The biggest news in our world today is that the election this year will be over in the next few days, but for everyone's sanity, we have something better to talk about in this episode. (This is a good reminder that if you haven't done so already, go vote!) Today Mike and Doug review Scott Brinker and Jason Baldwin's report: MarTech 2030 Five Trends in Marketing Technology for the Decade of the Augmented Marketer. If you're watching or listening along, we recommend you have this report open so you can follow along.
Editor's Note: This article is amazing and very well put together. Both Mike and Doug agree to almost all the points made. If you haven't read it, you should.
BIG NEWS
Mike's initial takeaway of the report is that it was a long read. (It is, it's 50+ pages!) Overall, though, it outlines some arguments that Doug and Mike have had in the past around marketers having technical skill sets. Doug's initial takeaway is that it was good, but it was too positive and there were some issues that weren't addressed. (More on this later.)
Have organizations changed? Mike thinks they have without question, but Doug disagrees. With MarTech's Law, change is relatively slow because humans change relatively slow. Although an event cant push a lot of change on someone, that doesn't mean that you, yourself have changed. So, have we really changed or are we fish being forced to swim in different water?
Trend 1: "No Code" Citizen Creators
Right now, no-code is working it's way up the hype part of the hype cycle. Everyone is talking about it like it's a new thing, but it isn't. The way this section is written sounds fantastic, but there's a flip side to it because there's a fine line between freedom and anarchy.
One of the underlying threats here that Doug believes is an underlying threat to Capitalism and Democracy is that in a pre-technology world, there was a cost to extraction/exploitation. If you were going to extract data, it would have to be meaningful because it had a cost. Now it costs nothing. It's free and easy, and you can do whatever you want. The more things get easier and put more in the hands of the individual, the more consistency will lack.
Trend 2: Platforms, Networks & Marketplaces
In regards to platforms, Mike and Doug went into detail on the definition of a platform in a previous podcast episode: A Framework For Building Your MarTech Stack.
When it comes to marketplaces, Mike likes them both as a business and a user. On the user side of things, they provide him comfort in making a decision because the marketplace (for example HubSpot) has approved those on the listing. He's also aware that marketplaces can get abused. There are marketplaces out there that are curated not by research, but by a big check.
Tech has gone through a lot of different revolutions, and it's currently in the wild-wild west. You can do whatever you want. It's much easier to get apps into your platform. We're making it so easy to buy the app, but do we actually go through the steps listed on page 18 to make sure it's done properly? Probably not.
Trend 3: The Great App Explosion
Mike's thought around the explosion of apps is that it's like the attention economy. There's a lot of choices/solutions, but the entire thing benefits big tech more than it does the developers. The business process should be driving the technology people are using. Who's managing this?
Trend 4: From Big Data to Big Ops
If you look back, the challenge years ago was on how to store data. It was super complex. Now we're at the point where we can extract value from that data easily. There's an imbalance between data intelligence and how we're using data. The biggest takeaway here is that if you don't know what you're using the data for, or if it doesn't support a specific action, it's a waste. There should be a cost to managing data.
Trend 5: Harmonizing Humans & Machine
This section touches on model making and model breaking which sounds wonderful, but is the one observation Doug disagrees with. Are we truly prepping our labor force today? Most aren't. Again, all of this sounds so good because it's supposed to free us, but this is so much better for big tech. We have to bring back the competitiveness.
The only other thing that isn't mentioned in this article is that there will be a black swan event, more than likely around regulation.
To the marketer, are you really ready for this? To companies, what are you doing organizationally for this?
Takeaways:
Mike - Fantastic read. I highly suggest you read it.
Doug - VOTE!
In the next episode, Mike and Doug will be tackling Gartner's Sales report for the future of sales and will answer the question, We're trying to embrace Inbound more, but how do we manage the transition for our sales team?