Welcome to MarTech Talks The Liminal's Podcast that brings you interviews with business leaders who are at the forefront of the Digital Transformation of Marketing and Sales departments so that your business can also grow in this new technological era. As a MarTech specialist Liminal has been able to improve the marketing and sales results of several companies, ensuring the conditions for business success in the new digital era. With Liminal, you'll have access to experts who will analyze, design and implement marketing and sales strategies and operations. All this, supported by technological systems such as CRM, Automation and Marketing Analytics. Create your digital business ecosystem with Liminal. Welcome Frans so nice to have you at our podcast thank you so much for having me looking forward to our conversation uh the more we talk about martech the better i think that's it that's it at liminal we've been working with friends in martech tribe for the last couple of years taking part taking a small part in this huge venture that is the martech landscape and which we'll be talking about in a minute france is one of the top 10 martech influencers in europe and in the world for two decades friends has been designing martech martin technology stacks for companies like hp adidas audi unilever phillips ikea carlsberg volvo and the list goes on and on what an amazing experience you've got on your belt my friend so uh is also a university lecture on the subject of digital transformation uh it founded martech tribe and now he joined forces with scott brinker to deliver the new and updated martech global landscape congrats on that friends thank you so much yeah it's a lot of work but we can't do it with people like yourself so thanks to you oh thank you thank you thank you very much regarding the martech landscape since first published uh over a decade ago the number of commercial martech solutions mapped on it as expanded exponentially from 150 to almost 10 000 within little less than 10 10 years as i said what sort of opportunities do you think this formidable growth in martech solutions brings to a typical smb company and and also what advice would you give to business leaders out there on how to take advantage of these opportunities yeah it's it's it's both uh an opportunity and a threat you know it's a threat if you don't um dare to dive in um and it's an opportunity if you do now not everybody is tech savvy enough to dive into so find people that can help you or educate you but the thing is you know every company is not only using more software they become software so you can imagine that more and more companies they have a mobile app of course they have that website that becomes more and more important you know adding functions like e-commerce and and those kind of things payments and then you have the upcoming and uh rising my websites like you know my portal etc which is often uh homegrown and from all these touch points you you yeah basically you could say you become a software company so last week i opened uh as a keynote my my presentation saying to the people um this morning you woke up and thought you were working for an automotive company tonight you will go to bed know for sure you're working for a software company amazing that's that's so true that's the thing and i think you need to uh up your skills and um there are many companies we work together with and then we see uh yeah there's fear there's uncertainty um and as you pointed out there are only more and more tools coming up so um yet to lower maybe the fear that here's a doctor's recipe i would recommend you know try a new tool and there are a lot of free tools out there and you don't have to try the big guys only you can try especially smaller ones play around they have a free trial for just i don't know 10 15 minutes um because if you don't understand the tool by then it's not you it's maybe the tool so you know and this will give you a comfortable feeling and um well you just mentioned the fact that we're um assessing and validating a lot of tools and we have now almost 10 000 tools globally and we do it with people like yourself and maybe you can confirm thiago but many of those people tell me wow that was a lot of work but i learned a lot amazing and and i i have a good feeling of what is out there all those tools the different flavors you know what it's the best education i got in martech so far and funny enough um the last decade when i work with consultants and i onboard them the first step is always you know check out 100 vendors and then they always go like are you are you nuts why i mean that's that's boring and why should i do it just do it you know and then a week later they come back and you go like thank you so much i learned so much and they you even can see in their attitude you feel much more secure and safe and clear and they know what they don't know and that's the most important part because martic is all about you know there's a lot we don't know and by the time you think you know it there's new features so i i i gave it a shot four years ago five years ago with uh 10 students from a university back here and um we went through 2000 tools and gave up you know it's just too many it's you couldn't and um and then we thought you know by the time we are done and i think back then there were six thousand maybe seven thousand by the time we're done we can start all over again because the features changed completely yeah so this uncomfortable feeling of not knowing everything um is is is something you have to face it's something you know play around and then you know more than enough and then you will see suddenly in your meetings internally but also with sales representatives from from software companies you you feel so much more secure you know what you're talking about you know what you don't know you can ask the right questions to fill in the gaps in your knowledge which is very human and normal and then take it from there so especially um well not especially smb uh companies also at corporates i see the same thing there's a lot of you know we're basically overwhelmed by the tsunami of martech that came in the last 10 years completely agree you have to put yourself out there expose yourself to the discomfort of not knowing and being a foreigner and not being a digital native to all this um you know explosion of tools but also it's not about the tool it's about your mindset as a business leader you know it's a development mindset or not uh i i like that you're on the money because now now that you know some tools you you get a better feeling of what is out there and and just leave them you know for a couple of nights and suddenly it will come it i think it automatically comes to you and go like that is a great tool i will never use it because it doesn't fit my strategy and that's exactly what you want you know the business leaders need to understand is this a tool i can use or or not is it serving our strategy or not and all too often you see that business leaders make one very big mistake and it's a bold thing to say i know i'm sorry but they're really big big c level people out there that say i want a fully flexed seamlessly integrated future-proof solution yes keep dreaming that doesn't exist and it's not that the tool doesn't exist maybe maybe i don't care but your strategy will change in the next three years because there's a pandemic there is you know on a geopolitical uh skills something else happening or competitors arise that suddenly conquer the market because they have ai or what so don't try to mortgage the future it's impossible so always i have a very simple rule of thumb if you if you build your stack you build your tools you find your tools you know make sure you cover the tools that um make money today so you have tools like a crm prints that makes money for you today you see your client base you see your opportunities cool and now think of how does my strategy look like for the next two to three years where i will try to distinguish myself from competition and and that's not like 10 new tools is maybe one or two features or maybe a module from one of those crms or tools you have already and then take it from there and of course you can experiment with new tooling ai driven i'm not stopping you there you can still do the doctor's recipe i told you you know and are very much encouraged to play around and experiment but to really make value out of martech business value make sure that it covers your current business model the way you make money today and the next two to three years and beyond that you cannot think you cannot we or you have a crystal ball well i haven't seen one but you know it's impossible to know what's happening in the next two to three years it's so important that concept of the business model and the future that you have envisioned for for it um being at the center of all the decisions you have regarding technology because it's not it's not really about digital transformation it's about transformation digital transformation is an ongoing process which will never end yeah and and i'm fascinated um by what you just said i would like to learn how you make that link you know how can you make that translation between you know the strategy and technology because i i sense often and i would like to learn from you the fear of decision so making a decision and say yes it's a great tool we're not going to use it because it's not fitting our bill and is that something you see in your daily practice with as advisors and consultants to our customers we've reached that same conclusion many many times and uh it's it's art because it's even harder for the the customers the clients who are paying to make that experiment um but at the end of the day you have learned which way not to go and that is so precious because if you've learned that a lesson before your competition you're one step ahead of them and that that's a very important point i am that's another question i receive often from clients where they say um yeah but what you are advising is you know putting the basics in place putting the stuff in place for the current business model in the next three years but uh why will we be a head of competition we need ai we need an ai driven cdp or whatever magic word they're using and they go like if you have this in place you will outsmart them outgrow them in the next three years you know beyond but first have the basics in place and what i often see is a collection of software rather than a stack and they have not been integrated yet there's no plan behind there's no customer data model there is no marketing architecture behind it there's not even an alignment with i.t if you ask i.t whatever is
the policy they normally say we have one but it's in my head and you know even big corporates and then by all means make sure you have that somehow nailed down and not in every detail it's more like you know guard rails to explain this is our martech governance structure this is when we onboard an off-boarder system and this is what you need you know as a system of records a tool that helps us with the current business model and this is tools of innovation you know you play around pick and choose as long as you can comply with you know legal uh terms that's it legal like uh privacy uh gdpr yeah so uh we're a great uh uh you know chat this was uh and um thinking about the portuguese market um and the the you know we've also seen a great growth in the number of martech vendors here in portugal uh and we're now um we now have more than 120 solutions of marketing and sales technologies made in portugal it's it's a well-known fact that portugal despite being a small country and even economy uh as an amazing track record of innovation uh of uh and and technological state-of-the-art startups you know for instance we outrank all this all the countries in southern southern europe in the number of startups valued above one billion dollars you know unicorns like feedside talk desk outsystems farfetch and what i would like to know is thinking about the portuguese martech software houses and makers innovators what do you think is most notable uh in this in our own landscape um thanks for asking um as you know we have a big database of ten thousand vendors uh software vendors and we know where the headquarters sit so 120 residing in in portugal and and we did a little bit of research of course in preparation of the podcast and we see that um relatively speaking there's a lot of commerce and sales tech as well as management tech which is more like project management type of stuff and talent management so that's really striking maybe you have ideas why that is the case and and what we also see is that they have a similar amount of social and relationship type of tools so we're talking about customer success crm social publishing but less relatively a small piece is content and experience which is a really hardcore martech area so um i'm not sure why that is i was thinking you know i can imagine that maybe in portugal people like you know to emphasize and streamline the way we collaborate and and have a sales focus so that's why we have commerce and sales tech and management tech collaboration tooling out there and and but less in content and experience and and that's striking because content and experience is not only i think uh becoming the future but um so after cdps have been adopted i think then we know what our clients and leads are doing across all our touch points we also want to talk back you know with relevant content snackable content so i think content becomes very important and especially here in europe we have this challenge of many different languages you know and many different um strategies per country and that's much less in in the states though so i i was expecting from a european country more content a type of tools content driven and they're great tools out there zoom guide i don't know if you've seen that one you know ai driven story writing it's it's fantastic but yeah i see uh other tools like unbabel um the translation is so cool and and uh or planless you know the one for projects all all three i just named are ai driven and it's really state of the art and i think that's that's really a great next move so if i tell you about these differences compared to europe compared to the world what do you think yes um it was surprising to me uh when we started working on this portuguese martech landscape almost two years ago the the sheer number of of uh companies um doing that um also we have um you know a very innovative um mindset in what entrepreneurial in this new generation of entrepreneurs who are already um we have a an engineering background okay and they've they've been also seeing these these opportunities um and probably uh you know the the scale has to be bigger you know um has to be greater the scale of these these companies so that's why i mentioned the the experience with our own unicorns none of them you know purely in our tech uh startup but they understood that in order to compete around the world you need to to to have you know a faster pace um strategy and and a greater um organization um and this is what i think for our martech companies in portugal we would uh be um it would be of value to them you know to grow not not just you know finding the uh the gap uh in in what portuguese uh martech um landscape uh exists but you know finding the way to scale it um outside of portugal yeah and then you're touching upon a challenge that you see in europe in martech is the scale so we have a lot of countries so you don't your home market is not necessarily big you know maybe germany france uk of course but then those are the bigger countries so um yeah that is norm normally a hurdle and it's much to be learned from indeed far-fetched and outsystems and talk desks those companies how do you do that and then again there's another phenomena that's very interesting so there's there's a long tail of martech right so the head is around 500 tools and then 9500 are smaller ones and um we had some conversations scott brinker myself about this and we basically could link or yeah we thought that the creators economy so many people that are just digital nomads digital natives that think you know i don't need a big company i don't need to be stock listed i don't need to have an ipo i have a brilliant income no boss this is great you know and maybe i don't need to skill so what i think shopify calls in e-commerce mom and pop stores you know maybe there is some phenomenal like mom and pop software i don't know and there are people that say i don't need a big company so i think that this aspect of the creators economy the gig economy is also out there where you have smaller companies and you don't need to grow you don't need to scale yeah that's great so thinking about these portuguese martech vendors that are now in the early stages of a go-to-market strategy friends um what would be the best roadmap for them to conquer a worldwide market that is dominated mainly by us brands um yeah it's it's coming back to the whole market right so if you have a big homogeneous uh market um it's it's a lot easier to scale so and this is one of the things i discussed with uh jonathan from actito a belgium company they have four languages right officially in their country or are three but a bunch and the thing is that it gives a tremendous advantage in how you set up your tool because you have to have your database ready for multilingual and i'm not only talking about the content that your clients put in there but also the labels of your software um so those two aspects it's it's something you know maybe trivial but that's one of the many examples that can slow you down and they now have something very scalable very robust but imagine a company in the us starting at the same time not having to conquer those hurdles they can scale up more easily and they have a bigger base you know but then they have the problem of okay how do you conquer europe so it's it's um you know a double-sided uh type of challenge um so i i would say yeah one of the strengths is you know multilingual multi-strategy multicultural currency multi-legal maybe even because yes we have a european union but not everything is synchronized in terms of legal so um and and that's that's a big challenge make sure you get that in place and in in the case of portugal i think spain is a very similar market you know and then maybe you conquer france italy and maybe that's the approach another one uh could be go to uk and try to establish something there i've seen some canadian sorry norwegian companies do that with great success so they first had some clients in their own home market but then moved to the uk opened an office there and because uk is the biggest martech market in europe just so we know and it's also one of the stepping stones for many uh american companies to you know to conquer europe so that might be also a strategy i'm just telling you and you know echoing of all the stuff i see happening i'm not sure if it helps yeah but it's great great advice yeah um you've said and and i completely agree with you that the history of the development of martech has mainly four stages you know coming from the first decade where um crm you know and it was all about having clients there in one place uh to a second decade when it was all about marketing automation and having leads all information of a prospect in one place and now we are in the era of data you know big data we don't talk about big data that's further proof that we are on that era it's it's normal um and cdp's customer uh uh data platforms uh coming to place and probably these are my thoughts on that uh maybe substituting the crm category in the near future i don't know probably um so and you've also said that the next decade the fourth era of martech will be all about content and making making sure that um we customize content to each of our customers unique contexts right so for a company that is now on the early stages or stage of martech using the basic tools from a crm how can they leap frog from this stage into this fourth stage that you mentioned using automation data content experience technology um that's that's a very good question um yeah it starts with crm you need to have an idea of what your client is doing and uh there's yeah you said maybe cdp's will replace crm or maybe crm will reinvent itself so the first stage was just i think the first crms just replaced the excel sheet because that's the very very first crm that everybody starts with and then your next step is a real crm but it's it's okay maybe it's just a rolodex on steroids initially and so then but the co wants you know sales forecasting because that's what the investors or the board or the owners want um and and then you go into more opportunity management and then funnel management so then you get your your reinvented type of crm and crm is now also becoming very important because of first party data so i think crm will reinvent itself and renew itself and by the way we see this with all kinds of technologies so cms reinvents itself with headless you know it's it's amazing and the same is now it's spreading into headless cdp headless e-commerce so yeah this this reinvention of these categories is is happening all the time so i think crm is the number one second is is marketing automation your lead management very important and i think the cdp era um is and i you probably will see similar things happening and by all means share that with me um in your practice is that with cdb we're really trying to understand the client what on earth are they trying to do with their product and what on earth are they doing and understanding when we talk to them communicate with them by all different channels and because frankly we don't have a clue and i think this cdb era is really the era of marketing because in the core marketing is really understanding the client you know qualitative and quantitative data it's the first time you can connect your gut feeling to data and the other way around and then say okay this is what a client really wants and and there's a simple thing that i always advise i teach at business schools and universities and say please create a persona and the first question is isn't that outdated maybe but it's your exercise for you to understand um how do i connect what i always feel and felt when i'm talking to a client linked to the data that we have already in a crm in a marketing automation tool and now suddenly you go like hey i understand what they're trying to solve and i don't need a new cdp to find the 200 000 data points i now know with my persona exercise there are only three or ten and the rest you know are satellite data points they're just feeding into those ten main ones so that is the real i think step to getting to a mode where you can harness a good understanding of your client into your stack into your because a stack technology you know that's where your data sits so it's it's the two things together and and i see a lot of people that you know come to me and say i need an ai driven cdp why because we don't have enough data yes you do you have plenty of data you just didn't crunch it yet yeah but it's not telling me what to exactly you're the marketer you should try to understand what the data is trying to tell you because if you open up a cdp you implement it it will show you a nice customer journey and i've done some trainings you know with uh cdp tools um and then my my question is always okay great we have this customer journey it's visualized and it's cool you see from which point in the in the funnel they're going to another point and some people flow back and now what does this tell me what do i know now about the client that i didn't know before why are they going back is it a piece of content that's missing am i not understanding a cta right call to action that's that's the real conversation and only if we understand that point we'll go into the fourth decade of content because then we know what to say and then we can produce that snackable content yeah and that would add to that so personas would be a first corning stone you know a milestone to to to get a good grip on because you would you would know all the data points that you need and that's such a great advice maybe you don't need that many data points great advice and i would add to that uh also business process mapping and optimization um and that has to do obviously also with customer experience and customer journey uh mapping um so before you think about thinking about technology you have to you know go back to the drawing board and yes yes and and it will help you to save you know it saves you from buying the wrong software or software you don't need and and that's the most important thing if you buy or purchase or use one piece of software tell in one sentence why you need it and what will break down if you don't use it switch it off for a day i you know this is what uh startups say you know to understand if your tool is sticky with your custom base switch it up for a day if you don't get a complaint you know start a new business because it's not working and it's the same here i mean and and you don't have to switch it off literally probably you'll have a downtime every now and then and then you know but that's very important and then what breaks down what process or even what revenue will you miss if you if it breaks down that is so important and and then you bring it really back to the core of what you really need yes there are 10 000 tools out there but probably only five make a difference for you and and that you can only find by asking this single question what if we don't have it what breaks down what can't we do and still then you can purchase a tool for experimentation's sake so in some cases we say please reconfigure your crm because it now it has a new function you know after 10 years you implemented it and update your marketing automation tool and play around with the cdp the cdp market by the way is still evolving it's not that mature compared to crm compared to automation because it's younger you know but play around so by the time that you have fully harnessed your crm automation and everything that's linking into that um in the next three to five years you're good to go with cdp and then you will blow everybody away and then we'll be a real turbo booster so yes start with your cvp today but don't present it as a cornerstone presenter something we're gonna play around with and then we really need to crunch that data to get those data points and fully understand what the client means yeah starting with with a small pilot uh that's that's perfect and one question that it always comes up you know the old and eternal question build or buy because you know last year martech alliance um our friends at the uk they reported last that's about 55 of customer uh data platforms marketing data platforms were either custom developed or incorporated into uh off-the-shelf some of the shelves solution um so why do you think this still happens this 55 percent uh surprised me and um is it really better to build a tailor-made solution solution than to buy a best-of-breed off-the-shelf solution very good question uh there are two aspects to this specifically to cdp's i would say you know it's an immature market um a young market maybe it's a nicer way to putting it it's it's absolutely great software out there don't get me wrong um but then there is also um i see some of those cdp initiatives driven by it and and they're really savvy with that stuff and they sometimes say you know what i use a public cloud and then i can build my own i can create a golden record i can make sure we have all the references in place and then in a data federated way feed into other systems so that is a great thing this is about the maturity of the technology so that's one aspect but there's also another aspect of how mature is your company so if you talk about the hype cycle of gartner they apply to the market in large at large and in companies you also have a hype cycle so sometimes crm is maybe not new in the market but new to your company and you will go through that same hype cycle and the idea is about the hype cycle when you're crossing the chasm so at the bottom or in your deepest you know depression as they call it or valley of despair or whatever that is the most beautiful point actually to achieve to reach it shouldn't be too low but make sure that by then you know exactly what you need that's the time you should start building maybe stuff yourself because by then you know this is those three core features i really need or those two modules i don't need the whole enterprise thing i just need these three things and then you go out and see oh that's interesting i need a and b and for a there's a best of breed but for b there's none and we need to do it ourselves and we spoke you know in a preparation about healthcare and pharma but also real estate those are industries that sometimes come up with their own cdp or their own crm and say we have our own because we're slightly different so there you see that the maturity in the market also can be adopted in the maturity of the reflected in the maturity of the company so um and again here just like with cdp's earlier i'm not saying don't ever build you can play around and if you talk about build by the way in some cases um google sheets you know or excel it's the duct tape of martech some some call it you know you can play around and and do a rapid prototyping and see what you really need and then go to the market and say hey there's a nest of breed so but really build a crm i would do after you know crossing the chasm and before that i would just play around with uh you know integrations there's beautiful stuff like um ipas tools you know integration platform as a service where you can connect different platforms yeah play around with that and then after the chasm you know go fully fleshed in outsystems type of solutions you know and and i've seen i see this at companies but only if you know your requirements well otherwise you're just trying to become a software vendor and not the one you know that is specific in automotive but just a software vendor and that's and that's dangerous yeah sorry don't run after the train you know that there's a a perfectly established market um that is developing you know the next um generation of crms for instance don't go after that trend unless it and unless what you've just said is true and and it's such an uh interesting view on that i would also add that if for instance your business model depends on that if your data and your uh and the relationship with your customers uh depend on that particular tool maybe you you are better off with a you know a tailor-made tool a hundred percent absolutely and you see this sometimes in the um the system of records like crm and automation but only if you really know what two or three aspects of such a tool are are keys for your business uh you see it more with systems of differentiation so those are the that's the next layer so they they you know those are systems that set you apart from competition and we're talking about product uh configurators or dealer locators those kind of tools that you know make you dif yeah there i can imagine that you go for a build um in that case yeah so we're just almost finishing our amazing conversation and i've been learning so much from you friends thank you but i still have one final uh question you know regarding the growth of this software market and and vendors it's it's absolutely noticeable as we've said um but i think that there is still a gap uh in the market that has to do with how we answer the following question um how can we use these technologies to deliver growth uh to our business and we've talked about that of course uh during this um this conversation but to me the the the answer is as two sides you know i believe that from the customers the client side i mean the the end users the marketing departments and sales um there ha there is an increasing need to have a chief martech officer for instance or in martech or martin opps uh that has a clearly defined role and ownership regarding this this matters on the other side on the supplier side um agencies uh consultants uh you know there there is a need to have more companies like uh liminal and martech tribe more consultants doing what you and i have been doing uh how can a an smb company um that is now starting its digital transformation journey achieve success um using you know uh with the help of a martech consultant um what i think is it's of course a a knowledge booster you know in injection and all the experience so and and what you see happening is that you mentioned it already that the role of marketing ops which is not so familiar and and common in europe but it's the role of that business savvy and tech savvy person you know that can translate i.t requirements into marketing and the other way around those people are invaluable you you really need those and give them a budget give them a title give them a a mandate um and and then take it from there and and they need to define the guard rails of okay this is when we use a tool and this is when we off board a tool so i see like i said i don't see a lot of stacks i see many you know collections of software and that are not integrated they don't talk to each other and the legacy is humongous so they're you can't switch them off because um there's a lot of data in there um so recently i worked with a supermarket retail chain and then they said from now on we will and it's it's really a big operation um we will uh set up a team of people that will focus on exactly not only finding the right tools but also decommissioning them so implement with decommissioning in mind um that's really where you go into what i call a plug-and-play architecture you know you switch on switch off stuff and pretty easily not only technically also data wise and and i think this is a role that it cannot do marketing cannot do this is typically something marketing ops do and we did some research and we looked into how many people and companies have and marketing ops team so in the states it was over 80 percent in europe it's 30 and there were some other additional 30 that have a marketing ops team but call it differently um and the ratio also difference between one market one marketing ops person and to five marketing people that's what you see in smb in the large corporates it's one to 15. so and that's an interesting rule of thumb if you want to size up you know and build some marketing operation teams and capacity then those are very important numbers to to play with and to see what type of budget you would need to set up such a team yeah great advice friends um this is all the time we have for for now uh thank you very much for coming to our podcast it was a pleasure and an honor to have you here and i've learned so much with you thank you same here i i would like to thank you again you know for helping out with the european super graphic and the landscape finding all those tools an amazing job and as you've seen in the super gratitude graph you are on the top there so thanks a million without you guys we can't do this so great stuff thank you thank you friends so this was the second edition of liminal's martech talks podcast liminal is the first portuguese company that specializes in strategic consulting and martech operations we've been helping uh clients to grow their business through marketing strategies and technologies such as crm uh automation business intelligence in this podcast we will continue to bring you interviews with business leaders that are at the front forefront of the digital transformation of marketing and sales departments so that your business can also grow in this new technological age thank you all for being with us today and we'll see you again at our next episode which will have none other than Scott Brinker as our guest so you are all invited thank you thank you very much Start transforming your business at liminal.pt
2022-06-13