There’s so much innovation taking place in the marketing industry that keeping up with the new technology can be difficult. As we have to be aware of the latest buzz in the marketing world before everyone else, we know exactly how you feel.
When it comes to investing in everyday technology, most organisations prefer to make an informed choice, pay and be done with it.Many businesses wish they could use a similar approach to marketing technology, but if they want to enjoy a successful and profitable future they can’t expect to find a one-stop shop for every solution.
According to Forrester analyst Cory Munchbach, as quoted by CMSWire, there’s simply too much innovation happening in the field of digital marketing for any vendor – no matter what they say. Marketers should keep this in mind if they ever consider reducing their technology stack to a single platform, as it could be too constricting. Using one piece of technology as a backbone for the rest of your solutions is one idea, however.
Technology vendors are attempting to address this issue by integrating each other’s capabilities – however, when asked if this will lead to the option of a definitive all-in-one platform, experts still answer with a resounding “no”.Invest in a platform clusterSpeaking to the same publication, Ensighten CEO Josh Manion said it is more likely that organisations will be integrating platforms into a platform cluster; this way, each cluster can cover different marketing needs and provide a different set of core services, applications and API capabilities. Since it is now possible for any company to introduce new core capabilities into a digital marketing platform, customers should start to look beyond the single platform capabilities of any one vendor.
This means some vendors, particularly specialised or niche ones, are in trouble – for example start-ups that are focused entirely on social media marketing; although this may seem innovative now, it is only a matter of time before their core services are added as a core feature of cloud-based products. This may explain why, whilst there clearly isn’t one single digital marketing solution, the market is still becoming increasingly dominated by a handful of large vendors. According to Constellation Research principal analyst Peter Kim, standalone solutions might be able to innovate faster than large platforms, but that’s only a temporary advantage.Integrate. Integrate. Integrate.At the end of the day, brands still need to integrate everything they can into their operations. Social media had been growing rapidly the last few years but it has now fully developed; most client-side brands have realised this and organised their businesses accordingly. This makes the integrated social solutions of certain vendors look more appealing, Kim explained. When considering marketing technologies, organisations should try their best to make their platform future-proof.
According to Manion, this can be done by investing in an open platform that enables marketers to easily add innovative solutions and retain their data if they decide to switch vendors.