Late last year we developed our top predictions for 2020. What resulted was a thoughtful list of 10 predictions that will either come true or not. As you can imagine, a pandemic was not on this list. Neither was the chaos it would cause in every facet of life, including the world of MarTech.
The teams we support are comprised of strong, smart, creative and ambitious marketers. But even those who were in the best of positions were shaken by the sudden transition to working from home while juggling childcare duties, and coping with a potential furlough or layoffs.
Somewhere as we approached our ‘new normal’, business leaders across almost all of our client’s organizations tightened their purse strings and implemented new, more stringent procurement processes, and took a hard look at existing expenses in order to brace for uncertainty. What resulted was a ‘right sizing’ of everything, from staff to contractors to technology.
Our stress from COVID-19 combined with the stress of having to do more with less wasn’t easy (to say the least). But it resulted in tighter expense management, fewer resources, and less technology. That all sounds ominous, but these leaner teams are still doing amazing work and getting results. It put a sharp focus on what contributes to growth while everything else fell by the wayside.
For marketing teams, the question was, ‘Does this technology do the job you need it to do?’ And for the lucky few, (who must have had a crystal ball) their tech stack remained the same. For most, it was a shift of some sort from cutting fringe technologies, acquiring new tech (think virtual events) to getting more out of their core technologies.
Consequently, one of our predictions did end up coming true, ‘The honeymoon is over, marketers need to show ROI – marketers must know and show their impact on the organization’s bottom line.’ If you can’t prove your revenue contribution, your budget will likely be reduced. You’ll spend precious time defending your team and potentially have a technology that you’ve invested a lot of effort into, removed from your stack. I know how painful that is, so remember to build impact into every report provided to management.
We wanted to explore just how this was playing out IRL so we conducted a survey to see. If you want to know how you stack up to your peers, take a peek. The results might confirm you’re in the same boat, or they may surprise you. In any case, feel free to reach out to me for a geek out session on anything MarTech stack related or even just a shoulder to cry on. I’m here and I’m with you on this crazy journey.
