What is marketecture? The marketecture revolution

What is marketecture, and why does it matter so much? In seven years, the landscape for marketing technology vendors increased by over 4,500% to over 7,000 vendors. It’s likely safe to say that marketing budgets haven’t risen proportionately, right?

Martech isn’t the only thing that’s changed drastically over the years – customers have, too. They’ve seen the choice of two or three engagement channels to choose-your-own-adventure in less than 15 years. Who to buy from, how to buy it, where, and when to do their research: all questions they answer for themselves.

And, with the drop of a hat, an unhappy customer can spread negative sentiment faster than you can say, ‘Oh no.’ What does that mean for marketers? It means they need to be ready to react. Quickly, contextually, and in-the-moment.

With customer experience becoming the new battleground for brands, do they have what’s needed to deliver on their promise?

What is marketecture?

Marketecture (or marchitecture) is a non-technical description of an organization’s products, services, systems, structures, and interactions. It is used to help a non-technical audience – customers, partners, and investors – understand an organization’s products or solutions, and how they fit into the wider ecosystem. Marketecture should be used to drive strategic positioning required to compete in a given market.

X + O data is the foundation of successful marketing orgs

Imagine seeing the doctor for the flu, but leaving with a cast on an unbroken foot. What if a dentist started drilling for a crown when all that was needed was a cleaning? Remember that new red sports coupe you’re picking up today? It’s actually a white station wagon – that runs on diesel. Would you be happy? Why should the engagements we receive on a daily basis be any different?

Brands should follow the same methodology as doctors, dentists, and auto dealerships: capture the data, turn it into insights and action, and become a source of trust. However, while various functions within businesses are customer-facing and stewards of customer-related data, successful companies are characterized by marketing departments that have the responsibility for managing this information and the customer.

Further, data-driven cultures and ease of access to data within organizations are also increasingly keys to success. Building a consolidated view of customer data pulled from both experiential and operational data is imperative to ensure brands deliver on their promise of a superior experience.

This enables marketers to gain a holistic view of customers, as they capture and better understand and anticipate their interests and intents. Building this central view can be a challenge for those who have not yet adopted a fundamental concept: martech.

What is marketecture culture?

So what is marketecture? It seems like a trivial concept, but it allows brands to select the best-in-breed solutions needed to fulfill and deliver on their internal stakeholders’ and customers’ expectations. You start by building a technology blueprint for success that you can extend over time as the landscape changes.

Additionally, spending on marketecture has increased exponentially, with CMO’s allocating 29% of their budgets to drive technology selections. Driving results, however, requires marketing and IT to be on the same page to develop deeper collaboration bonds.

4 ways IT and marketing can collaborate

So how can silos be broken in order to benefit the entire org?

1. Let marketing take control of customer data. Empower them. Even more importantly, trust them. A great starting point for businesses is to assess where they sit in terms of customer data maturity, and to take a view of ‘what good looks like’ for their organization.

Once the leaders within a business grasp the customer data imperative and start to understand the nature of the barriers to success, they can start to address the issues and create a roadmap for success.

2. Ensure that marketing technology platforms are integrated. Marketers must lobby hard internally for investment in unified technology platforms, so that marketing technology is as fully integrated as possible with sales, commerce, and service-related platforms. Without cohesion, the investment made into marketing technology could end up being no more than an email platform.

3. Push data in real time. Don’t wait. Leverage the information customers are willing to give you across the enterprise to react contextually, and more importantly, in time. This provides brands the chance to further deepen customer bonds by leveraging techniques like progressive profiling. If you build it, they will come.

4. Focus on incremental improvements. Rome wasn’t built in a day. The key to success is mapping customer journeys and understanding what information is needed at a given moment in order to improve the customer experience. Think about small, incremental improvements where harnessing the right data, at the right point, in the customer journey can provide real utility and make a difference.

The field of play has changed. Marketers can no longer shout – they must listen and respond as needed. And to do so, they must be empowered to make decisions.

Without the information and technology they need at their fingertips, a customer is no more than a needle in a haystack that you may never find.