Growth in MarTech Budgets & Adoptions — Carlos Doughty // MarTech Alliance

Quotes

• “I think MarTech's budget is gonna increase. It might take maybe the second half of the year or maybe a few months’ in but I do think it will increase. There’s quite a few signals that point in that direction. The first is, we’ve got digital transformation and acceleration happening around us. There’s plenty of signs for things to move quickly.” - Carlos “We also looked at another signal in terms of investment in space and positions. One very interesting report from Lumar showed that there is a 183% increase for the MarTech companies they are tracking from January to December, so share prices are booming right to that level.” - Carlos “I agree with you but I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. There are companies like Zoom and I think of what’s happening regarding the pandemic, there are two schools of thought. One is we’re all forced to use these tools and technologies because we can’t be together in person. Everybody has to be on Zoom to have their meetings. When the world gets back to normal, we’re gonna change our behaviors and revert to what we used to do.” - Ben “The other school of thought is, ‘okay, we’ve made this transition to use these technologies, and we’re gonna continue to use them even though we have the ability to go back in the future.” - Ben “I think I’ll throw a third one which I think is the most realistic, we’re gonna implement all these technologies, we’re gonna get used to it, the world will go back to normal at some point when we’re all vaccinated and no one’s getting rid of their Zoom account because even if they use it less, they’re gonna see it as a necessity.” - Ben “The speed of the project, the project that maybe were taking years to happen, we have seen that we can move with speed. That we can get things done when we need to and that has come because we didn’t have a choice but I think we’re gonna continue with that.” - Carlos “On the other side, I think of things like usage of data and marketing automation tools. After the pandemic is done, I don’t think people are gonna turn off the marketing automations that they’ve set up. I think all of those tools and investment in that space is going to continue.” - Ben “There are 49 categories. Budgets can run across those 49 and something can go down and something you could pick up afterwards and that could be innovation for one space or another. Right here, right now I would say that there’s quite a few that are winning.” - Carlos “There’s been a massive, massive increase in people having to invest in social listening to really understand my customer, understand sentiment and changing consumer habits. Now, I’m being a little flippant with that because behaviorally we don’t change that quickly, arguable you’re not gonna learn something that’s so transformative.” - Carlos “I want to ask a question if this is gonna be a good year for the MarTech space. Like, what does that come at the detriment of? I think of how the CMOs of the world are allocating their budget, you could break it into three groups: people, media, and technology. So if the technology costs are going up, and they’re spending more time adopting these technologies, does that mean there’s going to be less people working in marketing? Are we gonna automate the jobs away? Do you agree with the segmentation of people, technology, and media? If that’s the case what do you think are the impacts with the other two segments of that triangle?” - Ben  “Sadly, we will continue to assume that tech will have it all. The impact and domino effect is that the marketing operations are gonna lean heavier on this environment. I don’t think there has ever been a right investment for the training of the individuals and I do think there often is, on technology. Ironically, it’s the thing that stops the technology from doing what it should. It’s not having the right people behind the wheel so utilization is nowhere near what it could be.” - Carlos “I do think that there is going to be a people shift in terms of who is working in marketing. It’s always been heading to be more data-driven and more technological. People who have the ability to add and code are gonna be more important for marketers, and I do think that the creatives are the thing that we gonna see cutbacks on while media budgets are gonna increase this year because we’re starting to see the P&G’s on the world bring back their media budget to Facebook.” - Ben“I do think there’s gonna be a re-evaluation at some point, of how much media do we need now that we are more efficient and now that we have marketing automation and do we have the right mix of people that operate these complex platforms we’ve used.” - Ben