4 Powerful Insights from 2017’s Marketing Technology Landscape

Quick! Grab a magnifying glass and let’s dive into ChiefMartec’s 2017 Marketing Technology Supergraphic.

Scott Brinker’s annual martech landscape has grown from 150 solutions in 2011 to 5,381 in 2017. In fact, the number of vendors increased 39 percent since 2016’s report. The rapid growth has created a market that resembles an open digital platform, giving marketers more choices and ways to customize their marketing technology stacks to best suit their individual needs.

Here are 4 highlights from 2017’s Marketing Technology Supergraphic:

1. Martech Vendor Distribution

“This market is a ‘long tail’ distribution of martech vendors,” Brinker explains in his yearly assessment of the state of marketing technology. There are a few giants with $1B+ in revenue, dozens of leaders with $100M, and then thousands of smaller firms ranging from 3 person micro-saas companies to firms with millions in revenue. Interestingly, 2,000+ are private companies that appear to be fully bootstrapped.

2. One size does not fit all

In the early days of marketing technology, many vendors, especially the big players, promoted a single solution for all of your marketing needs. Today, the major providers have become “true platforms”, enabling marketers to integrate the various solutions needed to achieve their specific marketing goals. Not only does the distribution of martech vendors represent a classic open digital platform but the actual design of solutions represents it as well.

“The spectacular scope explosion of marketing — and the rate at which new disruptions and innovations continue to roil marketing and business at large — has made it impossible for any one vendor to deliver everything that every marketer needs in a digital world.” — Scott Brinker

3. Show Me Your Stack!

What’s a marketer to do with 5000+ solutions?

“Instead of choosing suite or best-of-breed, many marketers are now taking a suite and best-of-breed approach — using the suites as digital marketing hubs and then augmenting them with a range of more specialized products to bake their own, special marketing and customer experience cake.” — Scott Brinker

The greatest enhancement to 2017’s landscape was getting a glimpse into how brands are actually assembling various martech solutions to create remarkable customer experiences. Here’s an example of a 2017 Stackie winner’s Martech stack.

“Aprimo rendered their marketing stack along two dimensions — (1) a continuous loop of plan, spend, create, distribute, and perform and (2) concentric circles within that loop of capabilities for marketing operations, content, website, social, demand generation, and data & sales enablement. You can see how each of the marketing technologies they’ve selected (or built!) fit into this architecture.” — ChiefMartec

Aprimo’s tech stack is a good example of how a brand aligns its story, strategy, and systems with technology. The five essentials of marketing — plan, spend, create, distribute, and perform — are at the center of Aprimo’s marketing systems, brand story, and growth strategy. By excelling in these five areas, marketers can mitigate marketing mayhem and generate measurable business results.

4. A Supergraphic Spreadsheet

The marketing technology database you’ve been asking for is here! Anand Thaker and Scott Brinker put together a spreadsheet of the Martech 5000 that includes all of the companies, the solution in which each is categorized, and website URLs. This is an excellent resource for your martech research. Go to this link and scroll to the bottom to access the list.

Marketing stacks must be clearly aligned with your brand strategy and systems to effectively deliver remarkable customer experiences. In order to avoid the chaos we call Marketing Mayhem, you must bring simplicity, clarity, and alignment to your marketing operations. Aiming to better understand the current state of mayhem in marketing departments, we conducted a survey of marketing operations leaders to better understand:

• What systems do marketers have in place?
• What challenges are they facing?
• What are the success factors to overcome the pains of complexity?

On Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 1PM CST, join Michael Smith of Aprimo and Dave Sutton of TopRight as they share the research results. Register now to save your spot!

Photo credit: ChiefMartec.com