The number of marketing technology (martech) providers vying for every marketer’s attention is staggering: In his latest report, Scott Brinker, vice president of the platform ecosystem at Hubspot, estimated that there were 5,000-plus providers in 2017 — representing a 40 percent increase over the previous year.
Add to that the five or more options every martech tool typically offers for marketers to choose from. Medium, for example, has to compete against other CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, Hubspot Blogging Software and Kentico.
This mountain of rivals that marketing-software brands must contend with every day makes their effort to appeal to their target customers — marketers — a little like trying to run after your hat in a hurricane.
On top of that, martech businesses are trying to beat their marketer-customers at their own game — after all, marketers are quite familiar with the marketing strategies martech brands use. It all becomes a bit like a psychologist working with a psychiatrist on his or her latest addiction. An observer might wonder, who’s asking the questions and who’s taking notes?
Still, marketing a martech brand to marketers need not be so hard. How’s that work? Let’s start from the view that selling to marketers is more of a (simple) science than an art.
Recognize that selling to marketers is more science than art.
Selling to marketers, in my view, is almost entirely science. I’d personally estimate a breakdown of 20 percent creativity and 80 percent science — meaning research, numbers, measurements and tests.
Marketers — the customers – look at numbers and validations (both of which are scientific elements) when making decisions at their jobs. Further, marketers can be attracted to martech companies’ designs, graphics, art — even their jokes.
But when it comes to getting those same marketers to pull out their wallets and take martech companies’ products to their CMOs or clients, those marketers will need proof (science) that any particular product is worth spending their company’s money on — or no deal.
Before spending $10,000 on social media marketing’s ad costs, for instance, marketers might test out a concept with $100. In fact, they’re always testing; and there’s science in that. So, if you’re the martech rep, show the marketer proof, and chances are that he or she will buy in.
Offer a trial of your marketing software and let the marketer test it out to get raw data. Display testimonials of happy customers. Share the numbers you’ve achieved. And pay attention to the language you use.
Use the lingua franca marketers…
