As the technology solutions for every marketing function are multiplying, it is creating a challenging situation for marketers to find the right tool from a list of thousands. The digitized version of marketing strategy involves many procedures such as customer relationship management, project management, artificial intelligence incorporation, developing personalized content, social media monitoring, and analyzing marketing metrics. Like several other industries, the marketing industry is overflowing with technological innovation, and it is hard to cope with marketers.
With the growing amount of people, data, and all that security and data privacy concerns, marketers have more than one reason to be worried. The new marketing technology, though very helpful in several ways, can get complicated. And managing all by your in-house marketing team can be challenging. In this scenario, marketers often incline towards outsourcing their work to marketing tech vendors to decrease the marketing team’s manual burden.
While marketing tech vendors can provide competitive advantages, any wrong decision while selecting a new marketing technology vendor can lead to a huge loss to the entire organization. Remember that your marketing team needs a partner that can provide the services they need without inhibiting team effectiveness.
Before selecting a vendor, marketers need to analyze the marketing objective and if the new marketing technology can cater to it. Marketers need to understand if the new vendor can create a scope for better ROI.
If you are unable to keep pace with the sprawling MarTech innovation and the growing number of marketing technology vendors, here are few questions that you need to ask and find answers to before investing in a new marketing technology vendor.
What’s your product roadmap and plans for future releases?
You need to know your vendor’s vision, direction, priorities, and predicted progress over time and analyze if it matches your brand’s marketing objective. You and your new marketing technology vendor should be on the same page. Moreover, with the current rate of marketing technology evolution, you also need to make sure that the vendor offers up-to-date products that will keep up with future trends.
Can the vendor address the number of clients you currently support?
A business, irrespective of its size, needs to offer accessible customer service and personal support to improve customer relationships. Therefore, be clear about the number of clients you cater to and confirm if the vendor can offer services for all your clients. You can ask specific clients who have similar requirements to you and ask them for their opinion directly.
What’s your training and onboarding process?
Maybe technology can support your marketing team, but remember that your marketing team will need to work with the vendor. Since the new marketing technology vendor will also impact your team’s work, make sure that the new strategy is easy to grasp for your marketing team. Do not decide until your marketing team is comfortable with the way the new MarTech vendor works.
What is the expected ROI in terms of revenue, savings, and increased productivity?
Every organization has a business objective which depends on their expected ROI. Therefore, select your marketing vendor keeping in mind the revenue that you want to achieve. Integrating a new marketing technology is not only a costly affair but also time-consuming. It is essential to ask the tough questions to be sure it’s worth the investment. Identify your primary marketing goals such as lead generation, revenue, and increased productivity for your team so you can be prepared to ask your vendor for relatable quantitative data.
Does the new marketing technology integrate with your existing MarTech stack?
Upgrading to new technology does not mean that you have to leave behind everything your marketing team has built over time. Instead, all your old customer data and past achievements play a huge role in making your new MarTech. Thus, it would help if you analyzed the areas that can create a bottleneck in merging your old marketing technology with the new one.
The new marketing technology provider should also understand your business’s objective and tailor digital marketing services accordingly. It should support your unique use cases efficiently, and for that, even you need to be very transparent about your business needs. To avoid challenges down the line, you need to ensure that the new marketing technology integrates smoothly with your existing MarTech stack. The new MarTech should seamlessly integrate into the core existing technologies such as marketing automation platform, CRM, and content management system. Also, is your existing technology capable of handling the promises of the new marketing technology?
Ensuring the answers to these questions can save your company from innumerable complications in the near future by evaluating the marketing vendor you are about to sign up with. When it comes to tech purchases, you need to make a potential decision as you are not only about to revolutionize your team’s way of working but also invest a fair amount of money. Thus, you need to make preparations beforehand and be sure that you purchase the right product for your needs.
