Less is more: how marketers can sharpen tech tools to unlock long-term value

Once this business case is identified, marketers then need to refine how they pilot and scale solutions, says Nat Gross, head of media and marketing advisory at KPMG UK.

“There has been a unification of test and use cases over the last year and now it’s about scale,” she says. “If you’re going to scale, you don’t bring in more and more tools; it’s about consciously deciding what you’re going to deploy and where.”

Gross recommends applying a clear framework to ensure a more conscious decision-making process, focusing on three key metrics: complexity or ease of implementation; the value delivered; and the risk involved, including both regulatory and legal considerations. By mapping each martech tool against these criteria, it becomes far simpler to understand which are worth scaling up, which aren’t worth further investment and, crucially, where there is scope for further experimentation.

This also enables marketers to balance short-term needs with longer-term vision, says Gross. “It provides marketers with a matrix with which to balance risk and reward. One tool may add immediate value and have less risk associated. But the world is moving fast and if all you invest in are safe bets, then you’ll never be prepared for medium and long-term change.

Think of it like a “layer cake”, she suggests, with individual experimental tools easily swapped in and out at the top but underpinned by some baked-in foundations. “These criteria enable you to pinpoint where it’s worth experimenting, balancing the foundational and experimental in order to create momentum and build growth for the long term,” she adds.

“Our approach is about testing, learning and building on what works,” says Beinart. “We look to scale the activity that delivers clear commercial impact and can be rolled out more widely, while continuing to explore newer areas where the long-term value is still emerging.”

He points to the brewer’s recent work on Guinness Nitrosurge, which saw it launch an interactive video campaign with an online retailer that allowed shoppers to ‘Add to Basket’ directly from the video. “When we compared this to the same creative without that functionality, we saw a clear uplift in both purchase rate and overall sales on the site,” he says. “We were also able to use shopper data to tailor messaging between existing buyers and those who hadn’t yet purchased, which helped make the campaign feel more relevant to each audience.”

The bottom line is that “martech is almost always a significant investment in financial terms, and an even more significant upheaval in terms of business process change, so doing your groundwork is essential,” says Andy Wickes, managing partner, creative and digital at Jellybean Creative. A few principles I always come back to are: Anchor everything to a data spine. Favour platforms with strong integration ecosystems. Run a structured audit before buying anything new.”