How organizations approach their MarTech differs among various organizations. The Marketing Performance Management (MPM) benchmark study found that the group known as the Value Creators (those who earn a 90 or greater grade by the C-Suite) is far more likely to have a strategic Marketing Ops function. Several characteristics distinguish this Best-in-Class (BIC) from its colleagues, named the Sales Enablers and Campaign Producers (the group earning 80-89 and the group earning 79 or less, named the Campaign Producers, respectively). The Marketing Ops role is present in 82% of the Value Creators organizations compared to only 54% of Campaign Producers who have this role.

One of the primary responsibilities of Marketing Ops among Value Creators is Technology and Automation. It is the second primary responsibility, after Marketing Performance Management, of the Marketing Ops function for Value Creators.

Source: Cooking Up the Best Marketing Performance, Marketing Performance Benchmark Study

In 2018, Scott Brinker of Chiefmartec.com shared his Marketing Technology Landscape, which identified 6,829 solutions offered by 6,242 unique companies. Just six years later the number exceeded 14,000! Scott’s research found that on average an organization uses 90 MarTech solutions. MarTech still accounts for as much as 20% of the Marketing budget and is expected to continue to increase. As the MarTech landscape continues to expand, it will become increasingly important for Marketing organizations to be able to successfully implement and deploy the technology. And yet, a good portion of MarTech remains shelfware. Gartner’s 2023 Marketing Technology Survey reveals that martech utilization has plummeted to 33%.

In our work, we have found four major causes contributing to both low MPM scores and unsuccessful MarTech implementations:

Automating outdated/flawed processes
Clinging to metrics that don’t matter to the business
Not aligned with the top-line business goals
Not adapting to changes rapidly enough

Our findings reflect those of other experts. Buyers often fall into the trap of thinking that software will solve their problems when software is just one tool. Ignoring the necessary upfront work on processes, metrics, and change management will lead to MarTech failure and, ultimately, low ROI.

best practices marketing martech marketing ops marketing operations marketing technology — Best Practices Ensure the Successful Implementation of Your Martech

The Proven Best Practices Behind the MarTech of the Best in Class

What can we learn from the BIC groups that are successfully implementing MarTech and earning high marks from the C-Suite? Our conversations with these organizations reveal that in some way, they all leverage three proven best practices.

Proven Practice 1: Define Your Processes

Marketing runs on processes: planning, reporting, customer journey mapping, content creation, opportunity management, etc. However, if your current processes are ineffective or inefficient, automating them with a workflow application will not improve them. You’ll just become faster at following a bad process.

Before you implement, configure, or deploy any technology, make sure all of your processes are defined and documented. Similarly, before you implement a workflow application, map and process-engineer issues.

The same applies to Marketing planning and Marketing dashboard applications. It’s hard to create the right dashboard if you’re not reporting on the right metrics and measures. A Marketing plan that is accurately aligned with the business will achieve high marks from the C-Suite.

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Proven Practice 2: Know the Problem You Are Trying to Solve

Often, it’s a lack of change management that robs you of ROI. People cling to the old methods when implementing a new system, and then when those methods continue to fail, they blame the new system.

Be clear about the problem you are trying to solve, solve it, and then automate it. The old adage applies: “What you put in is what you get out.” Your Marketing plan should be outcome-based and customer-centric before you try to upload it into the application. The same applies to alignment, accountability, and analytics initiatives.

Proven Practice 3: Support the Change

It is imperative to allocate sufficient resources for the change management issues related to new processes, metrics, alignment, and accountability. Otherwise, you’ll remain as ineffective and inefficient as before.

Most companies we talk with don’t have the bandwidth or the expertise to commit internal resources to the implementation of new technology. Expertise reduces the time any task takes, and time is a component of ROI, so they engage external resources to help. Regardless of the provider type you choose (a MarTech vendor’s consulting/customer success group, a MarTech vendor partner or an independent Marketing firm), they should have plenty of years of experience re-engineering the relevant Marketing processes, creating metrics that matter, assembling actionable dashboards, guiding change management, etc. They should also have proven methodologies, tools and templates to speed the accomplishment of your goals, and of course, they should have solid, world-class customer references.

Considering a MarTech implementation and want to learn more about proven best practices to make it run smoothly? Schedule a complimentary 20-minute conversation with Laura today.

FAQ:

(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)

Q1: How does MarTech approach differ among Marketing organizations?
A: It differs materially by Marketing maturity and performance-management capability. The MPM benchmark study indicates that Value Creators—Marketing organizations earning 90+ from the C-Suite for proving value and impact—are far more likely to have a strategic Marketing Ops function than Sales Enablers (80–89) and Campaign Producers (≤79). This matters because Marketing Ops is often the operational owner of technology, measurement, and scalability.

Q2: What does the benchmark data suggest about Marketing Ops presence across the personas?
A: Marketing Ops is present in a much higher percentage of Value Creator organizations than Campaign Producers. The implication is that the presence (and strategic scope) of Marketing Ops correlates with the ability to implement performance management and deploy MarTech effectively.

Q3: What role does Marketing Ops play in the MarTech success of Value Creators?
A: Among Value Creators, Technology and Automation is a primary responsibility of Marketing Ops—second only to Marketing Performance Management. In practice, this positions Marketing Ops as the function that connects process discipline, metrics, systems/tools, and adoption—so technology supports outcomes rather than becoming shelfware.

Q4: Why is MarTech implementation getting harder over time?
A: Because the landscape is expanding rapidly and the average stack is increasingly complex. The number of available solutions has grown dramatically over time, and organizations commonly use many tools simultaneously. Even with substantial budget allocation (often around one-fifth of Marketing spend), utilization can be low—one cited survey indicates utilization has dropped to roughly one-third—meaning much of MarTech becomes underused “shelfware.”

Q5: What are four major causes of low MPM scores and unsuccessful MarTech implementations?
A: Your findings identify four recurring causes:

Automating outdated or flawed processes
Clinging to metrics that do not matter to the business
Lack of alignment with top-line business goals
Not adapting rapidly enough to change
These issues also reinforce a broader point: software does not fix strategy, process, or change management gaps—it amplifies them.

Q6: What are the three proven best practices behind Best-in-Class MarTech success?
A: Conversations with high-performing organizations consistently point to three practices:

Proven Practice 1: Define your processes.
Marketing runs on processes (planning, reporting, journey mapping, content creation, opportunity management, etc.). If processes are ineffective, automation only makes you faster at executing poor workflows. Before implementing or configuring technology, define, document, and (where needed) re-engineer processes. This includes ensuring planning and dashboard systems are built on the right measures and metrics and that the Marketing plan is aligned to the business.

Proven Practice 2: Know the problem you are trying to solve.
MarTech ROI is often lost to weak change management—people keep old methods, then blame the new system when results do not improve. Be explicit about the problem, solve it at the process/metrics level, and then automate it. Outcome-based, customer-centric planning must exist before uploading plans into tools; the same applies to alignment, accountability, and analytics initiatives.

Proven Practice 3: Support the change.
Allocate sufficient resources for change management tied to new processes, metrics, alignment, and accountability. Without this, the organization remains as ineffective as before—just with more technology. Because many teams lack bandwidth or expertise, engaging experienced external support can reduce time-to-value (a direct component of ROI), provided the partner has proven methodologies, templates, and world-class references.

Q7: What is the practical takeaway for leaders considering a MarTech implementation?
A: Treat MarTech as an enablement layer—not a cure. Define and fix processes, align metrics to business outcomes, clarify the problem to be solved, and resource change management. When these foundations are in place, Marketing Ops can deploy technology to scale performance management and earn stronger credibility with the C-Suite.