6 Lifesaving Strategies for Buying Marketing Tech

This post is full of takeaways from The Hard Corps Marketing Show, a weekly podcast I host. We crush marketing myths and take no prisoners.

Are you a savvy shopper? How about when it comes to purchasing technology?

Marketers in the US buy a lot of software. Over $30 billion dollars worth in 2018.

Another $60 billion is spent on services and a recent report from Forrester Research suggests these numbers will be growing by 27% over the next several years.

And we’re not as good at making these purchases as we think!

Just last week I was on an eye opening podcast interview with David Raab. He is a long time marketer and founder of the Customer Data Platform Institute. David smashed this myth right out of the gate.

“It’s not easy and it’s not what they were trained for… and so they struggle with it. They have to work and learn, realize this is a new skill I have to acquire.” - David Raab

If you don’t approach purchasing as a skill to master, you run the risk of getting tossed around like a rowboat in a monsoon. To be more accurate, take that image, add lots of sharks to the water and a terrible sunburn.

In real life, the challenges often look like these:

• Pushy Sales - While not every sales rep does this, we have all experienced the high pressure sale that needs to happen now and there’s “no time” to really evaluate, or at least it feels that way.
• Flashy Demos - I once saw a demo for a marketing automation platform that blew my mind. I was ready to buy the tool and even stock in the company! Thankfully, a good friend suggested I take a closer look and found that this bacon was all sizzle with no yum!
• Shiny User Experiences - Ah, this one. Good UI design pleases the eyes and can distract you from what matters. There’s a longer story to this one! It's full of suspense and intrigue... and me making a purchasing mistake!

Pretty Bird, Pretty Bird

I remember buying software early in my career. I bought an app that was supposed to help me do a better job of bidding and tracking my AdWords campaigns. It had fancy buttons, impressive graphics, and tons of features. It looked really cool. I don't even remember how much it cost, it was that cool. One of our companies was spending over $100,000 in AdWords every month and it was all a bit of a mess. I assumed that with minimal effort I could click some of these fancy buttons and it would clean up the issues we had tracking AdWords expenditures. That, unfortunately, was not the case. The tool was just there to help clarify things and it wouldn’t know the context for the words that were written. It was just there to be a guide for me.

While I like to poke fun at my IT friends, they’ve been purchasing software for a lot longer and have worked out strategies we can learn from. Experienced marketers like David are a great source too! The good news is that not only is this a skill you can acquire but there are sound practices that will ensure you are making the right decisions.

Skilled in Acquisition

Compiled from experts, wise sages, and the bruised, here are the most important rules for successful marketing software purchasing.

Strategy First - Marketing Automation can only automate what you tell it. If you give it bad instructions, you're going to do a much better job of putting bad marketing in front of many more people than you did previously. Technology is not the cure all. It's the amplification. It's the megaphone to making sure more people get the message. Spend the time to learn about your audience and create the strategies for reaching them.

Mind the Gap - Process is a scary word for some marketers but it’s actually critical to map out the entire buyer’s journey and your messaging to them. Any software you then purchase must intentionally fit into and improve your process.

Gather Requirements - Requirements gathering tends to get reserved in the realm of software developers, IT, and sometimes Product Marketers. What exactly do you expect to get out of this tool? What am I going to do with it? See if you can find a tool that actually does what you need. One of the best ways to do this is to start by writing out scenarios of actions you want to be able to accomplish. Later, you can ask sales reps to show you these scenarios in their demos.

David brought up a great point about requirements. Some marketers will say that they don’t know what the requirements should be. So they buy the system and still don’t know the requirements. It didn’t help them discover them and now they have a tool to pay for in the meantime.

Stack Your Corner - Boxers enter the ring by themselves but have a team of pros in their corner. When making a tech purchase in marketing you can create an insane advantage by getting the input of experts you really trust. Be careful to not just take the advice of people you know that have only used one tool. I always laugh when I see debates on LinkedIn for the “best tool for X”. So many people comment about the one platform they’ve used and how it’s great or not. The only input I want to hear is from someone who has used two or more of the options.

BTW- I’m happy to be in your corner for Marketing Automation. I’ll wear your hoodie, look tough, and give you the straight shot on what’s going on. One round left- you got this champ! If the purchase is something else I haven’t used, then we’ll find you several pros who have experiences to share.

Complicated != Powerful - Complicated does not equal powerful. I once encountered this situation when starting a new position at a company who had replaced an awesome marketing automation platform for a really complicated one. The tool was years behind the industry and tantamount to torture after using one of the modern tools. I later learned the VP of Marketing & Product at the company chose the complicated (worse) tool because it had the ability to create multiple databases. None of the other tools had this, but guess what? Only one database could sync to your CRM, so there would almost never be a reason to create additional ones. Complicated doesn’t mean it’s the best. These days, with modern looking interfaces, it can indicate the opposite.

Consider the Future - The final aspect to consider when making purchases is what you might use the tool to do in a year’s time. Certainly 3 years is ideal, but even thinking about a year from now will help get you out of an immediate mindset. I have met many organizations that choose too conservatively on a tool for right now and then find themselves needing to migrate a year later to a more robust tool! 

It’s a jungle out there Marketers! But with solid strategies and the right people in your corner you’ll make the right decisions.

How about you? What have you learned from purchasing marketing technology? Anything to add to the list?