How to Optimize Your Martech Implementation for Marketing Success

Failed martech implementations can put B2B marketers at risk of losing credibility, budget, and breaking internal trust. Teams need to plan properly, take calculated risks, and always have a backup plan. So how can B2B marketing teams ensure a successful implementation from the start?

Join us as we talk to seasoned martech expert Raja Walia (CEO & Founder, GNW Consulting), who shared some proven strategies on how to optimize your martech implementation for marketing success. During our conversation, Raja emphasized the importance of aligning technology with business goals to set your team up for long-term success. He also shared some common pitfalls that teams should avoid and stressed the need for proper planning, accountability, and enablement. Raja highlighted some key findings from a new GNW Consulting and DemandMetric report, based on insights from 200 marketing leaders. Learn why focusing on revenue metrics, understanding sales cycles, and enabling your internal teams are paramount to making your martech investment pay off.

https://youtu.be/S8aVzk78PmA

Topics discussed in episode:

[1:54] The risks of failed martech implementations in B2B

[4:07] Common pitfalls B2B marketers should avoid when implementing marketing technology

[10:08] The hidden revenue impact of misaligned technology in B2B marketing

[14:49] Ask the right questions before implementing new technology:

What are you trying to solve?
What are you trying to do better?
What does success mean?
How does success show up to each of the teams?

[18:49] Actionable tips for B2B marketers on implementing technology successfully

Audit the current processes
Enable teams for ongoing training
Start with a narrow MVP
Speak the language of the board
Align technology investments with business goals
Set a budget aside for ongoing training and support

[25:23] Key metrics B2B marketers should track to measure martech success:

Revenue: the ultimate goal
Operational metrics such as time to campaign, sales response time
Conversion of leads to qualified opportunities
Sales cycle velocity

Companies and links mentioned:

Transcript

Christian Klepp 00:00

Failed implementations can put B2B marketers at risk of losing credibility and budget. They need to plan properly, take calculated risks and always have a backup plan. So how can marketing teams ensure their martech implementation is geared up for success? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Raja Walia, who’ll be answering this question. He’s the founder and CEO of GNW Consulting, a strategic marketing operations agency that specializes in helping companies navigate the complexities of marketing technology. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. You Mr. Raja Walia, welcome to the show, Sir.

Raja Walia 00:46

Hey. Thank you for having me, Christian.

Christian Klepp 00:48

Great to have you on the show, Raja. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation, because I think a part of this is going to be a little bit of a tougher discussion, and that’s just a bit of a hint of what’s to come. That said, I think it’s an extremely important conversation to have. And B2B, marketers really need to be paying attention to this stuff. So let’s dive right in. Raja, you’re on a mission to provide companies with the strategic guidance needed to adapt to the ever evolving martech landscape. So for this conversation, I want to focus on the following topic, how marketing teams can ensure their martech implementation is geared up for success. So just to provide the audience with a bit of context, your company. So GNW consulting, in partnership with demand metric, you recently launched the state of martech implementation report, and that was based on insights from more than 200 marketing leaders. So I want to kick off the conversation with this question, how do failed implementations put marketing teams at risk of losing credibility and budget?

Raja Walia 01:54

No, it’s a good question, and one of the reasons that we generated the report is, I think it’s very crucial, especially in today’s economy where, you know, budgets are kind of being hit as much as possible, and marketing is always under the gun. Because you got to realize that executive level outcomes are all realistically that matter. So when we think about the idea of a failed implementation, what we’re really thinking about is what was promised and what didn’t occur. And that’s how at the executive board level, generally, we look at it. So it’s not only that the CMO takes a hit, you know, it’s the finance gets involved and starts questioning whether marketing should really be trusted with budget at all at that point, right? What execs and generally what marketing teams kind of get is that failure usually kind of starts from an implementation perspective by not having it’s not bad tech. It’s the idea of what the business goals and outcomes are. And we tend to fall down this rabbit hole of a kind of like a traditional motion of implementation, whereas in the current state of things, it’s a technical implementation aligned with what the business is set to accomplish, and we don’t, as marketers, we don’t really convey that like, we don’t really like, emphasize how it’s going to solve bigger problems. So I think the idea behind the report, realistically, was that we lose credibility because we’re so focused on the technical that we don’t really operate and say this is what the business is doing better now than they were doing before. And that’s generally, I think we’re not, we’re not factoring those we’re not factoring those ideas well enough, and we’re just focusing on the tech and how well the tech is implemented.

Christian Klepp 03:43

Absolutely, absolutely. Maybe this is stated in the report. But I’d also like to get your perspective, just from your experience, right like, and I know, I know that this can go down several different paths, but just Why do you think fail like, implementations fail like from a general perspective, like, where do marketing teams get it wrong generally?

Raja Walia 04:08

So I think, from a if you think logistically about implementations, it’s the idea of what you’re doing and how it’s going to help the business grow. Once again, executives don’t really look at Tech the same way that we look at Tech, they see it as kind of an end to a means (means to an end). The means (ends) is one of the things, either grow the business, expand the business, or market the business. So realistically, what when we treat implementations, just like a system implementation or a system greater enhancement? I think that’s like step one. That’s where generally that operational mindset starts, starts down the path of, okay, now we are now we are focusing on just the technical outcome, but not how it relates to what the goal of the business is. So I think in. And it’s a very clear fix, like we worked with a lot of companies, and the idea is like, what is the ownership across functions and how is it going to relate to overall business goals? That’s a conversation that, generally, as marketers, we need to have a lot more of to say, what are we solving for the business, rather than what are we implementing for the business? And, you know, honestly, too many times we kind of buy software, and they said, and we asked, well, what can it do, which is completely opposite of what we should be doing. We should be going in with the idea of, this is what the business is trying to do. How does your software make our life easier or fulfill this task? Right? And I think it’s just a switch, and it’s just a switch, and thought process on how we look at marketing technology.

Christian Klepp 05:47

Absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to move us on to the next question about what are some of the key pitfalls that you think marketing teams should be avoiding, and what should they be doing instead?

Raja Walia 06:00

So I think the reality of this is that most wh...

Ep. 180: How to Optimize Your Martech Implementation for Marketing Success