Most organisations approach martech selection as a procurement problem: find the tool with the best features at the best price, implement it, and hope the results follow. The results rarely follow - not because the tool is wrong, but because the underlying process it was supposed to automate was never designed properly, the team using it was never trained properly, or the incentives that determine how people actually behave were never examined.
Show me an organisation with seventeen tools in its marketing stack and I'll show you a team that hasn't committed to doing any of them well. The stack proliferates because each new tool feels like progress. It usually isn't. It's usually an avoidance strategy for a harder problem.
Before you buy another tool, ask: what behaviour is this technology supposed to change - and why isn't it changing without it?
How to approach martech properly
- Start with the process or business problem, not the tool - map what you want to happen, then find technology that enables it
- Audit what you actually use before adding anything new - most stacks have significant duplication and underutilised licences
- Involve the team who will use the tool in the selection process - adoption is a people problem, not a procurement one
- Measure utilisation, not capability - the question is not whether the tool can do something, it's whether your team actually does it
- Build for the process you have, not the one you aspire to - tools that require a more mature process than your team can sustain will fail