With the astonishing growth of mar-tech and ad-tech technologies, a new set of marketing skills are required, led by a champion who spearheads, defines and drives marketing technology initiatives, strategies, governance and adoption.

While the sheer volume of available marketing technologies is overwhelming enough, the future looks even more daunting, especially when you consider the scale at which connected devices are growing. (Estimates of 1 trillion connected devices by 2030. We're at about 20 billion connected devices today, up from a mere 500 million in 2010). Yikes!

What's really scary is that at some point virtually every product we own will have a digital component to it (and inherent connection). From wearables to appliances to pets to consumables to car parts to tennis racquets -- virtually everything we have and use in our lives. More connection points means more complexity as we address our ability to listen, adjust and respond to customer interactions, across entire customer life-cycles.

BTW: As these connection points increase, consumer attention span will invariably decrease across devices and channels. Quick moments of interaction will be the norm, which means we'll need to be lightening fast in leveraging these “moments" in our marketing.

So now that dreams of your job getting easier down the road have been squashed, lets focus on who you'll need to bring in to champion the good fight and act as your company's GPS guide in navigating the marketing technology landscape, as it is now and as it will be.

Many have already adopted at least some marketing technologies. And you may have already seen the 2016 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, created by chiefmartec.com  to give us a current view of vendorland.

Here’s a summary of the marketing technologies you're likely considering:

  • Advertising and Promotional Technologies

    Mobile Marketing
    SEO/SEM
    Native Advertising
    Video
    Print
    PR
    Paid, Earned Owned

  • Content and Experience Technologies

    Mobile Apps
    Interactive
    Optimization/Personalization
    DAM (Digital Asset Management) and MRM (Marketing Resource Management)
    Marketing Automation Platforms
    CMS

  • Social Platforms

    Listening
    Campaign
    Community
    Advocates/Raving Fans

  • Commerce and Sales Platforms

    Proximity
    Channel/Partner
    Sales Enablement
    Affiliate Marketing
    eCommerce
    CRM

  • Data Platforms

    Data Enrichment
    Data Standardization
    Data Science
    Data Integrations
    SaaS
    PaaS
    DMP

  • Analytics Platforms

    ROI Attribution
    Mobile
    Data Visualization
    Predictive BI

The Marketing Technology Leader will need the following skillets to be successful in guiding your technology transformation:

Marketing Technology Strategist: Defines the internal marketing technology ecosystems required to support continuous and cohesive marketing conversations across your customer’s current and future lifecycle experiences.

Customer Experience Advocate: Many strategic marketing technology initiatives fail because they were never aligned to the expectations and benefits of customers.  Some were driven by shiny new capabilities announced by technology vendors, or by strategic decisioning anchored to flawed processes. So this person will need to act as the Voice of the Customer, providing ongoing confirmation that systems and technologies are meeting customer expectations and improving customer experiences.

Business Requirements Leader: Defines and documents business requirements and expected outcomes, connecting these to a list of applicable technologies vetted through a vendor and solution internal approval process, in order to ultimately support buy vs. build decisioning.

Data Wrangler: Act as liaison with other internal/external data platform owners in defining which siloed data sources should be integrated and how.

Integration Juggler: Manages and/or supports the marketing technology applications integration projects, including the integration of SaaS, PaaS, internal/external systems, liaising with IT staff in managing and directing resources and capabilities.
Data Analyst: Visualizes data and uncovers the stories they tell, answering questions such as whether to pivot or persevere.

Change Management Evangelist: Manages and advocates the transformational change management and global adoption of the marketing tech stack.

Protector of the Realm: Manages internal training and protection of systems, connections and process. Identifies opportunities for automation and scalable improvements.

Opportunist: Looks ahead and identifies emerging technology and CX opportunities that aren’t quite obvious yet.

So, can you find someone who can wear all these hats? Maybe. More likely you'll find someone who can compliment your existing team’s strengths and support their weaknesses.

Of course the other option is to outsource some or all of this to those in the business of delivering these services.

Either way, the sooner you get started the sooner you'll be delighting your customers with indispensable value, leading to increased revenues, which will lead to increased budget to purchase the next set of marketing technologies.

 Steve Kellogg
Digital Marketing Strategist and Technologist