It probably comes as no surprise that Gartner found that CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) spending on technology now rivals that of a CIO (Chief Information Officer). According to Gartner, 27 percent of the marketing expense budget is now allocated to technology. That’s higher than what CMOs spend on paid media (22 percent), and almost the same amount that they spend on labor (28 percent).
But where is the marketing technology space going in 2017?
There is an increasingly large amount of marketing technology at our disposal nowadays, each with their own sets of benefits. To make sense of it all, Chief Marketing Technologist Editor Scott Brinker recently released his annual Marketing Technology Landscape graphic (which he named the ‘Martech 5000’ this year). This graphic explores and explains how the various facets of the industry are moving forward.
Martech 5000
You can download the full Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic at chiefmartec.com.
The biggest difference between this year’s graphic and the ones from previous years is that the number of different marketing technologies has cracked 5,000 for the first time ever. That represents a 40 percent growth over last year alone, although this is a slower increase than in previous years (2016 saw an increase of 87 percent over 2015).
Even with a slower rate of new marketing technologies emerging, the sheer variety of marketing technology solutions available today is overwhelming. In 2017, marketers will have to be discerning when it comes to selecting their marketing stack, since it is now almost impossible for any one vendor to deliver everything a marketer needs.
What marketing stack is right for you?
Building the right marketing stack is imperative for every marketer today. In 2017, one big shift that Brinker alludes to is that most of the major providers have “shifted their strategies to embrace the ecosystem — becoming true platforms that make it easier for marketers to plug in a variety of more specialized and vertical solutions”.
This means that marketers can now more easily build their own best-of-breed marketing stack, and no longer need to choose between a suite that claims to do everything or a very specialized solution that doesn’t connect with other technologies.
On this topic, Simon Yates, Managing VP at Gartner, recently wrote that,
“Marketers are moving quickly from the basics to sophisticated tools. More than half of the respondents have deployed the martech staples — web analytics, web content management and email marketing top the list followed by survey/customer insight tools, data management platforms and content marketing platforms not far behind”.
So as 2017 moves forward, marketers should be looking to round out their marketing stack with sophisticated solutions that are in best-in-class and plug seamlessly into other marketing technologies. And above all selecting the right mix of marketing technologies that help create a better experience for customers.
