Martech disappointment grows despite increased usage

The latest CMO survey results have been released, offering new insight into the state of marketing strategies. A key theme emerges from the survey: the growing pressure on CMOs to demonstrate value and ROI in the changing marketing landscape.

Since this fall 2024 survey does not ask exactly the same questions as the spring edition, this analysis will not be able to make a direct question-by-question comparison. Instead, I will focus on the March section of the survey and link to other sections to provide context and hypotheses about the findings.

Budget trends and challenges

Despite increased budgets for CMOs, marketing budgets as a percentage of total company budgets declined, falling to 10.1% in fall 2024 from a three-year high of 13.8% in September 2022.

Marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenue also fell from 10.1% in spring 2024 to 7.7% in fall 2024, the lowest level in more than three years.

When companies cut costs to drive sales growth, marketing budgets are the hardest hit, with executives cutting them 44.6% of the time, more than any other area.

Dig deeper: How to align processes to drive martech utilization

Martech Investments and Usage Patterns

Meanwhile, CMOs slightly reduced March spending as a share of total marketing budgets, down 0.9% from spring 2024.

However, martech usage increased by 1.4% over the same period, suggesting possible stack consolidation or switching platforms to reduce costs.

Martech’s impact on performance and expectations

Marketing technology continues to have an above-average impact on company performance, scoring 4.8 on a scale of one (not important) to seven (high impact), unchanged from spring 2024.

However, it still fell short of expectations, with 54.9% of respondents reporting pay disappointment, up 6% from the spring.

Dig deeper: The impact of martech on company value

The survey results also reveal how CMOs are using martech platforms:

• Martech tools support 55% of marketing activities, with 45% not using these tools.
• Only 50% of martech tools are in use in operations, down from 56% in the spring, despite martech being closely linked to marketing functions.
• Fewer CMOs are focused on strengthening data strategies and reducing data forces, falling from 51% to 48%.
• Marketing experimentation also decreased slightly, from 35.6% to 32.7%.

Taken together, the rise in martech disappointment may be related to the decline in the use of martech in both marketing activities and corporate operations.

Recommendations for marketers: Maximizing the return on investment of martech

Marketers face many challenges that go beyond the technology stack, but can play a key role in maximizing mart value and ROI.

Reassess the impact of martech on MOps

Marketers should assess each martech platform (e.g. CRM, MAP, CDP) by asking:

• Can this platform reduce dependence on external suppliers?
  • For example, drag-and-drop platforms allow internal teams to create and deploy assets such as social media posts, templated emails, and text messages without third-party involvement.
• Can my team achieve better results using this platform?
  • Could tools with easy-to-edit templates help increase the frequency of email communication?

Improve customer data collection

Because marketers are closest to both data collection (eg, web forms and in-app surveys) and their use in customer engagement (eg, campaign creation and deployment), they can influence data quality. Clean data is easier to process and unify across platforms (CDP, CRM, data warehouse), reducing the need for extensive operational/IT involvement and enabling faster adoption.

Key questions to consider:

• Do we have processes for collecting customer data as clean as possible?
• Is there accessible data management for marketers and stakeholders?

Balancing martech investments with performance expectations

While the CMO Fall Survey offers valuable insights, it raises more questions about how companies are allocating mart budgets and using these tools effectively. It remains clear that the use of martech continues to grow in importance. Although not all the answers are available, marketers can increase the value of martech by focusing on process improvement and data quality as outlined above.

Dig deeper: How marketers can help increase martech usage