If you’ve ever been responsible for finding the right solution to a marketing problem, you’ve no doubt experienced one of the major challenges businesses are facing in 2018. The space is growing at an incredible pace, and new startups are popping up every day to try to meet the demand or solve some niche problem in the system. The amount of fragmentation we’ve seen in the marketplace is staggering, highlighted by the chart above (the latest work of Scott Brinker, VP at HubSpot and Editor at the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog).
The highlights? 6,829 marketing technology solutions from 6,242 unique marketing vendors, representing a 27% increase in logos to this visual. This year’s landscape introduces Bots & Live Chat and Data Compliance and Privacy (thanks, Facebook!) as new categories and has removed Predictive Analysis as a category since the functionality is now built into hundreds of products. In his blog post regarding the annual release, Brinker also notes that the average enterprise today now uses over 1,000 cloud services!
Datapoints aside, this chart represents the chaos and clutter that can lead to analysis paralysis as businesses large and small fight to secure marketing budget. Our advice to anyone feeling overwhelmed by all this: stay calm and focus on the big picture.
What is it that you need to accomplish? Do you want to sell more products? Launch a new service? Get more newsletter signups? Increase donations? Gain subscribers? Whatever it is, it’s going to be impossible to develop an effective marketing strategy without having a firm grasp on the desired outcome first. Only then can you choose the right strategies and tactics to make the biggest impact on your business.
And if you’re feeling lost along the way, finding the right strategic partner can make all the difference. Coordinate° was built to help businesses establish clear goals and navigate the marketing landscape. By taking the time to understand your business and objectives, we can develop and execute the most effective and creative strategies for success.
If you’ve been struggling to figure out the best way forward for your business, send us a note and let’s chat!