As the number of technology solutions available to marketers grows, content marketers are starting to focus more on integrating than acquiring tools. According to a new report [download page] from Parse.ly, the biggest pain point with integrated technology is the complexity of integration.
This struggle may be why a separate report found just 1 in 10 (11% of) marketers and salespeople saying that their tech stack is fully integrated into a single platform, with integration of tools being the top area in need of improvement in martech.
Beyond the complexity of martech integration, respondents also find the cost of technology to be a pain point. Martech’s share of resource budgets has dipped slightly this year, but there are still numerous indications that spending on martech continues to rise.
Other frequently-cited pain points with integrated technology include migrating to a new technology and onboarding users to technology.
Commonly Used MarTech Tools
Almost 9 in 10 (89% of) content marketers are augmenting their CMS with another marketing technology, per the report. The most common is analytics and business intelligence, with 86% of respondents making use of these tools. Close behind is marketing automation, with three-quarters (74%) of respondents leveraging these tools. With marketers ascribing a range of benefits to automation tools, almost one-third will be shopping for a new solution in the year ahead, recent research reveals.
Trailing in adoption among the tech types listed are personalization tools (45%), digital asset management (32%) and multivariate testing (23%).
Among analytics and business intelligence technologies, Google Analytics is the clear favorite, as used by 93% of those with analytics and BI technologies. Tableau (19%) was a distant second. There’s more parity among automation tools, with Hubspot leading (37% of this sample) and Pardot or Salesforce Marketing Cloud (24%), Marketo (21%) and Mailchimp (19%) not far behind.
Finally, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the most common option among personalization technologies, while Google Optimize leads among multivariate tools.
About the Data: Findings are based on a November 2021 survey of more than 800 content marketers at B2B (41%), B2B and B2C (23%), B2C (10%) and other companies, including media companies and non-profits.
