Martech stacks grow but golden nuggets prove elusive

With budget cuts and talent shortages starting to bite, marketers are increasingly turning to martech to do the heavy lifting but the vast majority still use analytics in an “overly passive” way and fail to unearth the “golden nuggets” about customer behaviour.

That is according to “The State of Marketing Analytics Technology 2022” report from Mediahawk, which quizzed marketing leaders across a raft of industries, including retail, automotive, agencies, IT, education, manufacturing, trade, professional services, and healthcare.

On their future goals, marketers are united. Driving traffic to their websites is a clear priority (86%) with revenue growth and lead generation following closely (84% and 81% respectively).

Even so, improving reporting with better use of analytics is also a priority for a sizable chunk of marketers (65%). And a further 47% count focusing on martech integrations as a key objective, too.

But recruitment is still the biggest challenge; four-fifths (79%) of those surveyed said that getting the right professionals on board is their biggest headache right now. Turbulent times have meant job losses across many sectors. And the demand for flexible working has given rise to new difficulties in attracting talent.

Beyond recruitment and economic challenges, 50% of marketers said analytics reporting is a major issue. Coupled with that, an even greater number (71%) said achieving 100% marketing attribution is their biggest challenge.

When it comes to technology, marketers spend over 25% of their budgets on their tech stack and have six marketing tools on average, with web analytics (85%), social media (75%), email marketing (67%) and digital advertising tools (67%) making up the top technologies.

With social media tools now more popular than advertising tools. Mediahawk maintains social media has become an increasingly preferred channel for marketers to target their audiences and gain data for decision making.

The overall result, however, is that tech stacks are putting a lot of data on the table, but it also highlights the ever-growing need for proper analysis and implementation of findings.

When about their reasons for using marketing analytics software, the vast majority of marketers said they predominantly use their tools to monitor campaign performance (88%).

Promisingly, 54% said they use analytics tools to improve conversion rates, while 27% are developing marketing plans using insights from their martech software.

However, just 6% said they are using their analytics tools to identify critical customer behaviour trends, such as by conducting user research.

The report states: “To become a more active analytics user, think about the questions you want to answer before you dive into your data. For example, you might want to know ‘How can we increase newsletter sign-ups?’

“With these strategic objectives in mind, you can drill into all the available data to make better informed decisions.”

Mediahawk chief executive Michael Morrell said: “Despite teams having fewer people and budgets being streamlined, martech stacks are getting bigger — as companies strive to increase conversion rates and pursue growth.

“But few marketers are unearthing the gold buried in their analytics, through tools such as call tracking. With a few deft moves, they could identify the entire customer journey in a meaningful way, spot the most critical touch-points, and flag up clear opportunities to optimise their next campaigns. Savvy marketers will be making this a priority in the next 12 months.”