by William Walsh | Nov 13, 2023 | 2023
As previously published on 11/9/23 in MarTech
Investment is slowing, budgets are shrinking and generative AI threatens disruption. Here’s why 2024 may be a shakeup year for martech.
One certainty for marketers over the last dozen years is that Scott Brinker’s martech landscape map would grow. The map, which started in 2011 with only 150 companies listed, now contains over 11,000 companies* — a ridiculous growth rate of over 7,000%!
With investments bringing generative AI into every marketing area imaginable, it seems certain that next year’s map will continue on the same growth trajectory.
But that may not be the case. The glory days of “build it and they will come” may be over. Even more concerning is the marketing technology landscape may be headed towards a “killing field,” as Larry Ellison once described the software industry during the dot-com bubble.
As a vendor, many of us have seen our clients’ marketing budgets slashed in 2023. What was thought to be a temporary reaction to uncertainty in the economy is now the reality for 2024. And it’s getting worse. Budgets are under attack, with headcount and technology investments being slashed.
1. Investment is drying up
The impact on martech is already starting to surface. In Q3 2023, martech investments went down significantly. The martech pipeline for new product announcements has slowed to 65 in Q3, down from 128 in Q2 and 121 in Q1.
The beginning of the year saw big investments in ChatGPT-related tools, which have also slowed from $10 billion in Q1 to $1.9 billion. For established vendors, servicing debt is getting very expensive. Watch for that to also have an impact on vendor financial viability in 2024.
The cooling of the investment is one factor in the slowing of the product landscapes, but other forces are at play, like the reduction of marketing budgets.
Another force is generative AI itself. It threatens existing products both with its innovation, as well as becoming a replacement.
A whole host of existing videos, content, SEO products, email platforms, list generators and so on could be eliminated if they don’t integrate their own AI solutions immediately.
3. Pressure on marketing to cut budgets
On the client side, marketers are now trying to find efficiencies in their spend. They’re also giving performance a hard look — and it isn’t pretty. In a down market, it’s difficult to defend investments that are not producing. A CMO I recently spoke to told me that in 2022, they closed one out of four opportunities created by marketing. In 2023, that number was one out of 10.
Data integration issues still plague organizations, as well as historical attribution challenges. Existing tools will be difficult to defend without hard evidence of business impact or ROI.
Martech “stacks” have grown so large that even in small organizations, it’s not uncommon to see 30 to 50 products aimed at various stages of the buyer journey. Those tools are now beginning to be under the microscope, and CMOs have to rationalize those investments.
Count on seeing marketing organizations unbundling and/or not renewing contracts with existing vendors at the end of this year or early next year. Vendors, the days of multi-year contracts will also be under pressure as buyers look for more flexibility.
Marketers love shiny new tools, and generative AI has the type of shine that is hard to resist. There is no question about AI’s ability to help marketing organizations be more efficient. Whether it’s content development or video production, the tools are fast and produce a pretty good output if trained appropriately.
The question of whether they are more effective remains to be seen. The pressure of not falling behind competitors may help CMOs justify those investments for now, but it will come with strings attached. The biggest string — a zero-based budget. It will no longer be an “additive” game. New investments will come from the elimination of other tools.
5. Barbarians will be at the gate
Expected to see a significant increase in M&A activity next year, Adobe, Microsoft, and Oracle will be hunting for opportunities to enhance their portfolio or plug gaps in their solution set. Reduced funding, combined with slowing (perhaps dramatically) market demand and more expensive debt, means there will be opportunities to pick up innovative technologies cheaply.
Also, look for competitors in similar categories to merge to reduce cost, expand the customer base and conserve cash. The martech landscape could very much become a killing field of the past.
CMOs who have become “data-driven” must now become performance-driven. In what is a more permanent stage of a slowing economy, competition for funding internally will pit sales, marketing and product organizations against each other. These groups will be increasingly skeptical of what marketing investments are producing.
Marketing organizations and technology providers will be pressured to defend their value, performance and worth. Buckle up — 2024 is going to be a rough ride for everyone!
by William Walsh | Oct 26, 2023 | 2023
As previously published on 10/11/23 in MarTech
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 6 Minutes
Explore strategic vs. haphazard approaches in B2B social media and how the best-in-class companies are finding their “sweet spot.”
Never has the expression, “Don’t confuse activity for performance,” rang truer than in B2B social media programs.
You can divide organizations into two buckets based on their approach to social media execution:
- Those that think strategically and plan their program.
- The ones who just post… anything and everything.
In a nutshell, that was our finding from a best-in-class research project evaluating the social media programs of close to 50 companies spanning multiple industries.
Unlike the B2C world, which successfully uses multiple social media platforms to engage with consumers and drive revenue, B2Bs have struggled to find the “killer app” for its social programs. More bluntly, how do businesses use these social media channels to impact their business performance?
Our research has uncovered a handful of businesses beginning to find the “sweet spot” for B2B. They have evolved their social media posts from simple updates and events to more sophisticated and produced content intended to engage audiences and drive business goals.
In parallel, they have invested heavily in agencies and in-house resources dedicated to various roles related to their social platforms. Because of these investments, best-in-class (BIC) companies have progressed their program planning from weekly to quarterly.
But that is the exception, not the rule. We also observed plenty of organizations still stuck in week-to-week planning of essentially “what do we have that we can post?”
B2B content focus areas
When it comes to content, we found that BIC organizations are focusing the majority of their efforts into four essential “buckets” aimed at various audiences, including:
- Product/solution. Featuring products through HD images, video and content on successful implementation, customer testimonials, etc., aimed at buyers and prospects.
- Recruiting/HR. Information and imagery on culture, careers, training, diversity, etc., aimed at recruits and existing employees.
- Brand. Content and branding focused on communicating or enhancing brand pillars, for example; innovation, inclusion, efficiency, reliability, etc.
- Community. Posts focused on topics close to their hearts, such as Earth Day, Bring Your Child to Work Day, MLK Day, volunteer work, etc.
AWS (Amazon Web Services) has become a content juggernaut by producing daily podcasts through LinkedIn, Streaming to their 8.5 million followers, and then redistributing through other platforms.
The production quality of content has increased dramatically. Most BIC companies, like SAP, use short, highly produced and stylized videos to reach their followers.
In terms of channels, not surprisingly, the 800-pound gorilla for B2B companies is LinkedIn. Twitter (now X) has lost much of its business audience and interest from B2B companies. Instagram (IG) is now one of the four essential platforms for B2B (YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook, to a lesser extent).
For example, IG has become a significant channel for McKinsey in distributing thought leadership. Their posts offer high educational value and most often link to studies and research.
Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, shares content in batches with a similar theme ( a charity, cancer research, culture, etc.) These “campaigns” usually have a consistent style, tone, and topic. At any given time, there may be 2-3 campaigns running on IG, tied together visually on the feed. This means they can create the content in a large batch and strategically schedule it out.
TikTok is growing its B2B audience, but it is very specific to industries/companies. Threads is still a question mark. It might be safer than X, but it’s having a difficult time building a B2B audience.
Abandoned pages and user behavior changes
A few other surprises also emerged through our research. “Legacy” platforms, like Facebook, where companies quickly rushed in years ago to set up pages and/or groups, have a vast graveyard of abandoned groups and pages. And that has left a door open for opportunists. We found fake pages using company branding and/or suspect posts using company pages.
We also observed behavioral changes by users, creating a challenge for brand consistency, particularly on LinkedIn. In the digital past, you had, on average, eight seconds to make an impression. Visitors would hit your site and quickly assess if they would explore or bounce. Now, with the scrolling features of social media, especially for Reels, that time is not down to seconds.
For example, during a social media research assignment for a client, we reviewed the LinkedIn post of a competitor. Our team found that consistent brand imagery (blue background with a cartoon image) for their posts created the impression that the viewer had already seen the post because of the similarity. So, if you want an audience to notice that your posts differ, use distinctively different imagery — and don’t tell the brand police!
Key takeaways and next steps
Along with our research, we created a social media maturity model built on the axis of content goals (marketing versus business) and production quality (a function of content, design and planning). We plotted the companies profiled and created a roadmap to elevate social media’s business impact. Below are our key takeaways:
- Visit and clean up what was built in the early days of social media and what might be lingering in the public domain (see my Facebook example).
- Start to think about creating a content schedule for a month and then two months in advance.
- Define the requirements to fill that calendar.
Based on BIC companies, you need to be posting:
- 1-2 times a day on LinkedIn (including weekends).
- 3-5 times a week on Instagram (daily on Stories).
- 1-4 posts a day if you would like to experiment on TikTok.
Map where the content will, or should, come from within your organization. You’ll need to go to HR, sales, product and corporate responsibility (they fill the four content buckets mentioned earlier).
Discuss their goals and how social media can help achieve and/or support them. Then, get their commitment and explain your process for capturing, reviewing, approving and posting their content.
Not everyone will invest in this journey. Some prioritize activity over performance, while others set higher expectations for prospects and customers.
Social media platforms in B2B are growing in importance, and companies need to mature their approaches to discover what works best for their business.
by William Walsh | Oct 10, 2023 | 2023
As previously published on 9/21/23 in MarTech
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
Learn the benefits of AI personality profiling, from reaching a wider audience to honing in on what your audience values most.
Every day we form impressions of the people we meet. We assess their trustworthiness, credibility and level of friendliness based on our interactions.
In business, we often assess contacts based on how they will — or will not — support what we’re promoting. Will they be an advocate or influencer? Will they be skeptical or feel threatened?
This can extend to organizations or industries. We describe organizations as being “data-driven” or “research-based” and industries as “cutting edge” or “slow-moving” to help us understand how to position ourselves and improve our messaging.
With AI personality profiling tools, we can become more familiar with an audience, segment or industry before we even engage with it. B2B marketing, usually kept at arm’s reach from customers, can now know them as well as account managers who have long-standing customer relationships. Here’s what this means for B2B marketing organizations.
What are AI personality profiling tools?
When it comes to engaging with customers or potential clients, understanding preferences and behaviors is key. This has traditionally been done through surveys, focus groups or other forms of direct communication.
However, AI personality profiling tools provide a new and more efficient way to gain insights into your target audience. They use algorithms to analyze a variety of data points (i.e., social media activity, online searches, and even speech patterns) to identify patterns and traits indicating a person’s personality type. This information lets you create more personalized and effective marketing campaigns.
One of the biggest advantages of AI personality profiling is the ability to reach a wider audience while still tailoring your message to each individual. In the past, developing different personas and buyer journeys could be time-consuming and require a lot of guesswork. AI tools can quickly and easily identify commonalities within your audience and develop targeted content.
Another benefit is the ability to uncover hidden insights about an organization’s corporate culture. By analyzing its leadership team’s personalities and behaviors, you can better understand its values and priorities. This can help you tailor your messaging to fit the company’s culture and present your solution in a way that will most likely resonate with decision-makers.
How AI personality profiling can reshape your marketing strategy
We recently profiled the personalities of the C-suite executives at a Fortune 500 company. Although diversifying board rooms has helped bring a wider variety of individuals with different life experiences and points of view, one area has not been diversified.
Perhaps best described as “birds of a feather flock together,” an individual’s personality type often dictates their profession or the industry where they work. Of the senior executives we profiled, 21 out of 22 executives had the same personality type.
This is an extreme example of a concentrated personality type. Typically, we find only one dominant type in 60-70% of the executive team. We also found a dominant personality type of Fortune 500 executives, 58% of the CEOs.
A homogenous population is a marketer’s dream. It means a “one size fits all” messaging and content approach. The other benefit it provides is insight into the corporate culture. The company we profiled is in the construction industry, with the dominant personality type being analogous to a “project manager.”
Given the dominance of the personality type, it is safe to assume that the corporate culture is a “get it done” environment. That nugget of wisdom is gold for sales. This type of environment signals that if it isn’t broken, it will not get fixed.
Trying to sell a “nice to have” will be virtually impossible, but selling a “need to have” should be easier. In particular, if you can find a burning need or demonstrate an advantage gained by the new solution.
A chance to hone in on what your audience values
Finding the “pain” and then building the argument for the business case will attract your audience’s attention. The greatest advantage in understanding their personality is knowing their behaviors and motivations.
For example, the “project manager” mindset is motivated by achievement, career advancement and recognition. Their behavior is to be heads down, so you have to interrupt them in order to get their attention.
To do this, you’ll need to align to their personal content preferences (which are industry-specific case studies) and use and business cases. They also prefer references, especially peers in the same role and industry.
All of this can be known, created and executed without ever having a conversation with a prospect.
AI profiling tools are simple to use and can easily provide new insights into audiences. It opens the door for creating new personas, buyer journeys and, most importantly, better content.
And you know what loves a homogenous population and insights about them more than marketers? Machines. All of this information can be fed into AI content generators.
Birds of a feather do flock together, and with AI tools you can know exactly what type of bird you’re hunting and how to knock them out of the sky.
AI personality profiling alone is not enough
AI personality profiling has its limitations. It’s crucial to recognize that personality types are dynamic and can evolve. Moreover, exclusively depending on data-driven insights may hinder empathy and a comprehensive understanding of the human experience.
Leverage AI personality profiling if you’re looking to gain valuable audience insights and enhance your marketing campaigns. But for a holistic approach, make sure to complement it with other research and communication methods.
by William Walsh | Sep 13, 2023 | 2023
Join Scott on the 27th at 11:35 am to hear how to take your ABM program to the next level or perhaps learn how to address some of the issues that are holding it back.
Grab your free pass to discover cutting-edge technologies and solutions to power exceptional customer experiences.
Register here: MarTech Conference
by scott.gillum | Aug 12, 2016 | 2016, Marketing
This summer we gave our intern, Paige DiPerte, the herculean task of helping us make sense of the constantly expanding universe of MarTech. In this post, Paige gives us a glimpse into the world of interactive content, and identifies some providers to check out. 
It’s no secret that engaging content creates more value for users and extends their loyalty as customers, and the vanilla content of whitepapers, eBooks, or infographics is not cutting it.
Even though Buzzfeed quizzes tend to be kitschy, these methods of engagement consistently are listed as “Trending” on the site. From finding out which Harry Potter character died last to learning instructions for how to operate a device, users are choosing engaging content like assessments, calculators, polls, brackets, and interactive videos. It’s not a surprise that DemandGen shared in 2016 report that 84% of B2B buyers prefer interactive content, while 83% want content to be more interactive.
This rise of active and personal learning puts users in a place to engage with content and then make informed, substantive decisions. This powerful form of absorption is beginning to shape marketing consumption into a constructivist framework.
At the same time, behind-the-scenes, marketers are donning the white coats of realists. Careful observation and analysis of the data gleaned from interactive content is a marketer’s gold mine.
Traditionally, marketing can infer a user’s “digital body language” from a footprint of website history, clicks, downloads, and emails opened to generate lead scores and segment labels. Problems, however, arise both in communicating intent through the data and in the traffic between marketing automation platforms (MAPs) and CRM tools.
The emergence of marketing apps has created a new divergence in lightweight, usable tools to deliver “microservices” for interactive content. And no, this isn’t an app like Instagram. Marketing apps are web-based and don’t require installation, can work on any device, and can be published or taken down at any time without the constraints of AppStore.
Not only do these marketing apps implicitly engage users, breed more enthusiasm, and feed users more memorable information, but they also supply brands with the very data that allows them to know their customers on a more personal level. If you score wrong on a quiz, it tells marketing what you don’t know. If you calculate your ROI, you are providing sales with the metrics of your business.
The stars of interactive content understand that it’s not all about the data, though. Vendors like Ion Interactive and Ceros allow marketers to create tools without any programming background. This eliminates cookie-cutter polls and quizzes, allowing them to customize their tools directly for their customers that they know and understand best.
Right now this means that active learning is intertwining with the data-based realism to deliver leads in more interactive ways. So what’s your excuse for not using them?
Paige DiPrete is a rising junior at Georgetown University studying Global Business and Portuguese. As an account service intern at gyro in Washington, D.C., she manages agency-client communication and researches MarTech insights.
