As per research by Gartner, marketing technology is representing 26% of marketing budgets. However, still, brands are utilizing just 58% of the capabilities of their marketing technology stacks.
How brands are getting engaged with their potential customers and their devices is transforming the entire customer journey. It also impacts how marketers usually think about their investments regarding martech.
According to Dawn Morris (Webster Bank’s CMO), it is highly helpful to ensure that we are making smart investments, also getting a good return on investment, and are on the route to drive value via our digital transformations.
Overall, to make the most out of marketing technology, we all must understand the top technology trends for the present.
Within the last five years, there have been several emerging technology solutions for marketing. In 2015, there were about 2000 marketing technology solutions only. However, in 2020, we were having more than 8,000 solutions and still counting. With so many solutions and trends available at every corner, it can be overwhelming to find a suitable option.
However, we have made a thorough research on marketing technology and emerging trends in regard to martech to help you manage your tech marketing campaigns in the best possible way. These trends will help you to achieve alignment between customer experience, marketing technology, and strategy.
7 Technology Trends for Tech Marketers
So, here we go with our top 7 technology trends that tech marketer must consider in 2021:
1. Integration of the Martech stack.
Most of the marketers at the present moment are having the essentials of marketing technology with them. Some of the common solutions have been brought to marketers over the last few years. These common solutions are including:
- CRM
- Marketing automation
- Webinar software
- Email marketing
- Conversion software
- Advertising planning solutions
- Chatbots
- Content optimizations
- SEO tools
- Dashboarding
Even though all of these tools are still living but apart from each other, however, to bring the best results with these tools is essential.
Therefore, this year, marketers will integrate max of these solutions into one well-oiled machine. Even many vendors have started offering integration and ecosystem help, both through third-party systems and native integrations. Companies such as Philips already have their stack of martech ready.
2. Full-cycle reporting focused on measuring ROI
Along with the martech integrations, the trend of full-cycle reporting is also up. Every marketer at present knows that there is almost nothing that can’t be measured online. To every marketer, a huge data pile is available. So, with integrated systems, the life of marketers will be easier with marketing ROI reporting.
Even more, with these integration systems, things such as revenue attribution, funnel reporting, as well as revenue reporting will easily be possible. Also, real-time dashboards can be helpful here. However, some solutions can even offer integrated reporting as well.
3. Be prepared for the cookie abandonment.
At the beginning of 2020, Google announced its plan of phasing out the third-party cookies support in chrome by the year 2022. Instead of these third-party cookies support, Google is planning out to institute a new technical solutions’ set for multiple things these cookies are being used for.
To understand this, remember Google has proposed new technologies that can be less annoying and invasive as compared to tracking cookies. So, 2021 is definitely a year for marketers to be prepared for that as well.
4. Use of videos for marketing and sales
One of the best things about the current pandemic is that the acceptance of video calls has been grown tremendously. Rather than flying out to the potential prospects or having a fixed 1-hr meeting, marketing personnel can now easily reach their potential prospects via video calls.
Due to this, we can see higher adoption of video content usage by marketing and sales professionals. However, in 2021 we are going to see a surge in this trend and its acceptance.
5. Merge of Sales and marketing automation
With the martech stack’s integration, the sales automation stack is also going to be taken into account.
Here marketing is using the tools or platforms for marketing automation such as Act on, HubSpot, Marketo, and more. It seems like sales people will also prefer using tools such as seismic and Outreach. It is mainly because the time of marketing and sales living on separate islands has gone. Therefore, in the latest marketing technology trends, both marketing and sales automation tools will be integrated to deliver the best customer experience and right customer journey in a more effective way.
6. Mobile-first is the core of omnichannel campaigns
In March 2021, Google Mobile-first indexing’s final stage came into effect. Desktop crawlers might stop completely. Therefore, it is high time for webmasters to see whether they have prepared well for mobile crawling.
The surprising news here is that the desktop-only websites are going to be out of the index completely. So, make sure to be well-prepared accordingly.
7. No-code: get things done without code.
Well, this is one of the nicest technology trends for marketers. It is because marketers usually are more data-driven and creative rather than being into coding. So, the martech integration trend will come out without coding. Due to this, marketers will be able to use more tools with ease.
Final Thoughts
The marketing budget is now being dedicated to marketing technology as companies are looking for the best ways to use martech integration into their businesses. Various successful brands are now all set to align their investments for marketing technology to achieve their business goals as well as to balance the use of their external services and internal talent to stay competitive in their respective industries.
However, if you are also planning to invest more in marketing technology, then make sure to prepare your business and its resources to adopt the above-mentioned trends as soon as possible. It is because this is highly important to stay ahead of your competitors.
With effective content marketing and demand generation solutions, your company can be engaging existing and new prospects now and in the future. Contact us today.
