In recent years, the work of the marketer in companies has become more complex because he has had to take on new activities that have emerged from technological evolution. When social media appeared, the need arose to have to preside over them adequately.
When the smartphone has become an inseparable companion for billions of people, it has become necessary to take it into account in marketing strategies. Each new habit of people is followed by a new marketing technique and new skills to be acquired.
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The layering of these activities has created a need for software designed to make them more effective and efficient, lightening workloads and freeing up time for strategic activities.
Thus was born a great one market space for marketing support technologies called “martech” (marketing technology). In 2020, a report by Bdo, Warc and the University of Bristol estimated the value of this market at 121.5 billion dollars (+ 22% compared to the previous year). For Gartner, 26% of marketing spend is allocated to purchasing support software.
What are these software
But how many software are we talking about? According to the mapping of Scott BrinkerVice President of Hubspot and author of the blog chiefmartec.com, in 2011 the martech products surveyed were 150, in 2020 they exceeded 8,000 units and in 2022 they reached 9,932.
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“The state of the martech is in excellent health – mi dice Scott Brinker – more and more B2B consumers and buyers prefer to have a digital relationship with companies, which extends to new channels and new customer experience expectations. Martech is the technology that allows companies to serve these customers throughout their purchasing journey and throughout their life cycle.”
“Although we are witnessing a consolidation that is taking place in the upper part of the market with very large martech companies that are acquiring top performers in other categories – continues Brinker – there continues to be a significant wave of new startups. Because the barriers to entry for software are relatively low and the opportunities for new marketing channels and tactics are enormous, martech remains a very attractive sector for entrepreneurs and investors. As a result, we continue to see waves of innovative products.”
Intrigued by this phenomenon, I started a mapping of the Italian solutions to support marketing activities, collected and analyzed in the free report “Martech Italia 2022”.
Last year I identified 102, while this year I found 139. This is an increase of 37% which is partly attributable to the arrival on the market of new products and partly to an improvement in my research activity. .
These “Software as a Service” can be categorized into five macro areas, which are in turn divided into more specific categories:
- Advertising & Promotion: contains 19 products designed to support the areas of mobile marketing and digital advertising.
- Content & Experience: collects 34 solutions falling within the vast world of content marketing and their enhancement through digital distribution techniques.
- Social & Relationships: contains 52 software that allows you to manage social media, relationships with communities, but also relationships with customers and prospects.
- Commerce & Sales: is a group of 19 support products for ecommerce and sales activities.
- Data: Includes 16 solutions that help marketers manage and use data for multiple analytics activities.
An interesting phenomenon that is taking shape is the merging of different adjacent solutions into suites. It happens when the vendor understands that the technology that gave life to the first product can also be used effectively for complementary products that can be sold in “bundles”. This recomposition of the offer obviously responds to a demand need: customers try to limit the number of suppliers to contain the technological and managerial complexity.
Another noteworthy movement that emerges is the rise of solutions that claim to make use of Artificial Intelligence. In detail, I identified 42 software (30% of the total) that would use some AI algorithm to optimize processes, bring out invisible correlations from the processed data, predict future trends. They are concentrated, as expected, above all in the Business / Customer Intelligence, Customer Experience and Conversational Marketing categories.
Ultimately, these 139 Italian solutions described in the “Martech Italia 2022” report, as well as being a sign of the vitality of the Italian software ecosystem, can help improve the increasingly difficult job of marketers: meeting the complex and changing needs of the modern consumer. .
Vincenzo Cosenza is a marketing and technology expert, author of the blog Vincos.it