Big surprise. When Martech’s Supergraphic was unveiled this year, it was more mind-boggling than ever before. Lovingly nicknamed the Martech 5000, the truth was pretty brutal.
The marketing technology landscape shot up big time — up 40% from 2016 — bringing us to a grand total of 5,381 solutions.
Marketing agencies, both big and small, are drowning in this infinite sea of technology. The intentions are pure for agencies. They are constantly exploring the possibilities of a new tool that will ultimately help them reach success as an organization.
How can your agency navigate these technological waters to be more effective? You have to wrangle the chaos of growth, so it doesn’t hold your team back from reaching their greatest potential. And that all starts with tool consolidation.
Growth can cause chaos That Hinders Your Potential
Here’s a homework assignment for you. Look at your current martech stack and count how many tools your agency is using, even any white label tools you might use. To give you an idea of averages, here are some fun facts from a research study by the Martech Industry Council.
Average number of martech products per company = 16
Highest number of martech products per company = 98
Depending on the size of your agency, you could fall anywhere within this spectrum. If you’re a content marketing agency, chances are you’re on the higher side and using far too many tools. And according to Leadscape, here are the top five categories of tool by usage:
No matter your budget, taking on more and more technology can lead to organizational inefficiencies that hinder your potential rather than supporting your growth. A nagging voice inside your head may be telling you this already. You’re wondering why all of this technology isn’t taking your team where you had hoped and dreamed.
“An organization becomes bewildered rather than energized when it’s asked to do too much at once.” – Michael Hammer and James Champy (Source: Reengineering the Corporation, A Manifesto for Business Revolution)
Let’s say you run a smaller agency and your team battles constant workarounds with the free or inexpensive set of individual tools in your stack. Would your team be more successful if you paid for one advanced toolset?
And if you’re a bigger agency, your team is working with 50+ tools regularly just to get the job done. How much more growth do you think your agency could achieve if you consolidated your tools?
Using too many martech tools is adding to the chaos
The common link between content marketing agencies of all sizes is this: frustration. According to Leadscape, 50% of marketers agreed that using too much technology was their top frustration. Right on its heels? 49% voiced problems integrating these technologies.
A typical content martech stack for an agency will span these eight categories:
Content Creation
Project Management
Calendars
Talent Acquisition
Accounting
Project Communication
Content Intelligence Tools
CMS
The intentions for technology adoption come from a good place when you’re a content marketing agency. You want to do your best work efficiently and effectively. We have more tools at our fingertips than any other time in marketing history, and it’s all too easy to get distracted by the next shiny object when there is something bigger and better to consider.
But, consider this… your team and your bottom line.
How many non-billable tasks are distracting them from billable work? Think of the logins they have to keep up with for every single tool. Or, how many hours they have to spend on learning curves for the latest addition to your martech stack.
It adds up, right? Then you realize you’ve come to a breaking point, when the precious cost of your internal resources tacks onto the initial cost of the technology you invested in. (Cue the sad violin.)
Okay, the sad violin can stop now—happy times are here again. Think about how you can make your team more effective. Meaning, it’s time for a major tool consolidation project.
Consolidating martech tools will save your agency
One content marketing platform to rule the rest will save your agency time and money. Billable hours are the livelihood of any agency. By consolidating your tools, your team won’t be dilly-dallying with non-billable efforts (and anguish) that steal them away from billable work—and they will be less frustrated and more productive.
This is how tool consolidation will positively impact your content martech stack and benefit the greater good of your agency.
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Ready to consolidate? Perfect.
You have arrived. You know that navigating the chaos of growth at your agency will be a heck of a lot easier once you consolidate your tools. When you have tons of projects and clients to keep up with, you don’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity. You want to grow, but you also need to scale.
ClearVoice for Agencies will simplify your content martech stack by packaging up all of your tools into a single platform. The benefits? Better content created in less time, and a happier team that can keep their eyes on the real prize… growth.
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