Marketing technology is the most astonishing growth sector that has surfaced in the past decade. New instruments put forth the promise of improved targeting, smarter personalization, faster content creation, and deeper analytics. Still, marketing teams in a peculiar position have found themselves. They have a lot of platforms but continue to struggle with not only executing campaigns smoothly, measuring performance inaccurately, but also getting insights in real-time. This disconnect is what many leaders now refer to as the MarTech maturity gap.

The maturity gap is not due to the lack of innovation. Most of the time, companies have more tools than they can manage. The core problem is that integration is the issue. When systems lack robust connections, even the most sophisticated tools work in isolation. Best-in-class companies are coming to the conclusion that the next competitive advantage does not lie in buying more software but rather in having existing systems collaborating as a whole.

From Tool Abundance to Operational Friction

In the present day, an average marketing stack comprises of several systems such as CRM, customer data platform, analytics, content management, ad platforms, email, social media, and many more. Each tool may perform its part well independently, but then the problems arise when they need to share the data among each other.

Leads from one system may get synced wrongly with another. Customer profiles vary according to the platform used. There are also examples such as campaign performance data being received too late or having its trustworthiness questioned. The teams pull more time out of their daily activities to do tasks such as exporting spreadsheets and adjusting dashboards rather than optimizing strategies.

Such friction in the process ends up slowing down the whole execution while at the same time creating the users’ frustration. It also covers up the value. The data is there but it is spread out all over the place. The new technology that is able to carry out the automation is available but the problem is it cannot traverse through the silos. Hence, marketing organizations look very active but at the same time, they are underpowered.

Defining MarTech Maturity

MarTech maturity is not defined by the number of tools that are in possession of a company but rather by the degree of interconnection and governance of those tools. There are certain traits that mature organizations consistently display. They have a strong data foundation, share consistent identifiers among various systems and have automated workflows across different platforms.

In these types of organizations, data is continuously moving from the customer touchpoint through insight and finally to action. A customer interaction causes the primary profile to be updated. This update will then allow for a personalized message to be sent out. Performance data will then be returned to the analytics department and it will be the basis for the next decision. The tech stack operates as a single system rather than as a collection of parts.

Organizations that are less mature usually pay attention to feature adoption. They will activate new features within separate tools but will not invest adequately in the infrastructure that links them together. Over time, this will result in the accumulation of technical debt and the fixing of the problem will be more difficult than it would have been if the problem had been addressed right from the beginning.

Unified Data Layers as the Foundation

Creating a unified data layer is one of the effective methods leading companies adopt to close the maturity gap. This layer serves as the one and only source for customer and campaign data. Rather than each tool storing and defining data in its own way, the essential entities like customers, accounts, and events are unified across all.

This method increases the quality of data and the level of trust in it. The teams will be more confident in acting on the insights because they are aware that the figures are the same across the dashboards. It also facilitates the scaling process. The new tools can get connected to the prevailing data layer without the formation of new silos.

Integration as a Sustainable Advantage

The gap in MarTech maturity is getting bigger. It is possible that those investing heavily in tools only may still be left behind if they do not adopt the whole new approach of integration. The layered approach to integration will give an organization the competitive advantage that their existing stack is now considered an asset. In the current market connection is the factor that distinguishes the leaders from the rest not the novelty.