision has yet been made.

Applications of decision intelligence

DI applies to various decision-making problems, such as resource allocation, risk management, strategic planning, and, yes, marketing. I’ve used it in developing systems and platforms for complex energy, finance, policy, and marketing decisions.

Our last startup platform supported DI for go-to-market executives reducing the decision-making process from nine months to a fraction of time with greater visibility, training, and impacts.

DI has been applied in credit applications or fraud detection in financial services.  It has been used in retail to determine how much inventory to purchase, optimal stock levels, or price forecasts. According to Dr. Loren Pratt, employing decision intelligence can positively impact evidence-based decisions in a healthcare crisis.

Other use cases include customer satisfaction, marketing attribution, and competitive and go-to-market strategies. Designs of the framework of these decisions were standard for GTM; however, implementation required building an enterprise platform, training, and data support. But in the end, this decision-making time dropped from nine to one-to-three months. The average impact was over $10 million, including an apparel company discovering a new $90 million revenue stream embracing the platform. 

Dig deeper: Automating decisions with real-time situational context

Benefits of decision intelligence

McKinsey senior partner Kate Smaje states that organizations are now accomplishing in 10 days what used to take 10 months. Having DI supports the continually increasing pace of decisions required to stay competitive.

The first benefit is DI aids leaders in navigating complex decisions with more focused and comprehensive information. As you design the decisions, you can structure cross-organizational information toward specific goals or objectives. Having this kind of visibility facilitates navigating trade-offs between competing objectives. It eliminates more of the analysis paralysis found in most strategic and high-level tactical decisions. 

Next, DI reduces risk and uncertainty. Decision-makers with real-time data and insights can leverage DI to identify and proactively mitigate potential risks. With the visibility in trade-offs, organizations can better apply risk/reward plans to avoid costly mistakes hindering a competitive edge.

Decision Intelligence enhances efficiency and productivity. By automating specific decision-making processes and providing decision-makers with real-time data and insights, DI can help streamline decision-making and improve productivity. You are reducing decision latency. These processes can be built or programmed into systems to free up time and resources to explore more options or allocate to other important tasks and initiatives.

Finally, organizations leveraging DI gain a more potent competitive edge by leveraging data and technology by evaluating, then acting on, more intelligent and faster complex decisions which typically cripple momentum or transformation.

Limits and challenges of decision intelligence

With data, AI, and automation involved, it’s not surprising that there are some challenges and limitations that are also present with DI.

Ethics/bias. DI can methodically help reduce bias and reinforce ethical decisions. At the same time, with any data-driven and automated system, decisions leveraging DI built by humans still risk being developed based on biased or discriminatory data or algorithms. Awareness training, along with all other organizational data-driven efforts, is a must.

Data availability. Leaders and project managers must be aware of data access and availability limitations. Decision effectiveness is often challenging to find on smaller datasets. Sometimes things go wrong, but it’s more based on luck than data. For complex and infrequent decisions, an organization may need help to define an approach for measuring decisions. In such cases, technology limitations may prevent a solution. Organizations need to formalize such decision-making processes and can only use technology. Also, it’s worth highlighting what could be missing or the scope of what’s possible.

Resistance. An important part of DI is ensuring more transparency, consistency, and training in the decision-making process. The traditional culture of decision-makers will initially be resistant as it feels that it dismisses their experience or instinct or runs against their specific agendas. Those in charge of DI efforts need to communicate how DI benefits their efforts and leads to better outcomes for individuals and organizations.

Leaders can overcome these challenges and limitations through clear communication and a well-defined scope of its application. Each new initiative can grow and enhance an organization’s decision-making culture.

Tips and factors

• Choose a focused decision. Begin by implementing DI in functions where business-critical decision-making needs improvement (e.g., data-driven, AI-powered). Alternatives include large complex decisions or ones that can be scaled and accelerated through automation.
  
• Begin with outcomes. There’s a flood of data in your organization, but you should only gather relevant data to that outcome to design a decision model. Add additional data or test theories of additional information once you’ve started with your early set.

• Map out decisions. Document assumptions, thoughts, emotions, concerns, and fears involved in your decisions. Review them quarterly or semi-annually. It will increase your organization’s decision-making muscle.

• Don’t automate everything. Humans, especially when it comes to complex and sensitive decisions, are necessary.

• Authority should be to the decision. Provide authority to make decisions to the people closest to the point of impact of that decision. Ownership will incentivize effective decision-making.
  
• Develop new decision-making habits. Teach decision-makers to apply systematic best practices, such as critical thinking, trade-off analysis, recognizing bias, and listening to opposing views.

• Beware narrow framing. In the book “Decisive” by Chip and Dan Heath, the authors explain that a straightforward way to improve decision-making is to avoid limiting the scope of the frame. A decision is rarely just a “yes” or “no.” There are always multiple options, so have at least three available for any decision.

Conclusion

Decision-makers frequently need more information, time, and experience to make complex decisions. A study by Bain found that business performance seems 95% correlated to the effectiveness of decisions. Decision intelligence systems improve efficacy by explaining and justifying the decisions, learning from past decisions’ feedback, and comparing the impact to improve decision effectiveness.

Decision intelligence is a crucial tool that can help you make better decisions. By combining data science, AI, and human expertise, DI can help reduce uncertainty and improve effectiveness. However, DI has its challenges and limitations. You must be aware of these risks and take steps to mitigate them.

The post How to use decision intelligence to tackle complex business challenges appeared first on MarTech.

That said, I’m surprised how many CMOs still keep their distance from the tech part of their function. The days of a CMO delegating the martech strategy to their MOps team are at an end. The emergence of generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, has changed everything. 

This article explores why today’s CMOs should prioritize marketing technology strategy and create internal policies for using generative AI.

Why CMOs need to be technology aware

The case for CMO engagement in technology was already compelling:

• Technology enables everything that marketing does. Bad technology choices will impact marketing performance.
• Technology accounts for ~25% of the marketing budget and significantly contributes to customer acquisition costs (CAC). There is a direct relationship between spending and CAC and, ultimately customer lifetime value (CLTV).
• Technology is the source of business intelligence about customers and their behavior, critical information in formulating a marketing strategy. Inaccurate or incomplete information will make strategy formulation difficult.

Dig deeprer: Why CMOs must be the company’s biggest advocates for digitalization

The impact of ChatGPT on marketing

There is no longer a clear demarcation line between technology and content. It’s now feasible to leverage AI to create text, video and animations. More importantly, ChatGPT’s simple user interface has the potential to completely transform how companies engage with their customers and deliver information. 

For me, the simple video that HubSpot produced to introduce Chatspot.ai drove this home. In 19 minutes, Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO at HubSpot, demonstrates the power and potential of AI visually and understandably. Every marketer should watch this video and think about how this type of interface and technology might augment and improve the customer journey and experience. 

As vendors introduce new AI-enabled capabilities, it will require reevaluating the components of the martech stack and potentially replacing anchor systems that have been in place for a long time. It’s worth noting that historically, in times of great innovation, new technology leaders emerge and that’s likely to be the case with AI. 

What today might look like mature and stable technology categories (e.g., CRM, marketing automation) may look entirely different within the next five years. Today’s market leaders may not be the leaders of tomorrow. It’s often much easier to start building from the ground up than deal with the technology legacy (a.k.a., technology tax) of an existing platform when trying to provide a leap in innovation. It’s important not to be complacent and to stay on top of shifts and changes. 

Complicating the evolution of the martech stack is the normal cycle of marketing hype associated with “shiny new things.” Companies are adding AI to their product descriptions without actually delivering anything that leverages AI. 

The challenge is to separate legitimate from non-legitimate claims. A straightforward way to test is to look at the size of the data set a vendor is using to deliver their capabilities. Regardless of product category, if a vendor is not working with a large dataset, they aren’t leveraging AI. To be effective, AI needs a large training set of data in order to learn. 

In addition, if a product leverages AI, it doesn’t always mean it is a better choice than an equivalent product that doesn’t leverage AI. It’s important to understand what differentiation their use of AI actually delivers.

A further complication is that a lot of venture capital is going into technology companies focused on leveraging AI to deliver a broad range of new capabilities. There is already an extensive category of generative AI products and an equally robust category of AI detection tools. 

Not all of these companies will make it. At some point, the market will become saturated with investment, the venture capitalists will move on and some companies will implode. 

Dig deeper: AI in marketing: 7 areas where it shines and struggles

The CMO and ChatGPT  

The CMO’s job is to understand where AI, particularly generative AI, fits within the marketing strategy. 

Making that decision requires an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the technology, the products that deliver those capabilities and the associated ethical and compliance issues that surround AI. 

Italy, for example, has banned ChatGPT (at least temporarily) over concerns that the training data OpenAI used contravened GDPR. Copyrighting AI-generated content is a grey area at the moment. The U.S. Copyright Office has said it will consider copyrights on a case-by-case basis. This is something that is going to evolve over time.

CMOs should consider internal policies around the use of generative AI. I’m more than happy for my team to leverage generative AI for inspiration around email flows and to create multiple versions of content for A/B testing. At the same time, I want to ensure that we proceed cautiously with AI-generated articles, blog posts and other content that may get flagged and penalized by the search engines for being AI-generated. 

While it’s not clear how well search engines can detect AI content today, it’s definitely an area of focus for them, particularly given the concerns related to spreading disinformation and deep fake imagery.

As generative AI gets more sophisticated, so will the technology for detecting it. There’s no point in investing in AI-generated content if it will be buried by a search engine. 

Dig deeper: How CMOs should respond to ChatGPT’s marketing impact

This is not the time to question the value of your content marketing team

One thing that ChatGPT will not eliminate is the need for human content creators — at least not yet. ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can be great content assistants and, at some level, content creators. But they are not a replacement for your content team. 

These tools look back at the data they have. Without data about your new product, they can’t effectively write about it or deliver the nuances of your value proposition and positioning. Marketing strategy, creative direction and decisions need a human touch and will for the foreseeable future. 

The need to articulate an AI strategy

At some point, in an executive or board meeting, CMOs will be asked to articulate how AI fits into the marketing strategy. While the CMO should be able to call on their technology head to talk about technical details, products and implementation, they should be the ones to talk about the overall strategy. 

To be clear, AI and ChatGPT are not synonymous. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with the chatbot. It exists under the category of generative AI. AI technology as an enabler exists in many different algorithms. You can have a ChatGPT strategy, and that may be your starting point for embracing AI, but it shouldn’t be characterized as your overall AI strategy. 

AI has tremendous potential across many marketing categories. For example, it can be leveraged to define micro-market segments, adapt the customer journey and deliver a high degree of personalization. Many of the tools in your stack today may already be leveraging AI. 

Where does the CMO go from here?

Today’s CMOs should prioritize marketing technology strategy and work hand in hand with their technology lead. Advances in AI will serve as a forcing function in this regard. 

If the CMO does not own the AI and technology strategy, they cannot effectively create an overall marketing strategy. It is imperative that a CMO be able to articulate how they will achieve their marketing strategy, and technology is very much a critical piece of that.

CMOs do not have to be deeply technical. They do, however, need to understand the following:

• What’s in their marketing technology stack.
• How each technology product contributes to the marketing function and supports their marketing strategy.
• The relationship between their technology expenditures and customer acquisition costs.
• Where AI (in all forms) has the potential to add value and/or disrupt their marketing stack.
• Know enough about martech stack to manage the technology team and its performance effectively.

At the end of the day, it is the CMO who is measured on marketing’s success. If success is impeded by poor technology choices, the CMO is and should be accountable. 

For those CMOs who have not yet crossed the divide and immersed themselves in marketing technology, I recommend the following:

• Subscribe to the Marketing AI Institute newsletter to keep abreast of the latest in AI and its implications for marketing. The Marketing AI Institute also hosts valuable events and provides training on marketing-related AI applications.
• Read the CabinetM MarTech Innovation report. Each quarter CabinetM publishes a roundup of new MarTech products announced in the quarter. (Note: This is not a lead collector for CabinetM, it is provided as a non-gated resource.) Alternatively, task your technology team with giving you a quarterly update on technology advances and new products they believe will add value to your marketing plan.
• Reach out to your key vendors, request information on their AI strategy and plans, and then monitor progress against that.
• Ensure that your organization has a single source of truth for all the technology being used to support marketing and sales in a form that you can review and assess. You may need to request that additional data fields be added to their tracking and reporting to get at the information that is most meaningful to you.
• Establish regular review meetings with your technology head and use these meetings to:
  • Collaborate on developing a technology strategy.
  • Discuss current technology utilization, performance and spend.
  • Identify gaps and opportunities.
• Don’t be afraid to dig in and ask questions. As a CMO, you are not expected to know the details of the technology architecture and integrations. Your job is to translate that architecture and strategy into a plan your C-suite colleagues and the company board will understand.
• And of course, keep reading MarTech.

The post Why CMOs must cross the technical divide appeared first on MarTech.

“Pet insurance is a business that has a huge amount of white space,” said Sabrina Sebastian. “There was a significant opportunity to expand awareness and penetration rate of pet insurance which is less than 3% for all pet parents today.”

In 2019, global insurance provider MetLife had acquired PetFirst, a pet health insurance company founded in 2004. After the acquisition, Sebastian, PetFirst’s former CMO, and now MetLife’s AVP for Pet Insurance Marketing, was tasked with growing the MetLife Pet Insurance division.

In 2021, there were approximately 135.2 million dogs and cats owned by Americans, with about 3.9 million U.S. pets (mostly dogs and cats) insured that year. As a growth-focused business, MetLife saw a significant opportunity to expand the pet insurance division. They’d been using a traditional marketing workflow with modular teams that were highly skilled in marketing. 

Said Sebastian, “If we needed to tap into other teams, we would do that, but it was a really traditional way of working. We discovered that we also needed to rely heavily on our tech partners, our data partners, and our business partners.” 

This need is what drove the shift from a traditional marketing approach to an agile marketing framework.

Bringing cross-functional teams together

Agile marketing, which has its roots in software development, is a way for marketers to respond rapidly to the changing needs of customers and drive successful business outcomes. It’s done through a team-based approach using collaborative practices. This new way of working empowers marketers to do the right thing for the customer at the right time, eliminating a lot of wasteful process overhead.

“It’s a very natural way of working when you need to tap into another skill set or another opportunity that exists outside your core team,” said Sebastian. “When we started to think about how we wanted to operate and work differently, we asked ourselves, okay, what do we need to be able to do that?”

MetLife was already using agile pods in certain departments within the organization. Their global CMO and other senior leaders within the company provided the support that Sebastian needed to move from a traditional marketing to an agile marketing approach.

“We had the support and the executive sponsorship of the MetLife global CMO. He was behind these efforts and got everybody else excited about that,” said Sebastian. “It was great to have that support starting at the top and from senior leaders in all areas of the business. It really does require a cross-functional team.”

In addition to buy-in and support from leadership, Sebastian was focused on how to put together her multidisciplinary marketing team. She ultimately approached all the teams that needed to be involved in the process including traditional marketing, content strategy, data and analytics, technology, and the more traditional IT and infrastructure teams. 

“We went to those leaders and said, okay, we’re putting together this team and we’re putting together a new way of working and we want to tap into the resources that you have,” said Sebastian. 

When bringing together cross-functional teams, Sebastian emphasized the importance of starting foundationally and understanding that not everybody is a marketer. Marketing needed to take a step back and educate various teams on what they were doing, why they were doing it, and how they were planning to get it done. 

“Ultimately, we needed to get them ingrained in the actual business goals that we had in front of us, said Sebastian. “A lot of these people had never worked on Pet before. Then secondarily, a lot of the people had never been part of a marketing team before. So, we had to do a lot of training and education and really just make sure folks were on the same page.”

Getting agile off the ground

To get the agile group up to speed with the pet insurance division’s new agile marketing approach, Sebastian’s team did some on-site training to make sure that everybody understood the foundations and principles of agile marketing. This also allowed the team to get to know each other. 

“Part of the agile marketing process is just making sure that the team stays connected,” said Sebastian. “There are daily stand-up meetings and different ceremonies that take place throughout the process to make sure that everyone is on the same page. We also did a fair bit of education and work on our side to make sure that everybody was comfortable and getting to know each other as a team.”

The agile marketing approach is collaborative. That extends to the way teams are lead and managed. Instead of a single manager or leader, there are Product Owners (POs) that help facilitate communication and keep people connected. One of the principles of agile marketing is the team is self-functioning and self-governing. 

“It’s not that there’s not someone in charge,” said Sebastian, “But there’s not someone who’s the boss. You depend on the team to manage itself. We have a PO that does an amazing job of organizing all of the things that need and managing the activities that a PO should.”

Dig deeper: Introducing an in-depth guide to the Agile Marketing Navigator

Focusing on outcomes and business impact

One of the biggest challenges that Sebastian’s team had to overcome, beyond the de-siloing of teams, was to adopt a more business-focused mindset when it came to goals. That is, when teams are isolated from each other, they tend to focus on the goals of that specific team, whether it’s marketing, sales, technology, or business.

“The great thing about Agile is that the business goal is really the guiding principle of what we’re all working towards every single day,” Sebastian explained. “So we’re making sure that we stay close to that goal and understand the ‘why’ behind the work that we’re doing.” 

Said Stacey Ackerman, partner at NavigateAgile and MarTech contributor, “It’s really common in marketing to be going 100 miles an hour trying to do as much as possible, but if you ask anyone what goal they’re trying to achieve for the business or the customers, most marketers have no idea. What I love about agile marketing is that everyone from senior leaders to the team executing the work is aligned and working towards the same outcome. Therefore, marketers that are really succeeding with agile marketing are actually doing less work with better results,”

MetLife’s agile approach is focused on outcomes and adding value versus just being busy. It’s a big-picture mindset that ties marketing activities to those outcomes that add value to the business. “That’s one of the ways that we really have seen a shift in our team,” said Sebastian. “We’re not just doing things. We’re doing things that are really impactful, are adding value, and are helping us get closer to those big business goals that we have.”

Sebastian notes two key achievements from having implemented an agile marketing methodology within MetLife. The first is that, while there were already several other agile pods within the company, her agile team has been able to blaze the trail for agile marketing. “We’re laying out the foundation for how an agile pod should work. And we’re able to share that knowledge across the organization.”

Sebastian confirmed that they’re selling more policies now than they ever have. Year over year growth is in double digits. “This is definitely a way of working that we’d like to continue to expand at MetLife, specifically in the marketing space,” said Sebastian. “We’ve seen really significant impacts from the work that we’ve been doing.”

“The other thing that’s interesting is that we have a direct connection with the consumer. MetLife is a voluntary benefits company, so we have a large portion of our efforts concentrated in the group business, but we also have the opportunity with Pet to go direct to consumer. That’s one of the reasons that Pet was a good fit for agile marketing. We’re all about meeting pet parents where they are. Being able to connect in meaningful ways to the consumer, regardless of where you find them, has been really impactful for us.”

The post MetLife uses agile marketing to unleash pet insurance sales appeared first on MarTech.

Amid the jaw-dropping realizations of what AI is capable of, marketers are faced with an existential question that’s a bit daunting to consider: Is this the end of marketing as we know it? After all, you can ask ChatGPT almost any question and get an exact answer.

Need to know how to set up form conversion tracking in Google Tag Manager? Just ask ChatGPT and it will give you step-by-step instructions.

Want to build a keyword strategy, craft a job description for a new hire, or write the copy for a new landing page? The AI will do it for you immediately and effortlessly.

It’s no surprise that marketers everywhere are concerned that AI will render many aspects of marketing obsolete, but before you start worrying, let’s remember that this has happened before:

• Direct mail was disrupted by email.
• The phone book was replaced by online search.
• Newspapers and magazines were largely replaced by social media.
• Telemarketing was replaced by SMS marketing.

Artificial intelligence is the next technological innovation that will fundamentally shift marketing approaches. Here’s what you need to know to stay up-to-date and prepare for the new world of marketing.

What’s changed (and what hasn’t)

The fast-paced evolution of artificial intelligence has already changed many things about marketing, but there are still several pillars that will stand the test of time.

Here’s a quick preview to give you a perspective on how to think about the future of marketing in a world dominated by AI.

Search engines

Searching on Google for information or answers will soon seem as useful as flipping through the yellow pages to find a reliable business. People will ask AI questions and get specific, contextualized and detailed answers.

You can even ask the AI to clarify an answer or provide more options. It’s time to rethink your SEO and content strategy.

Content production

Creating content is already much easier and faster, thanks to artificial intelligence. As if we needed more content, AI will result in an explosion of content like we’ve never seen before. This isn’t speculative — it’s already happening. 

There are now tools capable of creating complete articles, slide decks, talking head videos and even reproducing anyone’s voice. These tools are fast, affordable and extremely accurate. Plus, they’re only going to get better.

Dig deeper: 5 AI writing assistants in action

Data analysis

Consuming lots of inputs and information and making sense of it is complicated, complex and time-consuming. Not anymore.

AI makes data analysis, insights generation and even predictive analytics easier. Your data and reporting will evolve to a significantly new level of sophistication without too much effort or cost.

Consumer behavior

Fortunately, people are still the same. We are still emotional, irrational and human. That means that the marketing fundamentals will still work the same, only the mechanism has changed.

Consumers will still look to each other for guidance, approval and recommendations. Creating conversations, connections and community is still a smart and reliable approach. 

Thought leadership

No artificial intelligence is sentient (capable of conscious experience) — yet — so most of what we’ll see in the near term is the repackaging, repurposing and regurgitation of existing thoughts, ideas and content.

Thought leadership is still paramount in the form of original and innovative ideas. Every marketer should continue to pursue creating and distributing thought leadership to stand out in the sea of sameness.

Brand

Nothing beats having a powerful brand. Building a recognizable, trustworthy and desirable brand is still challenging, time-consuming and expensive.

The power of having a strong brand will only increase. Savvy marketers should continue their investments in brand building.

Dig deeper: Building a brand strategy: Essentials for long-term success

The pros and cons of AI in marketing

Artificial intelligence isn’t perfect. Although it will make marketing easier, it also brings some significant concerns and considerations. 

First, here are some of the major wins:

Improved efficiency

Marketers are constantly overwhelmed with many tasks that AI can easily take over. Using AI will enable small teams (or individuals) to scale their efforts and be more efficient, which will have an enormous impact on the results that can be achieved.

Data-driven insights

Consuming, processing and summarizing large data sets is one of AI’s biggest strengths. Marketers can use this to mine insights from multiple data sources to inform and optimize our marketing efforts.

Google Analytics already provides “Analytics Intelligence,” which uses machine learning to answer questions about your data and build customized reports. 

Personalization

Delivering truly customized experiences is no longer a pipe dream. Email platforms can already use machine learning to send messages to customers at the exact right time, based on their historical behavior of when they’ve opened emails in the past.

As the capabilities evolve, AI will be able to create brand-new, unique and personalized experiences, content and conversations with users.

Cost savings

The time and cost savings of using AI tools will be one of the biggest impacts on every marketing organization. Marketing budgets are notoriously thin. The ability to reduce expenses and achieve greater scale will be transformative for marketers. AI also brings a new level of automation that will deliver immense time and cost savings.

Dig deeper: How AI can help your marketing right now

However, there are some significant concerns with the adoption of AI:

Quality and accuracy

Since artificial intelligence cannot think independently, there are massive concerns about the quality, accuracy and integrity of its output.

How can you trust what the AI says? What source is it relying on? We must be vigilant about ensuring that anything the AI produces can be verified.

Job displacement

Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence will replace and displace jobs, with some marketers being more affected than others.

As with any new technology, there will be a shift into different types of work required to leverage AI to support the marketing organization. Companies are already hiring for “AI specialist” roles to understand and capitalize on what’s possible.

Privacy and ethical concerns

Since AI relies on consuming lots of data and information, how can we protect user privacy? In addition, how can we ensure that artificial intelligence is not biased or discriminatory?

There are major concerns around privacy and ethics that must be addressed before fully adopting AI.

Dig deeper: 4 areas of martech with ethical concerns

Will AI replace marketers?

AI will dramatically change how marketing is done. It will make it easier, faster, cheaper and better. Those benefits come at a price: replacing the need for many specific tools and shifting certain roles.

There is no question that some marketing roles will be made redundant by artificial intelligence, especially on small teams with limited resources.

However, all artificial intelligence requires a creative brain for input and guidance just as much as it needs critical thinking and proper review to maintain the quality and integrity of what it produces.

Every successful marketing team will embrace the use of AI throughout their tech stack and their processes in order to maximize their efficiency, creativity and productivity. In doing so, it will usher in a new generation of marketers who understand how to mold and shape AI to produce better marketing assets at record speed.

The ultimate question

There’s one important question that every marketing leader should be thinking about and asking: Is your marketing team using artificial intelligence?

If you don’t know the answer, you better find out. The benefits of using AI in marketing are massive: getting more done faster and cheaper. However, the risks must be understood and controlled. 

Is your marketing team regurgitating your competitor’s content — or are you creating authentic thought leadership and building a powerful brand?

Artificial intelligence is just another tool. It’s your job to help your team understand how and where to use it to create powerful marketing.

This isn’t the end of an era, but the exciting merger of human creativity and cutting-edge technology will revolutionize how we connect with our customers.

The post The end of marketing or a new beginning? The truth about AI appeared first on MarTech.

Q: How did you get to where you are today?
A: My career path has been an irregular one, to say the very least. I have a degree in English, which certainly works towards marketing, but since I work in marketing technology, it kind of makes less sense to most people. After I did my degree, I worked a lot in early internet communications, like the keyword stuffing type of online articles and things to bring people in to websites.

I moved more into generalized content and then, through the recommendation of my husband, into more of an analytics role. This made use of some additional training for understanding programming languages, not necessarily being able to be a programmer but to understand the context around them. And from that moving into more specific digital marketing, which is very data-driven experience. 

Dig deeper: Marketing technologists are well-rewarded

I’ve been working in really highly privacy-focused marketing, for Medicare and Medicaid organizations before getting into the role that I am in now, which is specific to marketing technology, but also still very much focused on the privacy operations kind of element of marketing. 

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself truly a marketer because I don’t do any of the brand content, SEO, e-mail, marketing automation or anything like that. It’s more of the foundational elements 

Q: What’s the biggest challenge for martech?

A: The biggest issue that I’ve seen in marketing technology truly [at previous places I’ve worked] is a lack of understanding and awareness of the value at the leadership level. In my experience a lot of leadership will be very operations focused. It’s kind of like the short term wins focus mentality. The thought they have about marketing is that marketers make things pretty. It’s a long-term perception that marketing and advertising are the same thing, which they are not. 

Bringing in the data and the analytics is a really important layer that a lot of leadership are only just starting to understand. Not having that understanding means that they don’t give the buy in, they don’t invest in the technologies. They don’t think about the foundational marketing tool strategies or governance strategies and things like that. 

Dig deeper: 20 ways to make your marketing team more productive

As a result, it winds up being very reactive when it comes to marketing technology. That’s not the case with the work that I’m currently doing because [Enterprise has] much more of a proactive take on the importance of marketing technology. They’re starting to really look at it as an important foundational element and putting in the budget. 

Q: I know you want to expand your team, are you having trouble finding people with the skills you need?

A: Yes. The reason why there are very few people who can do marketing technology in the way that it needs to be done is because we tend to be very much unicorns. There’s a certain subset of us who grew up with the internet and who saw the changes and worked in them. 

I personally have worked in just about every part of digital marketing technology and digital marketing from content to wireframing websites, to implementation, access management, implementation of advertising and implementation of an analytics platform. Because I’ve had this much experience, I’m able to look at the privacy operations part of it from a very different lens. 

That’s the way things went for every member of my team. We’ve got some members of the team to focus on tagging and analytics operations, some that focus on site speed, some that focus specifically on how best to optimize content on the site.  Each of us went kind of in our very, very unique paths and there’s not a lot of people who have that experience or knowledge or even interest in doing many different things to get that one particular focus.

There is the potential for that to happen with training, but I think it will take some time. It will also take a unique subset of individuals who are interested in both marketing and technology and are willing to do that super deep dive into one very specific area. It’s hard to be a generalist in marketing technology. You definitely have to be a specialist to really do the work that we do well.

Download the survey here (no registration required).

The post MarTech Salary and Career: Saidah Abdulhaqq on the making of a unicorn appeared first on MarTech.

Those members of the marketing operations team more focused on tech and operations (“maestros”) than the design and execution of campaigns earned, on average, $25,000 more than their campaign-focused peers.

More maestros promoted. A marginally higher proportion of maestros were more likely to have been promoted over the last year than marketers (49% vs. 46%); and 61% of maestros said “demonstrating/proving a positive impact on the business from martech” was the most rewarding aspect of their job (against 58% of general marketers).

Responding to these findings, Scott Brinker said:

Marketers design and run campaigns. Maestroes manage and integrate the stack, design
the processes and workflows, and — importantly — train and support marketing staff on using martech.
Maestros are the giants whose shoulders marketers stand upon.

Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and Editor at chiefmartec.com

Dig deeper: What is marketing operations and who are MOps professionals?

Graduate degrees no impact. It was no surprise that, the larger the employer the higher the compensation. Perhaps less predictably, having a graduate degree had no impact on salary. Directors earned, on average, much more than managers and other staff.

Why we care. It’s important to us to take the industry’s pulse each year and track the opportunities opening up for marketers and maestros and their levels of satisfaction with their work, their compensation and their promotion prospects.

What we clearly see is an industry in which two predominant self-identified types are emerging — those individuals primarily concerned with operations and techology and those primarily concerned with devising and executing campaigns. The place where those professional capabilities intersect is what we call — martech.

Download the survey here (no registration required).

The survey. The survey, conducted jointly by MarTech and chiefmartec.com, was taken by 419 marketers in December 2022 and January 2023; 401 of those provided salary information. Nearly 70% (286) respondents live in North America; 15% (63) live in Western Europe. The report’s conclusions are limited to responses from those individuals only. Others were excluded due to the limited number.

Respondents answered more than 20 questions related to career roles, salary, technology and job satisfaction and challenges/frustrations. They were from all job levels — C-suite to managers and staff.

The post Marketing technologists are well-rewarded appeared first on MarTech.

Modern marketing is a many-headed beast. Nobody, surely, is competent to meet all its demands, from campaign design and execution, through data analytics and measurement, to mobile and location strategies and social media engagement. The solution? A team — or even several teams.

But what if you’re in Paaske’s position, running a small-to-medium business with a marketing organization comprising one or two full-time employees?

Paaske explained Boomer Baby’s business model. “You become eligible for Medicare at 65 most often,” she said, “so what we do is help people navigate that process — it’s not so straightforward. We help match people with the right insurance plan and get paid a commission by the insurance carrier when we help people enroll.”

Keeping up with marketing needs

With new marketing technologies continually emerging, it’s hard for Paaske and the Boomer Baby team to keep up. “It’s hard unless you have a full-time marketing expert,” she said. “As a new technology pops up — even just email marketing; I mean, back in the day Mailchimp was new, ‘How do I use Mailchimp?’ Whereas if you have access to somebody, you hire them or contract out, they’re like, ‘Just send me the list and I’ll do everything else.'”

For Boomer Baby, hiring an expert in each new marketing strategy and technology is not an option. Contracting niche experts for limited projects is another matter. “Having access to GrowTal and being able to find an expert on demand — not having to have them on your payroll — is awesome. I’ve been asking for something like this for years.”

A pre-vetted network of marketing talent

GrowTal offers access to a network of marketers with a wide range of skills. One main benefit, said Paaske, is the flexibility it offers in staffing marketing projects. “Even if you hire full-time marketing staff,” she continued, “marketing is a huge umbrella term. There are so many specialties it’s almost impossible to expect one person to have strong capabilities in the different areas you might need, from automation to content production.”

It’s possible to have an ongoing relationship with selected contractors too. “We do establish relationships,” Paaske confirmed. “Initially, when we wanted to get automated email campaigns going we worked with an email marketing specialist; when we wanted to run some digital ads we worked with someone else; when we wanted to look at our branding and our messaging, they had someone else they matched us with.” Working with someone on a finite project doesn’t mean you can’t circle back when you need them again.

Digging into business needs

Of course, the concept of marketplaces for freelance talent is not new. Fiverr, Upwork and other sites offer what is essentially self-serve access to many different kinds of contractors (including digital marketers, for example). GrowTal, which focuses exclusively on marketing talent, takes a more bespoke approach to supplying talent both to brands and agencies.

“We hop on a call to get the best understanding of what the client needs,” said Sarah Little, GrowTal’s marketing and operations manager. “This is a benefit because we are truly able to dig into the needs for their business, source the exact expert that has expertise for what they are looking for — whether it’s a more junior expert for execution purposes or a more senior expert to work through strategy — and find the expert that has direct experience in the specific field of a client.” GrowTal can tailor its recommendations to specific verticals like healthcare, clothing, luxury or food.

The experts on GrowTal’s roster come pre-vetted — and it’s a tight community with about 100 experts currently on platform. “We have made our process in-depth to ensure our clients are getting top-tier talent,” said Little. “We get many referrals from people in our marketing community, in addition to experts that have worked at very well known brands such as Meta, Google and TikTok, and we have experts that apply through our website.”

A resume or portfolio review is followed by what Little called “an intensive interview with a thought leader in the specific area of expertise.” Candidates for quantitive roles (like paid social and search) take quizzes; candidates for more qualitative, creative roles have their existing work reviewed. Boomer Baby interviews the candidates GrowTal recommends.

Opportunities for marketers

In addition to meeting the needs of clients, GrowTal clearly offers marketing experts an opportunity to build a flexible freelance career. Experts are paid an hourly rate, work the hours they choose and can decline to work for a client if they don’t see a good fit.

Another big advantage for freelancers is that GrowTal finds the clients. The process of applying to join the GrowTal community is said to take “a few weeks” from initial application to scheduling an interview.

Dig deeper: MarTech Salary and Career survey shows a profession coming into its own

The post Working with freelance marketing talent appeared first on MarTech.

It is also necessary to build various capabilities beyond your domain expertise. Take advantage of opportunities to develop interpersonal skills. And don’t forget to learn about the skills of those you work with. For example, DevOps and sales topics can help you better understand your stakeholders. 

Professional development doesn’t have to be expensive and time-consuming. Here are some reasonable and cost-effective opportunities that require varying levels of commitment.

1. Company-provided training

Companies have a strong motivation to develop their employees. That’s why they hire and run talent development teams for that purpose. Such teams tend to offer training applicable across disciplines for skills like coaching, teamwork, emotional intelligence, ethical behavior and prioritization, in addition to helping onboard new hires and promoting the established organizational culture.

Training is typically promoted in intranets, internal newsletters and town hall meetings, usually occuring during regular business hours. Since senior leadership backs it, it is easy for people to rework their schedules and obligations to accommodate training sessions. Most importantly, they typically don’t cost participants personal money and can help them network within the organization.

2. Industry and discipline outlets

Regardless of their profession, people should stay abreast of the industry in which they work. Understanding your company’s products is crucial no matter how technical or in the weeds a martech practitioner is. 

Plenty of industry-specific outlets provide up-to-date news about trends and forces affecting industries. These are worth following. They typically have websites, newsletters, podcasts and webinars. Examples include Inside Higher Ed for higher education, Skift for travel and hospitality, Supermarket News for grocers and many others. In some cases, trade associations maintain such outlets.

Following such outlets is helpful for professional development. They can help you understand the needs and motivations of customers and users to inform strategies and tactical decisions. They also provide competitive intelligence and emerging trends and tech to consider. As for discipline-related outlets, MarTech itself is an excellent example for our field.

Dig deeper: What are the top skills you need for digital marketing?

3. Vendor offerings

Many tech vendors offer product training and certifications – especially big players like Salesforce and Adobe. Common offerings include webinars, white papers, user communities and user conferences. Of course, this is to their advantage in developing a strong and devoted user base. In many cases, such offerings are free or low cost, which makes it easy to justify effort and time. 

It is important to note that many of these offerings are product-specific, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have broader value. Consider how product-specific information can apply to a broader context — including competing products. Keep in mind, however, the advantages and disadvantages of product specialization.

4. Professional groups and communities

Like other professions, many martech-related groups and communities aim to provide a venue for members to assist and support each other. Meetup is one of many places where you can find such groups.

Such groups come in different types. Some form around specific products, which vendors sometimes explicitly support, while others form around specialties. MO Pros and Marketing Ops Professionals are two examples of MOps communities.

Groups sometimes are devoted to specific specialists working in the same industry. There are also geographic groups like Silicon Slopes in Utah for people working in tech disciplines or tech in general.

These groups may have LinkedIn groups, Slack workspaces or listservs. They also require participation and volunteer leaders, so help out and simultaneously strengthen your network.

5. Online courses

On-demand training providers, like Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, and Pluralsight, offer access to most content for free. In some cases, libraries offer access to their patrons at no additional charge.

While on-demand courses lack real-time interaction between instructors and fellow participants, they are very convenient. Many also have hands-on projects and offer legitimacy to course completion through quizzes and exams.

6. Libraries

Your local library also has many great resources. They have books and other publications, but library card members can also access premium databases like LexisNexis and other outlets with paywalls. 

If you can’t find a specific book or publication, ask a librarian to order it. You’ll be amazed at their willingness to order something at a patron’s request. Put your tax money to work. Besides, not everyone has room for massive bookshelves.

7. Mentor relationships

Don’t forget mentor relationships. While these typically don’t require much financially, they certainly require mutual commitment of time and planning between mentor and mentee.

Both parties in a mentor relationship must contribute to making it worthwhile for both people. NPR’s “Life Kit” podcast recently dropped an episode about effective mentorships that provides many helpful tips on how both parties need to prepare and behave to produce a positive outcome.

8. You

You. Yes, you are another great professional development resource for others. There are many ways requiring a wide range of commitment that you can help others grow professionally. 

Present at an event or conference. Mentor another professional. Contribute to an outlet. Attend a virtual or local meet-up and then participate. Hold expert open office hours.

Accept that invitation to speak in a class setting. Host a martech intern at your organization. Start a podcast, blog or YouTube channel.

Contributing to MarTech is one of the most fulfilling parts of my professional life. While I’m no genius, I appreciate the ability to give something back by sharing my perspective and helping others avoid mistakes and hurdles I’ve encountered.

Dig deeper: People skills vs. martech skills: You don’t have to choose

Ample opportunities but sole accountability

Many inexpensive professional development opportunities are available today. However, you are the master of your destiny and are solely accountable for taking advantage of them.

The post 8 inexpensive professional development ideas for martech pros appeared first on MarTech.

This article explores the most sought-after skills in digital marketing and what they mean for marketing professionals and the industry.

Top skills marketing leaders look for when hiring

Up to 57% of marketing leaders prioritize analytics experience when hiring new talent, according to the State of Marketing 2023 report. As brands grow and become more data-driven, marketers who can effectively navigate and interpret data are highly valued.

Other skills that marketing leaders are hiring for and prioritizing are:

• Social media management (12%)
• Copywriting (9%)
• Video production (7%)
• Graphic design (6%)
• Search engine optimization (6%)
• Google Ads (2%) 

Although marketing analytics is specified, the ability to use data when managing social media communities, producing content and managing paid search marketing is also critical.

This shift towards prioritizing analytics experience reflects a growing recognition of data’s vital role in marketing strategy and decision-making. This makes sense for a few reasons. 

The need to demonstrate business value

Companies are tightening budgets to weather the current economic storm. At the same time, CMOs have been demanding that their marketing and PR teams demonstrate ROI from their programs. This is a trend that I’ve seen over the last 5 to 7 years.

Marketers were asked about their KPIs and how they plan to measure their programs’ performance in the same report, and 26% said that cost per acquisition/sale was the number one KPI, followed by:

• Social engagement (19%)
• Customer lifetime value (17%)
• Cost per impression (9%)
• Customer retention rate (9%)
• Cost per click (8%)
• Cost per lead (8%) 

These data points clarify that marketing leaders prioritize metrics that prove value. Outside of social engagement, these KPIs are all aligned with financial metrics.

Third-party cookie deprecation

Google plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024. Aside from rethinking audience targeting and focusing on first-party data, marketers must up their analytics skills to use the data effectively and draw meaningful insights.

Consumer privacy is also a significant consideration. Legislation, like the GDPR and CCPA, require companies to obtain explicit customer consent before collecting and using their data. Still today, 75% of marketers rely on third-party cookies.

Dig deeper: Why we care about compliance in marketing

Marketing budgets are on the rise

This year, over 50% of marketing leaders plan to increase budgets, but just 14% will make substantial investments, according to the same report. This is likely due to the uncertain financial times that have characterized the last 12 months.

However, despite these budget constraints, marketing leaders are still investing in data-driven strategies, such as:

• Investing in analytics tools.
• Hiring talent with analytics experience.
• Other initiatives to help them better understand their customers and engage them on a deeper level.

The demand for analytics skills will likely remain strong as marketing teams continue leveraging data to improve customer experience, drive sales and maximize ROI.

Per Gartner, almost 30% of the digital marketing budgets are being allocated to analytics across three functions: 

• Marketing data and analytics (9%)
• Customer analytics (8.8%)
• Marketing insights (8.3%)

While each function serves different purposes, all require an in-depth knowledge of data and analytics.

Marketing data and analytics is about performance

Hiring marketers with an analytics background is necessary to measure marketing performance better. Marketers should be able to analyze data from various channels such as paid search, email, display ads and social media to identify opportunities for improvement and provide actionable insights.

Knowledge of conversion rates, budget optimization, clickthrough rates and other performance metrics are critical. One mistake in reporting can result in millions of dollars of loss for brands.

Typically, someone working within this function would review the data and provide actionable insights after the campaign has ended.

Always-on customer analytics

Customer analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data about customers to better understand their behavior, preferences and needs. This involves using data sources such as customer transactions, demographics, web and social media metrics and customer feedback to identify patterns that inform business decisions.

In most cases, initiatives that require in-depth customer analysis using survey data happen quarterly or bi-annually. In large companies, this is usually outsourced to a research firm managed by an internal staff member with expertise in analytics.

Bringing the outside in with marketing insights

Marketing insights refer to the actionable knowledge gained from analyzing third-party marketing research from firms like Gartner, Forrester, Global Web Index, Kantar and Nielsen. These insights can help marketers and PR pros understand the current macro trends, consumer behavior and competitor activity in their industry.

This might be similar to customer analytics, but it’s more focused on industry trends and macro-level insights. Again, this helps marketers plan their strategies and understand the broader industry landscape.

Cultural trends and insights can also come in other ways. In the report, 31% of the marketers surveyed have designated cultural insights teams in-house. This approach is more expensive, given the cost of salaries and the current economic climate. But having an internal team can be beneficial in speed to insight and data ownership. 

Invest in the right resources to drive marketing ROI

Data and analytics are essential tools for modern marketers. Investing in the right talent, tools and processes helps you keep up with the competition. Building a team with different functions specializing in customer analytics, marketing insights and data and analytics is key to success. With the right talent and resources, brands can tap into valuable insights, drive revenue and maximize ROI.

The post What are the top skills you need for digital marketing? appeared first on MarTech.

As marketers, we need to get more out of our martech stack, whether through consolidation or more strategic use of existing tools. Finding areas for improvement isn’t new, so why all the fuss now? 

Why your martech stack ROI is worse than it should be

In the last three years, my company has conducted over 500 calls with HubSpot customers about their platform setup, spend and optimization. We’ve identified some of the most common martech stack issues — from underutilized capabilities to redundant spending.

The result? The average company is wasting 35% of their budget on cloud and SaaS tools.

Reason 1: You don’t know what you don’t know 

Unfortunately, this overlap is unintentional and may stem from a product purchased to solve a specific problem at a certain point. If you’re not an expert in your company’s martech stack, you won’t know how to use existing tools to boost results or maximize new functionality that could replace apps you no longer need.

Unfamiliarity with stack capabilities leads to redundant tools and inefficient workflows. To keep up, you must continually read product updates, beta launches and more to learn how your martech stack functionality is expanding. 

In early March, HubSpot announced a new tool that leverages AI functionality within their platform, useful for portal research, market research, writing copy and more. This brings together additional content creation and research tools you might only find with other vendors.

Dig deeper: Marketers making less use of martech’s expanding capabilities 

Reason 2: It seems too expensive to upgrade

Upgrading to a more functional version of your stack can seem expensive, but the sticker price is rarely set in stone, especially for enterprise deals. It’s worth exploring options or negotiating a better deal with your vendor. (You might be paying for features you’ll never have any use for.) 

Remember providers often offer bigger discounts to upgrade your account than to renew it at the current level. If you can identify ways to generate ROI on that upgrade, it could pay for itself and then some. 

For example, in the sales enterprise version of HubSpot, your portal gains automatic enrollment into sequences and team roles. This standardization of information for the sales team, plus the ability to communicate 1-to-1 with leads who may have ghosted or gone silent, could mean huge time savings and more growth opportunities. 

Reason 3: Disorganized buying processes and “grandfathered-in” systems

This reason is often underrated, but it’s important. At larger organizations (and even smaller ones), it’s easy to lose track of all the systems you’re paying for, especially when there isn’t a consistent, organized process for buying new software. 

And when new leaders come into the picture, they might not know the full extent of what tools are being used, or why, so unnecessary costs are less apparent.

Dig deeper: 3 steps to building an effective martech stack

How to get more value out of your martech stack

1. Negotiate your software contracts

This should be a no-brainer, but there are people more skilled at this than others, so companies often leave money on the table. Many software companies are willing to negotiate to keep you as a customer and expand your usage within their platform. 

Consider working with a partner to help you navigate the negotiation process and ensure you get the best deal possible. Partners will have the expertise and relationships to secure better deals.

2. Invest in team training

Knowledge disappears with turnover. Newer team members may not have the same grasp of a system that previous leaders did and, therefore, won’t use it to its fullest extent. This is where training and development can help. Individualized training may also uncover gaps you weren’t even aware of. 

Dig deeper: In this economy CMOs need to spend more on training, not tech

3. Consolidate tools

With the accelerating rate of mergers and acquisitions, larger platforms are buying smaller ones to expand their offerings quickly. Many of the larger tools on the market (such as HubSpot) now offer functionality that does an “okay” job of other things once relegated to specific software.

While not always as sophisticated as leading competitors, a unified system adds convenience and cost savings. For instance, HubSpot Marketing Pro and Marketing Enterprise make it possible to schedule and post social media inside the platform. 

Does it offer all the full functionality you’d get in a Sprout Social or a HootSuite? No. But it might do enough to save money by discontinuing another tool .

Do an audit of your martech stack, looking for areas where you can cut old or poorly functioning tools and eliminate redundant services.

Dig deeper: My stack is bigger than your stack, so what?

4. Cut seats, not just tools

Most SaaS companies charge per “seat” or user, so costs increase with each additional employee on it — even if they’re not using it. Look through your platforms and see where you can downsize the number of users you have.

This seems obvious, but companies of all sizes consistently overlook it. Many mistakenly give seats to employees who don’t need access to the platform’s paid features, driving up costs unnecessarily. They may be set with X number of paid users, and the rest of the employees accessing the system can do so using a view-only free seat. 

Taking a closer look at who needs access to your SaaS tools and platforms can significantly reduce the seats you must pay for. This can result in substantial cost savings without sacrificing functionality or performance.

5. Bring in external resources

While bringing a consultant or external resource reduces in-house hiring and training costs for marketing and sales software, the advantages often go beyond cost savings. 

By leveraging external expertise, you can tap into their deep knowledge of tools and platforms, reducing the risk that you underutilize tools. These folks often have fresh perspectives and can help upskill your existing team, providing training and processes to ensure you’re continually leveraging your investments efficiently.

Lastly, external resources can help with continuity and information transfer. This includes the knowledge you don’t want to lose from employee turnover so that you can ensure consistency in your technology strategy, even as your company restructures or changes.

Dig deeper: 5 tips to boost user adoption of new martech tools

The post 5 tips to get more value from your martech stack appeared first on MarTech.