Scott Brinker, VP of HubSpot and author of chiefmartech.com<\/a>, has been analysing the global marketing tools landscape for years and has been publishing the annual Marketing Technology Landscape since 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The map tracks and ranks these tools and, together with surveys and insights, is released on MarTechDay, a much-awaited event for those involved in technology and\/or marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In particular, the Landscape divides the MarTech tools into six macro-categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each of them contains within it numerous sub-categories; for example, THRON PLATFORM<\/a> has been included in the DAM & MRM & PIM<\/strong> sub-category of the Content & Experience<\/strong> category for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the insights of the 2024 edition, streamed on 7 May, we have selected five; and the first is based on the Landscape volumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Landscape 2024 found 14,106<\/strong> MarTech software on the market<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A gigantic number, the size of which is even more appreciable in perspective. Compared to 2023, the increase is about 28% over previous years, with a compound annual growth rate of 41.8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a few issues ago of NORTH<\/a> – our 50% newsletter and 50% North Star <\/em>– we discussed market consolidation, i.e. the reduction of MarTech tools available to companies. Were we wrong? Not really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although it appears to be a concept at odds with the figure above, Brinker and Riemesma agree that the competitive landscape of marketing technologies will increasingly tend to consolidate<\/strong>, i.e. stabilise first and then shrink slightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a process that in part is already underway – albeit eclipsed by the countless start-ups that have entered MarTech in recent months – supported by the acquisitions of the Big Players and, above all, stimulated by the goal of organisations to contain the complexity and budget of their IT ecosystem<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If supply grows and demand for MarTech solutions falls, then what can we expect<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report is clear: despite the ongoing simplification of IT stacks, it is pure utopia to think of a very small number of large platforms offering a wide range of features and satisfying all business needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The long tail of solutions<\/strong> populating the market is fuelled by small, sometimes very small, technology providers that listen, interpret and innovatively fulfil niche needs<\/strong> that could hardly be met by MarTech giants such as Adobe, Google, HubSpot and Salesforce, to name a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in order to support digital simplification and the alleviation of IT costs, MarTech providers are – and will increasingly be – called upon to ensure increasing levels of versatility in their product offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We ourselves have noticed, for example, that from the very first contacts, companies<\/strong> that choose us as their provider are increasingly aware of the benefits to the digital ecosystem provided by a single platform<\/strong> such as THRON, which includes DAM software<\/a> and PIM software<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concentrating a substantial amount of workflows in a single solution not only reduces investment in software fees, but also minimises the development and maintenance costs of integrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marketing automation platforms are the most common type of MarTech solutions in the companies’ IT stack (88%), followed by CRM (84%) and BI (69%), trailing DXP (54%) and CDW (48%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In more than one in three of the surveyed companies’ stacks, workflow platforms, CDP (both 37%) and Digital Asset Management<\/a> (36%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artificial intelligence is the undisputed star of the last few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the 159,000<\/a> solutions in OpenAI’s GPT Store, Brinker and Riemesma identified more than 3,000 focused on MarTech, although they chose to include only a few of them in the MarTech Landscape count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, the overall breakdown of the types of functionalities offered is interesting, with one third of GPTs’ MarTech tools focusing on content marketing<\/strong>, no doubt due to the enormous leap in quality of generative AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is followed, far behind, by SMM, SEO and collaborative tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We close this round-up by talking about what is commonly called the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias<\/strong> whereby people with limited skills<\/strong> in a specific area tend to overestimate their capabilities<\/strong>, while those with high skills<\/strong>, on the contrary, underestimate them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The MarTech experts noted this by asking a thousand companies to self-assess their IT stack after deploying it; they found that 30 per cent of companies deemed more ‘MarTech-mature’ by the experts who conducted the study self-assessed with lower average scores than the 70 per cent of companies deemed more ‘MarTech-immature’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, therefore, abstracting one’s gaze from the particular to focus on the general can be indispensable in order to have a perception of one’s organisation more in line with reality. Whether one tends to overestimate it or underestimate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is also why every third Wednesday of the month<\/strong> we publish NORTH<\/a>, our newsletter for marketers, IT, CIOs, e-commerce managers and digital specialists who want to keep an open window on what is going on around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thron.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Articolo-38-MartechMap.webp\")
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The number of MarTech tools no longer stops<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The size of the corporate IT stack is getting smaller<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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What does the corporate IT stack look like?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Eyes on AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Dunning-Kruger effect also affects MarTech<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Our advice? Lift your head and look around<\/h2>\n\n\n\n