MarTech Chart: The most (and least) valuable steps for vetting marketing technology

At Target Marketing, we surveyed our readers, and with over 300 responses, put together a report on “The Marketing Technology Buying Process.”

In that research, one of the key things we asked about was what steps in the marketing technology were most valuable to our respondents:

Thinking about how you evaluate and purchase marketing technology, for each of the methods below, please choose the value you get from that method.

Respondents rated those steps on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “extremely valuable” and 1 being “not valuable at all.” (There was also a 0 option for “do not typically use.”)

Here are those steps, ranked by highest average score on down to the lowest, along with our takeaways.

Power to the marketers

One of the biggest takeaways from this chart is how the steps at the top really empower marketers to make their own decisions. The top five most valuable processes were product demos, self-driven online research, product “test drives” and extended demos, peer or community recommendations, and product testing reports/reviews/buyers guides.

Conversely, the lowest ranked steps involved asking for guidance from someone else: conducting interviews with tech experts, site visits (with vendors or product users), and recommendations from resellers and implementation partners. Assessment tools didn’t fare much better (although over 80% rated those in the 2 to 4 range, with a plurality rating them as 3, “very valuable”).

This was born out by some of the other questions in the study. For example, when asked who was involved in the marketing technology purchasing decisions, for most companies it was just marketing, the C-suite and IT (which, arguably, are the bare minimum departments required for a tech purchase). When we asked whether the purchase decision would be made by one individual, one departmental team, or multiple teams, most marketers leave it up to one individual or departmental team.

The purchase is really in the hands of the marketing department (to the extent that it’s fair to wonder if this is even too casual of an approach), which means the steps that empower them are the most valuable.

Hands-on experience is essential

Nothing helps a marketer decide to buy like a hands-on demo or, even better, an extended “test drive” or test installation. These processes earned the highest number of “extremely valuable” answers from the marketers we surveyed, and the number of marketers who reported they “do not typically use” these steps were both in the single digits.

This makes sense. Before you can decide if a technology is the right thing for your company to purchase, you want to be able to use it and see how it’s going to work in your workflow. As one respondent put it, “I cannot afford to buy a lemon. My job depends on it. I cannot afford to buy it twice or lose time that I need.”

Having said that, how many times have you investigated a tool only to find out they cannot give you the kind of demo you need to feel comfortable with the purchase? Or they insist on holding your hands while you try the product.

This is something I think marketing technology vendors need to get better at. If you want marketers to choose your product, you need to be able to show them that it’s going to work when they have it installed and are guiding the ship themselves.

Who do marketers trust?

We talked about how marketers favor self-empowerment over outside advice. But that brings up a more fundamental question: Who do marketers trust on technology?

Clearly, it’s not the vendor. Site visits with the vendors and successful clients, as well as input from tech resellers, were all very low on the list of valuable steps. But interviews with technology experts were perceived as even less valuable than those!

If you suspect some anti-vendor bias there, you’re right. As one of our respondents said, “Be sure you’re willing to put in the time and effort to perform the due diligence required, and never believe the vendor.”

But some of this also has to do with the time investment for something like a site visit. Interviewing product users did OK, as did reading vendor-provided content. Both of those are in the middle of the pack on our chart.

To me it appears that what marketers really don’t want is to go on a visit or get on the phone and get sold to — even if it is while watching a prize client prance around the tool, or by a hired gun “technologist” who’s promoting the vendor’s side of the story. Marketers are savvy to these tactics, and they don’t appreciate them.

What is trusted are independent product reviews, testing and guides (which came in 5th), as well as independent news, articles and comparisons (7th). That comes with this piece of advice from another respondent: “Do your research apart from discussions with a vendor(s), and talk with as many product users as possible.”

Conclusion

Whether you’re in the market for new technology or peddling it yourself, understand that marketers have gotten much savvier about the marketing technology buying process.

To be a successful purchaser, you need to be ready to educate yourself and put in the time to understand the tools available and what these can do for you.

To be a successful vendor, you need to be able to empower those savvy marketers so they can see for themselves that your solution rises to the top.

Related resources

 The Marketing Technology Buying Process (the complete report, available at TargetMarketingMag.com)

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