We’ve all been there - a piece of new technology that promised to bring in more leads, at a cheaper cost, with an increased deal size, all whilst reducing man-hours. But with the average marketing team now using 75 different apps, on reflection much of our Marketing Tech Stack is susceptible to overbuying, underutilization, never being integrated into wider processes, and never delivering the promised ROI.

In the UK today is Guy Fawkes Night - across the country bonfires are lit to remember the gunpowder plot against Parliament. As marketing leaders we need to use November to set fire to our redundant marketing tech stack.

Low Hanging Fruit - Delegate TODAY

1 - Check your MarTech spend

In most organisations, the greatest scrutiny and visibility is on the “big ticket” spend - typically the multi-year contracted tools. These were procured in tough and detailed negotiation and now that the contracts are signed…you’re not getting out of them!

Instead, this week get one of your team to check the “shadow” purchases within your team. There are normally two places to look: individual licenses charged against company credit cards and individual employee expense claims.

Most CMOs are amazed about the amount they are spending on shadow tech purchases. Finance teams often don’t break “informal procurement” down into helpful categories (and often department budgets just list them as “employee expenses”). But employee expense accounts and corporate credit cards are littered with unused ChatGPT, LinkedIn Premium and Adobe Creative Cloud licences. Collectively, it can amount to a huge dollar amount.

The quickest way to clean it up? 

1. Report your corporate cards as stolen and just let the payments bounce. Only bother to update billing details on those services that are genuinely in use.

2. Don’t honour employee expenses for software tools.

2 - Audit your seats

A study by Productiv found that on average, only 47% of SaaS seat licenses had any usage within a 90-day period in 2023 (caveat: their full article explains why that might be a bit of a bloated figure).

The brutal, surefire, way to cut seat bloat is to task one of your team to:

1. Rank all MarTech that you are billed/licensed by seat, with the highest annual per seat cost first.

2. Check the audit log for each platform, to see when each user last logged into that platform.

3. If it was more than 40 days ago, deactivate their access.

4. If after 90 days no one has complained...delete their accounts.

Strategic Thinking - Schedule time THIS MONTH

With over 14,000 MarTech applications there is a dedicated tool that will claim to solve just about any problem imaginable. However, too often our teams are guilty of purchasing “the next great thing”, without thinking about the strategy.

For our tech stacks to work well, we need to ensure our teams are Strategy First in their thinking. The principle of "strategy before tactics" is crucial for achieving long-term success and effective results.

Jumping straight into tactics (like purchasing tech) without a solid strategy inevitably leads to:

• Disjointed efforts - marketing activities lack coherence and focus.

• Ineffective resource allocation - time and money may be wasted on tactics that don't contribute to overall goals.

• Difficulty in measuring success: without clear objectives, it's challenging to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

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