Today’s consumers simply aren’t interested in generic, one-to-many marketing campaigns that don’t feel customized to their individual tastes and interests. They expect a personalized, boutique experience from the brands they do business with.
As marketers, we know that creating those highly customized experiences requires data — a lot of it! And marketers rely on technology to unlock the value of that data. But finding the right technology solution and using it effectively is a challenge for many organizations. Marketing leaders are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their marketing technology investments and their ability to extract value from their current solutions.
In partnership with Which-50, Cheetah Digital set out to explore this phenomenon, by asking:
- What causes marketing leaders to revisit their technology decisions?
- What are the most important factors in selecting a new technology solution?
- What challenges are most likely to hinder the implementation of a new technology stack?
- How does the relationship between marketing and other areas of the business impact this process?
In our new report, Strategy First, we dig into these questions and many more.
The results of this study confirm many long-standing beliefs — such as the critical nature of data and the importance of strategic alignment across an organization — but also uncover a number of surprising insights. For example:
- Cost is seldom the driving force behind the decision to change technology vendors. Instead, marketing leaders cited the need to improve marketing execution and the need to better utilize the brand’s data assets.
- The technology selection process often includes more than just marketing and IT decision-makers, with finance and other senior executives weighing in on more than 40 percent of decisions.
- The effort needed to implement a new technology stack frequently exceeds expectations, and integration issues often present the biggest challenge. Even with marketing clouds that sell the idea of a single, unified solution, the combination of products within that marketing cloud do not always integrate well.
- The skills required to effectively utilize marketing technology are increasingly advanced. Many organizations fail to adequately plan for training, and post-sales support provided by vendors is often limited.
There’s no silver bullet when it comes to marketing technology. Finding the right solution for your particular needs is a complex process — not to mention implementing that solution and using it effectively. By downloading this report and applying its findings, you can learn how to avoid many common pitfalls and drive real ROI through your marketing technology solutions.
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