Building your martech stack: Try design thinking to identify the right solutions

Tony Byrne thinks that technology should not slow marketers down. But, he says, many marketers feel just that.

“Getting the right technology isn’t sufficient for digital success, but it is necessary to get the right fit,” Byrne, the founder of analyst firm Real Story Group, said Monday during a workshop he led on how to buy marketing technology at our MarTech Conference in Boston.

By using a deliberate methodology to choose martech solutions, Byrne said that marketers can get the kind of technology they need to meet their objectives.

“We already have this technology in house” or “this is what so-and-so uses” are not good reasons to choose a vendor, he said, adding that no company should ever default into a particular piece of technology.

Though Byrne acknowledged that a single vendor might be able to provide a more integrated marketing environment, he said it’s important to weigh that against other considerations such as usability, adoptability and developer intensiveness.

Design thinking

Byrne suggests that marketers use design thinking, also known as Agile methodology, to make decisions around adding to your martech stack.

Historically used by developers to guide their processes, Byrne said that its human-centric, team-based, adaptive and test-based process is perfect for choosing martech vendors.

In the initial stages of dealing with prospective vendors, Byrne suggested that marketers keep the product’s scalability, feature richness and compatibility with your environment in mind. He suggested that instead of asking “can you,” ask “how do you” to get better insight into a vendor’s capabilities.

But probably the most important part of that process is the testing, which Byrne said should go beyond a demo.

“In a demo, you’re watching the vendor play out your story; by testing you spend time with it and see how it works with your actual scenario,” Byrne said.