What Marketers Aren’t Talking About: The Trouble With MarTech Integrations
Takeaway From the 2017 MarTech Conference
During a lunchtime presentation, at the 2017 MarTech conference in San Francisco, a keynote speaker asks the assembled group of marketers, “How many of you can honestly say that your MarTech Stack is completely integrated?” Only one or two raised their hands.
To the rest of the crowd, the speaker says, “It’s not your fault that your stack isn’t integrated. It’s not. It’s the vendor’s.”
Afterwards, marketers walk slowly up and down the aisles of the exhibition hall, their eyes scanning the backdrops of booths. Occasionally one or two folks stop at our booth, their eyes catching on the “custom integrations” text we have written across our canvas.
“So what do you do?” They ask.
We’re a web development company, we explain. We aren’t selling a software or platform, we’re selling a service.

Our conversations with each marketer vary, most circling around the issue that the lunchtime speaker brought up–the trouble that comes from building out a MarTech stack with several different tools, each generating their own data insights, but not communicating with each other. Trouble that leads to neglected software, lost insights, and data silos. There are dozens of different MarTech platforms present at this conference, offering AI tech, predictive analytics, marketing automation–but the most common topic of conversation is the struggle of integration.
When having integration issues is all anyone can talk about, why is nobody talking about the solution? It’s coding.
Why Marketing Needs Development Resources
Integrating marketing technology is complex, and it almost goes without saying that development, or IT, is going to have to enter into the process at some point in order to accomplish it.
Getting multiple systems to communicate with each other, passing data, triggering specific functionalities and responses, is quite advanced. For a developer that understands API technology, however, it’s par for the course.

But the actual technical process of connecting those platforms together is one part of the problem. Architecting an efficiently integrated digital marketing strategy is the other. And it all starts from your website.
The Base of Your MarTech Stack: Your Website
At the conference, the response we receive from marketers when we explain that we’re a web development service provider is mixed. “Oh,” some of them say, “I already have a website,” and they walk away. Or a few of them stay longer to chat, energetically and enthusiastically talking to us about Agile project management, sandbox environments, ongoing support, API connections.
Most of our clients are marketing teams who come to us looking for assistance structuring their website. Usually this also includes integrating their MarTech with their website, as well as with each other. It’s a constant that we’ve observed after a decade of working together with digital marketers. Your website is the center of your online marketing strategy–the base of your MarTech stack.
Most strategies revolve around two goals: directing traffic to your website, and keeping that traffic on your website. This is because for most digital strategies, the website is where conversions are generated. Integrated MarTech gets its value from its ability to drive that traffic and to learn from that traffic.
Your website itself is an instrumental–and arguably–your most important marketing tool. Creating content, building landing pages, featuring webforms–your website is what tells your brand’s story and entices users to become a part of that story.
Integrated Marketing: Why the Conversation Starts With Your Website
The internet is constantly changing, and in an effort to keep up with audiences, digital marketing mirrors that dynamic behavior. Analytics, split testing software, email marketing–each of these are just aspects of a larger whole–building a strong web presence–and should not be viewed in a vacuum. Individually, these tools aren’t going to bring your business a massive amount of growth and success (despite what their services may promise).
But when they’re contributing to a well-constructed, well-architected digital presence, then you’re going to start noticing a difference. Not just in the success of your marketing efforts, but in your own management and control.

Image via Chiefmartec
An integrated MarTech stack provides a lot of benefits to marketers–more freedom over managing their system, marketing automation, and the collection, analysis, and implementation of data. However, those benefits are only attainable if your MarTech software has been well integrated together–both from a technical angle, as well as a strategic one.
Web development has become a necessary part of modern digital marketing, not just because of technical necessity, but because of what modern marketing depends on: data insights, driving traffic online, creating and maintaining a strong UX.
It’s diverse and requires constant maintenance and attention that is only possible with the assistance of a team of people who understand both your business and the entirety of your web presence.
Not just your MarTech tools.
Working with a web developer shouldn’t be a blocker. To help you find your ideal web development provider, we’ve created this guide. We cover the 5 different types of service provider, breaking them down by cost and project management. Download the Choosing A Web Development Provider whitepaper!
What Marketers Aren’t Talking About: The Trouble With MarTech Integrations was originally published on Bear Group’s blog, Bear Ideas.
