The difficulties and pain points facing enterprises today ultimately stem from sluggish growth. While rapid technological iteration and market volatility provide fertile ground for innovation and transformation, they also mean that the dividends from pure internet or digital technologies are gradually disappearing. Where is the new growth point? Every enterprise may need to re-examine its business chain. The breakthrough may appear at the marketing end, which is closest to the market and users. In recent years, the MarTech (marketing technology) trend has gradually swept the globe. The latest marketing technology super-ecosystem map released by the master Scott Brinker shows that the number of mainstream marketing technologies has increased by nearly one-third to 6,829, more than the total from 2011 to 2016 combined. Compared with the "6,000+" in the U.S. market, there are only about 100 enterprises providing marketing technology products in China. MarTech is still in its infancy in China. Why does the market need MarTech? MarTech is a combination of Marketing and Technology, representing "marketing technology." With the rapid development of the internet, data volume is exploding at an unprecedented rate, becoming more fragmented and mobile; social media continuously generates new structured and unstructured content data; consumers are becoming more mobile and interact through multiple screens... The marketing environment has undergone earth-shaking changes. Faced with this "out-of-control" state, many marketers inevitably feel anxious. How to respond to the rapidly changing environment? How to reach target consumers in the vast sea of people? How to keep marketing activities controllable? How to improve marketing efficiency? How to increase return on investment? Various questions come thick and fast. The knot must be untied by the one who tied it. This anxiety is caused by technology, and it must be solved through technological means. How is MarTech applied to marketing? Social marketing, digital marketing, e-commerce, and cloud-based software technology mean that traditional research, budgeting, and placement methods can no longer interact with consumers in real-time across fragmented multi-touchpoints. Software technology is gradually replacing traditional consumer touchpoints, becoming the main growth tool for attracting and retaining users. For example, luckin coffee, as an intruder, expanded rapidly in less than a year and now has 809 stores, capturing the white-collar population in first- and second-tier cities, breaking the stable market pattern led by Starbucks. luckin adopts a regional precision placement and refined operation strategy in media promotion. luckin's actual placement strategy is very restrained and refined, closely following store openings: for each new store, it places Focus Media ads within a 1.5-kilometer radius and WeChat Moments LBS targeted ads within the same radius. If you have stores near both your home and company, you will definitely feel an "overwhelming" presence: in the morning, you see its ads in the elevator; on the road, you are likely to see its offline stores; when you go upstairs to the office, you see its ads again; when you sit down and browse your Moments, you see its ads again; and if you are curious and search on Baidu, you will see its brand zone again. So the feeling of overwhelming ads is real, but it is only for you. In summary, it repeatedly covers the same audience within the same public opinion field, and then uses strong promotions like first cup free and buy two get one free to lower the consumer entry barrier, further improving ad conversion. At the same time, luckin uses full-process mobile transactions and queue-free purchasing to make the experience smoother and more convenient, and data collection more complete. From the first day, luckin had more than 60 user profile tags, and now has expanded to more than 120 tags, accurately recording consumer behavior. This data accurately collects users' various consumption preferences and behaviors. Based on this data, very precise user profiles can be obtained, and this data also provides luckin with strong operational and marketing decisions. Through WeChat, SMS, and App push notifications, it can solve user activation and subsequent maintenance issues at very low cost, greatly improving the efficiency of precision marketing. The above is a practical case of marketing technology in e-commerce marketing. Of course, no single marketing technology product can solve all problems in marketing. Therefore, enterprises should select a series of marketing technology products suitable for their industry and specific needs, combine them into a toolkit, and integrate their applications. What is China's MarTech ecosystem like? At present, the marketing technology ecosystem in the United States is very mature. On the one hand, there are a large number of excellent suppliers in the market; on the other hand, various links can be connected to improve efficiency. In contrast, the development of marketing technology in the Chinese market is still in a very early stage, with obvious differences from the United States in terms of environment, enterprises, and personnel. From a macro-environment perspective, supply-side reform, consumption upgrading, and structural changes in international trade are occurring simultaneously; from a micro-environment perspective, Chinese consumers are highly digitalized, online media is highly concentrated, brand development history is short, and channels and platforms dominate. Chinese enterprises have low levels of informatization and standardization, with informatization capabilities unevenly distributed across industries and regions. Talents who are familiar with business, understand technology, and can combine data science, business knowledge, and marketing strategy are extremely rare. Among the marketing technology companies emerging in the Chinese market, some are limited to Adtech (advertising technology), while others focus on a specific subcategory. The variety and number of suppliers are far from covering the entire marketing technology ecosystem. But more and more marketing technology companies are beginning to appear domestically. If you search for "marketing technology" on Baidu, you will see a large number of company homepage links, mixed with reports on Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent marketing technology products. Therefore, it is believable that China's good digital environment will provide more sufficient driving force for the development of marketing technology, and China has the possibility of overtaking on the curve. Three major challenges for marketing technology landing in China Gao Peng, founder of Covertlab, pointed out the three major challenges for Chinese enterprises in implementing marketing technology: cognition, strategy, and capability. First, the biggest challenge in digital transformation is cognition. Unlike other functional departments such as finance, human resources, and supply chain, marketing does not have a standard informatization solution. Especially since marketing technology in the Chinese market is relatively blank, enterprises often do not know what they do not know. There are many pain points, but no solutions. The best way to popularize new ideas is to find leading enterprises in different industries to create benchmark cases. Second, strategy. Unlike previous marketing strategies, strategy here refers to the comprehensive capability from technology to data to execution. Advertising agencies and consulting companies can provide some clues and strategies through third-party data. But for enterprises, only by mastering first-party data can they directly connect with users, accumulate data assets, and continuously test to verify data analysis ideas and marketing execution strategies. Third, capability. Specifically, it refers to the ability to drive growth through data. Behind building this capability is a dual understanding of business and technology. Arbitrarily applying data analysis tools without understanding business goals, or simply setting goals without understanding data analysis logic, will lead to a huge waste of time and resources. A major principle of applying marketing technology is not to touch the relevant data until you have clearly thought about the specific goals. Only the enterprise itself understands its business best. Relying solely on third parties cannot solve the fundamental growth dilemma, so enterprises need to cultivate their data operation capabilities day after day. Methods for data-driven growth The maturity of the entire marketing technology industry depends on the diversification of ecosystem participants on the one hand, and on the other hand requires that enterprise CMOs, technology officers, and managers understand the logic and methods by which data can truly drive growth—in other words, the methods of data monetization. First, digitalization. Digitalization is the basic action for enterprises to apply marketing technology. First, enterprises need to connect with consumers, build a traffic pool, and connect offline behaviors that were previously unmanageable through digital means. This requires enterprises to re-examine every link in their business and not give up any possibility of digitalizing touchpoints. It should also be emphasized that an enterprise's true data assets are built on its own first-party traffic pool and database, because only first-party data can be cleaned, analyzed, and managed. Second, enterprises need to conduct data management and operation, continuously looking for monetizable logic through progressive profiling, and thinking about where to use this data. Second, insight. Data must be mined to have value. By analyzing data connected to various business links, discover opportunities that others do not see, and formulate strategies accordingly. Third, agility. To cope with today's rapidly changing business world, agility has become a quality that enterprises must possess. If it takes several months from research to solution, the creative may already be outdated by the time it is produced. Having an automated system is the foundation of agility, enabling real-time collaboration of data, interaction, and user experience. The next step is agile marketing, conducting multiple tests at a controllable cost. It is not necessary to achieve every goal, but it emphasizes rapid trial and error and iteration. There is no doubt that the development prospects of marketing technology are broad. Brands need to establish deeper connections with consumers, which requires providing more personalized services based on a better understanding of consumers. Enterprises can start by applying marketing technology at points with specific goals and test the driving force it brings to enterprise growth. Conclusion Although MarTech is still in the exploratory stage in the wave of marketing technology development in China, its powerful data integration, data analysis and insight, and precision push capabilities provide sufficient confidence for enterprise growth. At the same time, China's good digital environment will provide more sufficient driving force for the development of marketing technology. On October 13, 2018, the autumn offline course of the Market Department Network Academy will discuss the theme of "Marketing Technology and Innovation", analyze the future trends of marketing development, review the development opportunities under the marketing technology revolution, focus on industry pain points, and promote the development of enterprise marketing towards precision and intelligence. Previous review Click the "Read Original" link to enter the quick registration channel! ↓↓↓