Strongly agree with trend #4 on marketing middleware. There’s currently a real trade-off between buying the best software for each marketing use case and going with a single vendor.

A time & energy waster when different parts of an organisation want different vendor stacks.

Scott, always great to read your articles and comments (as in the ones to Tyler an Blair) – thanks. RE: HP: Couldn’t agree with you more about their foot in the door and the relaunching of all the solutions that Autonomy and Aurasma have to offer the Marketer of today ….and tomorrow … Attribution is the one word that came to mind regarding the the future of marketing and what’s ahead in 2015 (glad to see you brought into the discussions).

I thought this was a very solid post (which is to be expected) and I’d suggest there’s another angle to the battlefield, which is customer experience. Gartner has some great insights on this (89% of competitive battles will be around it) http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/gartner-surveys-confirm-customer-experience-new-battlefield/

So, the question will be which of the technologies you discuss are best positioned to facilitate the delivery of experience across the enterprise in a managed and optimized delivery way. I’m biased, of course (disclosure: I’m VP/mktg @sprinklr) but it’s got to happen.

Brian, above, really nails another key point…all of this stuff is great, but if there isn’t leadership around changing culture so that it is TRULY customer centric (not process-centric and not merely lip service), then all the investment in the world won’t really make a huge difference. It’ll help, but it won’t be transformative.

Very insightful as always.

I particularly agree on points #4 and #5 and I believe they are definitely related: higher adoption of marketing middleware will help blur the line between software and services vendors. I think there will be acquisition movements going on but definitely compensated by a bunch a new entrants.

All in all, a very dynamic environment which is good to be part of.

Great article. I had a similar thought a month or so ago and I posted this on LinkedIn titled “Why Google will buy Marketo” – although I really could have titled it “Why Google or Microsoft should or will buy Marketo, HubSpot or someone like them….” 2015 should be interesting!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141013004823-577129-why-google-will-buy-marketo?trk=prof-post

Microsoft have already made acquisitions in the marketing technology space – they acquired Marketing Pilot in Oct 2012 (https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2012/10/17/microsoft-dynamics-crm-steps-forward-in-the-marketing-automation-space.aspx) and released it under the Microsoft brand as “Microsoft Dynamics Marketing in June this year. They acquired Netbreeze (https://www.netbreeze.ch/) in March 2013 and have re-released this as Microsoft Social Listening and have recently acquired Capptain (http://www.capptain.com/). So a lot of acquisition already and probably more to come…

Thanks, Tyler. I appreciate both your kind introduction and your points of contention. 🙂

I agree that the points you raise are part of the equation too. The reality is that “marketing” and “marketing technology” are in a very fluid state right now, much more shades of gray than black-and-white statements do justice to. My not-quite-predictions above certainly suffer from oversimplification. But I’d humbly suggest that your counterpoints, while true in many ways, are also subject to considerable nuance.

Yes, SMBs will have an easier marketing management environment than enterprises — they always have. Marketing software is just the latest incarnation of that, although I will state that in the digital world, I believe SMBs have some real structural advantages thanks to their nimble size.

Still, there are a lot of cases where a little bit of tech savviness goes a long way in helping an SMB choose the right software, apply it in the right way, and strategically take advantage of opportunities to differentiate themselves as new consumer technologies and preferences emerge. Definitely doesn’t mean that every business needs a dedicated marketing technologist (they don’t) or that everyone who wears a marketing technologist hat, often in addition to other hats, needs to be a high-powered software engineer (they don’t). But I do believe that thinking of customer experience through the lens of technical capabilities is going to be a respectable part of marketing’s DNA for many years to come.

The ROI of marketing software is certainly a fair thing to question. My friend Louis Gudema does a great job of arguing that point. However, without defending it in absolute terms, I’d just ask this: have marketing software investments given better relative ROI than previous sinks of marketing money such as mass market advertising? There have been some pretty disastrous, multi-million dollar Superbowl ad campaigns after all. Marketing didn’t need technology as an excuse to make expensive bad decisions in the past.

I think it’s important to note, however, that a lot of marketing technology is focused on measurable performance. It’s far from perfect. Attribution is a hard problem. But I think the intention to hold marketing to ROI on its choices — in technology, in media, in creative — is a positive shift in management and culture that marketing technology catalyzed.

And, yes, I agree that marketing operations has traditionally been quite removed from the creative and customer experience aspects of marketing. That’s not good. But I believe that more marketers are realizing that and that the potential exists to change the way we structure and manage the “capabilities” behind brilliant marketing. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But most things worth doing are 🙂

Anyway, thanks for adding to this conversation — really good points to think about!

That’s an excellent point, Brian. The culture is the most important part of the equation, and by far, the most difficult to change.

But, I’m a bit of an optimist that such change is possible, if those companies decide they want it. The interview I did in the previous post with Rishi Dave of Dun and Bradstreet is an inspiring case to me. But I have no doubt that it was a major challenge (and more to their credit for tackling it).

This was a great feel good read for marketing tech/ops folks campaigning for more prestige in their organization. However in all the cheerleading, I believe your ignoring a few key risks and realities that marketing technology/operations workers face.

1. Individual marketing software is becoming more and more user friendly in terms of UI and basic implementation for many SMBs. Marketing technologists may only be needed in the enterprise where implementation and maintenance is overwhelming for those without a strong IT background.

2. Marketing software continues to be a huge staffing and infrastructure expense with a somewhat shaky ROI to the organization. In other words, many decision makers see it as a super expensive way to realize that they wasted their money, putting theirs and other’s jobs in jeopardy.

3. Marketing operations is consumer facing in a way, but it is not really marketing, rather will continue to mostly be the facilitation and maintenance of marketing. Most marketing ops people do not have creative latitude and are instead responsible for the implementation of others’ ideas including creatives, analysts, or media planners.

Sure, these are pretty vague claims that are hard to *prove*, but in my opinion, they represent how many people not directly responsible for marketing tech view the role.