Today, there are more than 7,000 sales and marketing technology applications in the marketplace!

Marketing technology?? building the stack, fighting complacency

Selling in B2B markets becomes more challenging every year. B2B prospects are more connected and distracted than ever before, while B2B marketers are largely underprepared for the velocity of change in how new customers are found, converted and sold.

Competition is largely about speed, and a lot of B2B marketers struggle to keep up. Your competition is constantly searching to gain an edge in marketing efficiency and performance which, today, means marketing technology.

Technology landscape is flooded

In the meantime, venture funding, acquisitions and IPOs continue to help grow the sales and marketing technology landscape. The market is now flooded with thousands of products and platforms. And marketers must now be able to spearhead the evaluation, selection, on-boarding and management of technology solutions.

The 4 building blocks of marketing technology

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Marketers must use the same CRM system as sales to manage one-to-one relationships with leads, prospects, customers, employees, partners, media and other priority audiences.

4. Email

Email is still the most successful tactic in B2B marketing. As spam avoidance software becomes more sophisticated, marketers must be always fine tuning their platform for optimal results.

Overcoming the challenges

So what are the common marketing technology challenges marketers must overcome?

Rapid pace of change

The rate of change is accelerating, and shows no signs of slowing. High-performing companies constantly adapt as new technologies and opportunities emerge. This agile approach requires someone to own marketing technology. For large enterprises, that position is likely a chief marketing technologist or someone with a similar title, while for small-to-midsize businesses the responsibilities may fall to the most tech-savvy marketer or possibly an outside consultant.

For help navigating the matrix of choices, check out business software review sites?G2 Crowd?and?Trust Radius.

Lack of urgency

As sales and marketing technology continue its advance, more and more companies will be left unable to compete. Why??

A lack of urgency in selecting and using platforms is prevalent, especially in businesses with less than $100 million in revenue. People tend to ignore what they don’t understand.?

As our sales and marketing tools inevitably move closer to artificial intelligence and machine learning, the urgency to understand technology has never been greater.

Integration

Technology startups are producing a steady stream of products that solve niche marketing challenges. As mentioned earlier, established marketing technology platforms are making it easier to integrate these niche applications.

With a proliferation of open APIs and app marketplaces, marketers can now add an infinite variety of capabilities to their sales and marketing technology stack. A good example is?Zapier,?which lets marketing technology users create SaaS integrations in minutes. This eliminates the need to write code or create APIs.

B2B winners will have a sense of urgency

As many B2B companies and professionals struggle with this highly dynamic technology landscape, the winners will be those who retain a sense of urgency about digital transformation. They will choose applications wisely, focusing on scalability and vendors’ product roadmaps. As new solutions and opportunities emerge, they can quickly understand and embrace the right opportunities for their situation.