Marketing + Technology #2
A system in motion
In my first article, I wrote about how Marketing + Technology form a System. I explain how the diverse parts converge to form a unit that transforms challenges into opportunities and how Technology is there to simplify the complexities of Marketing.
Implementing Martech considering the rapid-changing nature of modern marketing and technology is vital for the success of this business function.
Martech, as a system, is influenced by the environment it lives in and at the same time influences that same environment. We can call these influences forces. These forces can impact the system in both positive and negative ways.
In addition to this, the forces can come from inside the system and also from the external environment. All these interactions cause motion in the system, a constant change of the state.
Every part affects the other, also called harmony
In this system, the major parts are People, Processes, Technology and last but not least, Data. Each element has its own wavelength, its own dynamic. Of course, there is also the environment, which similarly to the Martech system has its own natural movement.
In the end, what we have is a combination of elements that move together. The aim is to orchestrate all the movements harmoniously in a way that the system performs efficiently.
People: two different but important groups
Every Martech system has two main groups of people. The ones that operate the system, the marketers and technologists, and the ones that the system is operated for, the audience.
Marketers and Technologists are looking for career growth and new learning. They imagine new messaging and new campaigns, they want to push the limits of the platforms but also want to better understand their Audience. As an operator group, they want to minimize errors and risks and maximize rewards. They act as individuals and also as teams. They try to automate processes as much as possible and also keep the element human as present as possible.
This group navigates the system, they are the ones that set the direction of the motion with the help of the other three pieces; Processes, Technology, and Data.
On the other side, an audience is a group of people that are the receivers of the system’s messaging. Their movement is complex, they generally interact with multiple similar systems at the same time, so their attention span is limited and scarce. They might be composed of multiple subgroups, each one with different dynamics. Despite all the efforts of the operators, the Audience behavior is generally unpredictable, and the best we can do as operators it’s capture data and learnings to hopefully better guess the next time we interact with them.
Ultimately, the system exists for this group, and their behavior will always keep shaping and reshaping the system.
Processes: the templated solutions for known problems
As every Martech practice evolves, processes are either adopted or created. There are plenty of well-known processes in Marketing such as campaign ideations, or audience segmentation. And so there are processes known in the technology area like systems integrations or landing pages creations or also content tagging, just to name a few that will sound familiar.
All these processes have emerged as a solution to repeating problems or challenges. And as with every system, whenever an issue reveals a pattern, a template for its solution is created, so we can use it and reuse it. And this is what we can call a process.
However, no matter how well designed a process is, there’s always space for optimization, especially because the patterns shown previously at every issue can have variations and the processes should be refactored or adjusted. Again, there’s motion in processes, they’re not static pieces, they must be reviewed constantly and some must be sunset while others might be created.
Change in processes cause internal movement, internal reorganization, and adjustments that are not visible to the exterior but that can impact how the system behaves, sometimes making it more efficient and sometimes making it less responsive to the exterior stimulus.
Technology: at the edge, middle and back of the stack
It couldn’t be more intriguing and passionate at the same time. Everywhere we look there’s a new piece of technology emerging or a mainstream system being optimized or refactored to adapt to new demands.
The sense of motion in technology is that perhaps it goes faster than many of us can even comprehend. Sometimes new features are launched and existing features are extended without us noticing. We can look at the macro or the micro level, and we will find an overwhelming amount of changes in technology that is simply breathtaking.
Putting all this in the simplest terms, technology advances really fast at the edge of the Martech system. In the middle of the system, progress is not as fast-paced but doesn’t allow much time for contemplation either, and at the back end of the stack the changes are slower but they can be game changers.
In summary, nothing denotes more the sense of motion in a Martech stack than the changes in technology. But it is also immensely important to understand when and which of all these changes must or should be adopted.
Data: what traverses the system inside out
Data is the element that flows through the Martech system. Though we can initially think of it as only being composed of “Customer Data”, the truth is that what impacts the systems in the way it performs goes beyond this subset and it also includes the pieces of information that we can extract from the environment, the internal interactions of the different pieces of the system and even from other systems connected to the Martech stack.
Customer Profiles, Operational Logs, Campaign Metadata, Budgets, Historic Performance, Industry Standards, Product Details, Social Behaviour, and even Geographical datasets are examples of some of the different shapes that Data can take in a Martech system.
There’s one intuitive motion or dynamic that Data tends to make us think of growth. But there are also other important considerations to it that are equally as relevant as the increase in its volume. Data also deteriorates, it gets dated, or even invalid if the environment where it was captured no longer exists or changes drastically. And there’s one particularly relevant aspect in data that gets many times overlooked. As we tend to aggregate more and more data, it tends to “hide” other pieces, data also “darkens”. To be completely valid and useful, data needs context and context is always changing. This is perhaps the most complex dynamic in the Martech system.
Closing thoughts
One of the exciting parts of working in Martech is that we’re dealing with highly dynamic and complex systems that generate motion from the inside and the outside. Every team looking after this important piece in any organization should be looking at these elements and how their particular movements can affect the rest.
Generally, these forces should be aiming to generate forward motion. But if the friction is higher than the impulse, the motion will be imperceptible and the progress meaningless. The question is: What are these frictions? How can we prevent them? How can we overcome them?
In my experience, the biggest friction comes from the fear of change that principally affects the element of the system known as People. Another source of the friction comes from too rigid or not well-defined Processes. In the Technology element, not planning or not having a strategy generally creates unbelievable amounts of friction that generally paralyzes the system. Finally, not understanding how Data works can generate such levels of friction that could essentially block progress and even break the system.
There’s definitely not a One-template-recipe or magic solution to all these problems but understanding that your Martech is a highly dynamic system is the first step. Your organization must look after the People, continuously improve the Processes and design for change, plan and understand that Technology is not a silver bullet, and definitely create a culture of data that will help you get close to a Martech that helps change things for better.
