Report: More marketers are becoming early adopters of marketing tech, although half can’t keep up with the changes

More than twice as many marketers say their companies are marketing tech innovators or early adopters, compared to a year ago. But 52 percent say they can’t keep up with the changes in marketing tech.

This picture of increasingly adventurous but overwhelmed marketers — found in Walker Sands Communications’ “State of Marketing Technology 2017,” out today — points to a greater acceptance of marketing tech by digital marketers, even as the space continues to evolve.

The report is co-sponsored by ChiefMarTech.com (full disclosure: Chief Martec’s Scott Brinker is a Third Door Media author and conference chair of our MarTech conferences). Walker Sands’ Account Director Sarah Hale told me that her company expects this report, her company’s second annual, to be released every year.

Compared to last year’s report, the current picture shows marketers increasingly comfortable with martech. For instance, 69 percent of marketers now say that the tools help them do their jobs better, compared to 58 percent last year.

But even as marketers are getting into the swing of things, the number of martech solutions continues to increase. Brinker, most notably, has included nearly 4,000 solutions in his annual Landscape.

From the Walker Sands report

The biggest surprise of this report, Hale told me, is that her agency expected more companies would deal with this huge population of choices by choosing a single vendor, like an Adobe or Oracle marketing cloud.

Instead, she said, only 20 percent of smaller companies (under a hundred employees) use single vendor solutions, while 23 percent of mid-size companies (100–999) and 18 percent of large companies (1000+) do.

Twenty-two percent of the smaller companies emphasize integrated best-of-breed architecture — that is, mixing and matching the best solutions in each category. Thirty-two percent of mid-sized companies also chose best-of-breed, as did the same percentage of large ones.

From the Walker Sands report

Another big increase compared to a year ago: 24 percent say their company “invests the right amount in marketing technology,” compared to only nine percent last year. And the percentage that now says budget is the biggest obstacle to martech adoption has decreased from last year’s, 69 percent to 50 percent

The report was based on an online survey of 335 marketers in different companies who were reached through an outside survey vendor.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.