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Why do B2B marketers spend so much on tools?
Tools, more tools, always more tools. This is the slogan that seems to have been driving marketers in recent years, with an unprecedented appetite for MarTech solutions. At the root of this technological over-consumption are frictions and unease. Let’s take a look…
The exuberant figures of the MarTech market
Accelerating or automating the execution of certain tasks, streamlining decision-making by limiting reliance on intuition, improving customer knowledge… MarTech tools have quite simply revolutionised marketing practices since the mid-2010s.
Today, almost a third of marketing budgets are devoted to the marketing technology stack, fuelling a market that regularly breaks its own records.
- According to an Emergen Research study, the MarTech market is currently worth more than $245 billion;
- Its average annual growth rate is estimated at 44.4% between 2021 and 2030. In short, the market doubles in size every 27 months.
This unqualified performance can be explained by a number of variables:
- Decision-makers are becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities presented by a good marketing technology stack;
- After the digital transformation, decision-makers now have to turn the corner and rationalise their decision-making. According to Gartner, 65% of B2B companies are expected to complete their transition from an intuition-based decision-making model to a fully data-driven process by 2026;
- The emergence of a B2B buyer who demands a fluid, personalised experience, just like the B2C consumer;
- The branding power of the major MarTech players and the impressive dynamism of their R&D departments;
- The absence of a coherent, formalised and unified corporate strategy for technological investment, led to an archaic proliferation of tools;
- The ‘discomfort’ of marketing in calculating ROI. Let’s expand on this point.
MarTech: “Compulsive” investment to overcome the problem of marketing measurement?
Despite the health crisis, which has led to budget cuts and even the freezing of certain investment projects, over 66% of B2B marketers have continued to invest in their technology stack in 2022 (Dun & Bradstreet).
As a result, 8 out of 10 companies use more than 5 “structuring” MarTech tools, and 30% use between 11 and 20 “major” MarTech tools. On average, B2B marketers use 7 MarTech tools every week, compared with 3 in 2018. In contrast, only 2% of B2B marketers in the Tech and SaaS sectors plan to reduce their technology stack in the medium term. This technological over-consumption raises questions. More than a desire to “keep up with the times”, it reflects friction and dysfunction on the marketing side. Here’s a summary…
1- Over-consumption fuelled by trial and error
According to the MarTech media’s “Replacement Survey”, 67% of marketers change at least one “core” marketing tool each year, with the most common change being a change of supplier.
This impressive turnover mainly affects marketing automation tools (24%), emailing platforms (23%), business intelligence tools (19%), data solutions (17%), CMS (17%), SEO tools (16%) and virtual event and webinar management solutions (16%).
Decision-makers explain this trial and error by looking for better functionality (51%), a more attractive price (23%) and better integration with in-house tools (19%).
2- The Chinese puzzle of calculating the ROI of marketing campaigns
According to a study by 93x and Finite, more than half of B2B marketers in the Tech and SaaS sectors admit that they are unable to measure the impact of their actions on the revenue generated by the company, and only 8% say they are able to measure ROI accurately.
This friction in marketing attribution is undoubtedly the main driver of the MarTech market, insofar as marketers seem to be responding to this malaise by multiplying tools rather than taking structural action.
The difficulty of marketing measurement in B2B can be explained by several variables.
- The relatively short tenure of CMOs, with organisations often turned upside down with each turnover;
- The lack of integration of the tools used in the company, with disparate data and breaks in the marketing attribution chain;
- The slowness and length of the sales cycle in B2B. The buying process can take several months or even years;
- The absence of a professional in charge of marketing operations.
3- Marketing budgets to rise again in 2022
In a year of recovery, companies have allocated more funds to marketing and sales. According to a Mention x Livestorm study, 68% of B2B marketers have seen their budgets increase by an average of 35% between 2021 and 2022. This increase seems to be benefiting MarTech spending to the detriment of recruitment, training and data unification.