Marketing technology plays a crucial role in helping brands reach their customers with precision and scale. Marketing teams have countless tools at their disposal — data warehouses, customer data platforms (CDPs), loyalty programs, customer engagement platforms, design software, eCommerce solutions — that offer numerous capabilities that can elevate a brand’s marketing strategy. However, many businesses fall into the trap of adopting new tools and technologies without a strategic plan in place for the skills, processes, and people they’ll need to make the most out of their investments. The result? Higher costs, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities. 

Having a solid martech roadmap is critical for scaling your marketing efforts and avoiding falling into common traps that result in becoming reactionary and stagnant. Building a roadmap is more than just creating a plan for what tech you’re going to invest in — it’s a time to deeply consider your marketing goals/KPIs, your existing tech stack, your integration strategy, your budget, your resources (people, time, skillsets, etc.), and your current results. Additionally, a great martech roadmap isn’t created in a marketing vacuum — it requires alignment between marketing, engineering/IT, sales, and business leaders to truly be successful.

Here’s why not having a solid martech roadmap could be costing your business more than you realize:

Costs to Your Bottom Line:

• Inefficient use of budget: Starting with the most obvious one — tech is expensive. Non-strategic decisions on what technology you’re investing in can cost you, and spending money on redundant or underutilized tools hurts your brand’s bottom line. In addition, there are high costs associated with retrofitting systems that don’t integrate smoothly, both financially and operationally.
• Costly Partnerships: Sometimes bringing in an additional set of eyes can help you make the most of your tech investments, but choosing the wrong partners because you don’t have a plan for how you want to use your martech can drain your team and your budget. 
• Difficulties in demonstrating ROI: Demonstrating clear return on investment is crucial to securing the budget necessary to maintain your martech and your marketing team. Without a clear roadmap that outlines your marketing goals/KPIs and a plan to track them, marketing attribution is nearly impossible. Scattered data makes it hard to prove what’s working, which in turn makes it harder to prove how your marketing efforts are contributing to revenue, which can lead to reduced budget and force brands to make difficult decisions related to platforms and people.

TL;DR: Spend your money wisely on tech & partners, and make sure you have a plan to maximize and showcase return on investment.

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Costs to Your Productivity 

• Wasted time: It’s time consuming to align marketing activities across different platforms and teams. It’s even more time consuming trying to do this without a strategic plan for guidance.
• Painful processes: Without a clear plan in place, everything operates more slowly, getting bogged down in repetitive alignment meetings, development discussions, and platform management. Systems and data are siloed, making it much harder to get campaigns out the door. This results in longer time-to-market for your messaging, opening opportunities for competitors to reach your customers first.
• Personnel Problems: A clear martech roadmap will reveal what skills and people you need to master your marketing goals. If you don’t plan ahead, you may not have the right people in place to hit the ground running and/or you risk frustrating your current team with constantly changing priorities. Neglecting to consider your team in your roadmap can lead to extensive investments in upskilling your people or costly non-strategic hiring decisions.

TL;DR: Without a strategic marketing plan, aligning activities across platforms and teams wastes time and complicates processes, which can lead to longer campaign rollouts and missed opportunities. A lack of planning also can create personnel issues, from overburdening staff to costly hiring mistakes or extensive upskilling requirements.

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Costs to Your Brand & Future Growth

• FOMO - Fear of Missing Opportunities:Customers have an abundance of options, which means every interaction with your brand counts. Over or under communicating, sending irrelevant content, or failing to meet customers where they are can all hurt your brand’s perception. In addition, operating without a strategy puts you at risk of being left behind by competitors who adapt faster and more efficiently.
• Failure to Scale: It’s extremely difficult to scale or adjust your marketing efforts if you don’t have anything to refer back to. This is a slippery slope that often results in marketing teams settling into a pattern of reactivity, instead of proactively pushing their efforts forward.
• Poor Customer Experiences: Having a disjointed tech stack or inconsistent strategy leads to inconsistent customer interactions and journeys. Poor customer segmentation, ineffective targeting, lack of personalization, and more can all impact customer experiences, which in turn can affect customer loyalty and lifetime value. Potential revenue loss from not using automation to scale campaigns and improve customer experiences.

TL;DR: Not having a roadmap hurts your customer experiences today, but also makes it harder for you to prepare for future trends and new technology. Taking the time to think beyond the next 6 months and having a growth plan ensures that your brand is future-proofed or at the very least, future-prepared.

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How to Get Started on Your Martech Roadmap

Now that we have sufficiently scared you with all the costs of not having a martech roadmap, it’s time that we share our pro tips on key things you should consider as you’re creating your strategic plan.

Technology

• Take inventory of all the tools marketing uses today and how those tools connect to your larger tech stack. some text
  • Where are your pain points?
  • What is your data doing - is it siloed, what’s the speed to activate your data?
  • Where are there overlaps in functionality? Is there room or appetite for consolidation?
• How does your roadmap compare to the roadmaps of your technology vendors?some text
  • Are you prepared to take advantage of new features as they become available?
• Are your platforms integrated with each other in a way that supports your customer lifecycle?some text
  • Even point solutions should be contributing to your overall customer experience - are they? 
  • Do you have a clear view of how your customer is interacting with the outputs of your martech?
• Is your technology usable? Is it flexible enough to accommodate your use cases and the people who use it?

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People & Productivity:

• Does your brand have the right people/team/resources to support the current or future tools?
• Do you have buy-in from all of the key stakeholders (including teams outside of marketing, like engineering/IT, revenue, etc.?)some text
  • Are the teams who will be tasked with development work aware & aligned to the plan?
• Who is the owner for each roadmap initiative? Having a designated owner drives accountability.
• How are our initiatives prioritized?some text
  • How will we know what needs to be done when? What is flexible to shift around to be able to accomplish the most important goals?

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Accountability & Measurement:

• Does marketing have clear goals / KPIs?some text
  • Does the current tech stack meet marketing’s needs to hit those goals? Why or why not? What functionality, data, and/or people are missing from the equation?
• What can we learn from our current performance metrics?some text
  • What messages/channels are performing well?
  • Where should we start testing new ideas?
• Do you have quantifiable benchmarks for your roadmap goals? Make it measurable!some text
  • Do you have testing periods built into your roadmap?
• Do we have competitive research that can inform our decisions?some text
  • Are your competitors doing something different/better that you could learn from/adapt to?

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Common Pitfalls to Avoid As You Create Your Roadmap

‍Not looking far enough ahead: We know things change quickly, which can make it hard to think beyond the next 6 months. However, not looking far enough ahead means you fail to set an overall strategic direction. We encourage our clients to look at least 2 years out. Even if your plan will change significantly after the first 6 months, proactively planning ahead allows you to appropriately manage any initiatives that may pop-up and gives you a solid strategy to refer back to when you’re faced with competing priorities.

Not setting due dates: Not creating a line in the sand makes it easy to push things off…and keep doing it. Even if due dates are subject to change, setting them provides you with the accountability you need to stay on track.

Not revisiting your roadmap: Don’t just create your roadmap and then file it away. Keep it top of mind and make it a living document. Revisit it often and make adjustments as priorities and initiatives change.

‍Not strategizing outside of your current tech stack: Don’t limit your roadmap to just your existing technology. We encourage clients to dream big and think about their marketing goals beyond their current tech stack. Once you’ve set all your aspirational goals, it’s easier to tie those back to your existing tech and/or identify areas of opportunity. Stay curious — keep an eye on martech players making headway in features, functionality and new approaches. Having a strategy that extends beyond your current tech puts you in a good position to adopt new & better technologies as they develop, giving you a competitive advantage.

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TL;DR

A solid martech roadmap is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and avoiding costly pitfalls. A well-thought-out roadmap not only aligns your technology investments with your marketing goals, but it also ensures your teams, processes, and resources are optimized for success. Think of it as a strategic investment in scaling your marketing program, empowering you to shift from being reactive to being proactive with your customer engagement strategies. By planning ahead, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and continuously refining your roadmap, your brand will be better positioned to adapt to future challenges, scale efficiently, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

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