58% of marketers say martech cybersecurity is the top consideration in procuring marketing software tools
I recently read an account by an executive summarizing his experience buying a marketing technology (martech) tool. He looked at several ABM platforms tools and concluded they all pretty much do the same thing in similar ways.
His decision boiled down to the salesperson. Of all the salespeople he spoke with, only one seem to genuinely care about his business and helping him solve a problem.
Such a point speaks well of a company and culture, but it underscores the sizable challenge facing both buyers of marketing tools – and the marketers tasked with promoting them. While there are 8,000-plus marketing tools on the market today, those that are competitive struggle to identify how they are different.
Yet cybersecurity is emerging as a key point of differentiation according to a new survey by Treasure Data. The company polled 427 respondents from businesses with more than 500 employees and found security was the top consideration in evaluating martech tools.
Martech cybersecurity tops the list of procurement considerations
Security was the top consideration by a wide margin too. Here’s how the numbers broke out:
- 58% said security was the top consideration in evaluating martech
- 38% said cost
- 38% said scalability, and
- 37% said integration.
Security isn’t a consideration that comes naturally to a profession that centers around promotion, but the survey shows security awareness is permeating the organization.
The findings remind me of a trend I’ve seen in other technology sectors. For example, a few years back, vendors that develop cybersecurity software and legal tech providers began to hire Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs).
Traditionally, that’s a leadership position charged with protecting a company’s infrastructure. However, the vendor community observed that title could both help them develop secure software products and security processes – because product breaches be a configuration problem. A CISO on the vendor side also plays a key role in sales enablement as they are better suited to speak to peers among customers and prospects.
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Martech: goals, pain points, barriers and benefits
The survey also had several other interesting findings that address the basics goals, pain points, barriers and benefits that prospective martech customers wrestle with.
1. What marketing hopes martech will help them improve
What do marketers aim to achieve the most? They want to acquire new customers, according to the survey. “Areas organizations would focus on improving, given the right capabilities and team” – that is what marketing teams hope the martech tools will help them achieve include:
- 55% said attracting new customers
- 36% said getting advanced insights
- 32% said identifying and cater to high-value customers
- 31% said optimizing marketing campaigns
- 29% said identifying at-risk customers and incentivize them to stay, and
- 27% said unifying customer data across systems and sources.
2. The top pain points among current martech tools
There appears to be considerable overlap among the current tools marketing departments have employed. Marketers tallied up the major pain points among marketing software tools they are currently using as follows:
- 39% said consolidating redundant technology
- 31% said rolling out new campaigns is too slow, and
- 30% said technology integration is “too hard.”
3. Organizational barriers to martech tools
Interestingly, budget was not the top barrier to procuring the right marketing tools. Among the “significant organizational barriers” to acquiring tools that will meet the marketing team’s future needs are:
- 46% said complexity in integrating the technologies
- 38% said budget
- 31% said a lack of security and privacy features, and
- 28% said too many tools to choose from
4. Expected benefits of martech.
The marketing shop expects the tools it buys to improve both efficiency and effectiveness, which is part and parcel of any technology product. The survey found, if the ideal marketing tools were in place, the following measures would improve significantly:
- 49% said overall marketing effectiveness
- 47% said time spent managing and improving data quality
- 47% said operational efficiency
- 41% said free up IT resources
- 41% said marketing spend efficiency
- 41% said time spent on integrating platforms, and
- 41% said [reduce] time spent on setting up marketing campaigns.
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The full report is an interesting and quick read. It’s freely available for download – The Best Martech Stack: How to Achieve, Optimize and Future-Proof It.
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Image credit: Unsplash and respective study
