Marketing technology, aka martech, includes all the digital tools that are used to deliver your message to your market every day, as well as the software that measures, analyzes, and makes sense of the data they generate. So those social media insights, data visualizations of your customers’ buying patterns, the graphic design software, everything that is used in the process of creating, managing, and sharing your brand message – that’s martech. It really is a bridge between the creative work of a marketing team and the technical skill to keep that work going.
A Marketing Technologist is a professional who is part strategist, part creative director, part technology leader, and part teacher. She understands marketing needs and trends, while also keeping a strong hand on the capabilities and limitations of IT systems. In the C-Suite, a Chief Martech Officer is the functional equivalent of a Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer. Professionals in the role of MTO have serious skills – a lot of them have IT or software development backgrounds.
What really sets the Marketing Technologist apart from your friendly neighborhood IT pro is her inherent passion for marketing. She doesn’t think that the creative department is frivolous or entitled. She recognizes that the data she analyzes is directly related to how design, copywriting, and images make your customers feel. Likewise, she doesn’t feel that the IT department is apathetic to the needs of the marketing department. She knows that all those creative assets need to be stored in a way that’s readily accessible and that communicating with your audience is an ever-changing landscape that servers must handle – or else.
Your team’s choice of software, how to configure and operate it, and how creatively you apply it, has become the nexus of how your company understands and influences your audience, and in turn, how your audience perceives your company. Your Marketing Technologist is responsible for managing – and optimizing – the whole process.
