A recent survey of US marketers by digital marketing firm Walker Sands Communication found that 62% of marketers had led a marketing technology purchasing process in the past three years.  At firms with fewer than 50 employees, 79% of marketers had managed the decision making process with the percentage dropping to 41% at larger organizations.

Amongst millennials, 55% had served in a purchasing leadership role.  “The new martech buyer journey is being shaped by a new generation of marketers,” said Walker Sands’ Director of the Marketing Technology Practice. “B2B brands shouldn’t underestimate the influence end users and millennials have on the marketing technology stack.”

Walker Sands provided the following tip when marketing or selling to millennials:

Millennials are beginning to step into decision-making roles, so it’s important to understand how to sell to them. They’re more tech-savvy than their older counterparts. Emphasize how your technology is more innovative and user-friendly than competitors. Also, it’s important to get more specific with millennials. Exactly how does your technology help them in their day-to-day role? When trying to reach millennials, spend more money on online display and social media marketing because they’re influenced by more information and a variety of content.

“With so many people potentially involved, B2B marketers have to understand who’s driving and influencing the decisions for specific pieces of technology,” said Parro. “Sometimes it’s the CMO, but the end user often has almost as much pull.”

Two-thirds of marketing professionals believed that they were able to provide input into the marketing technology tools used by their firm.

Martech purchasing committees most commonly consist of three to five members (57%) with one-tenth of the committees containing ten or more members.

The biggest obstacles to implementing new marketing technology issues were budget (69%), difficulty of implementation or integration (35%), and internal resistance to change (33%).

When it comes to conducting research, laptops and PCs continue to be the primary tool with 91% of marketing professionals beginning their research on these devices and 92% conducting all or most of their research on their laptops or PCs.  Nevertheless, marketing content should be mobile-enabled as non-research phases (e.g. lead nurturing, quick lookup) are more likely to be from mobile devices.

When beginning to research solutions, buyers see themselves as in control with thirty percent first learning about the technology from peers or colleagues, twenty percent on news publications or blogs, and thirteen percent from search engines.  Sales reps initiated the education process only five percent of the time.

Sales reps also lack much influence over the final decision with only eleven percent of purchasers finding sales reps to be very influential and 58% somewhat influential.  Unsurprisingly, marketers placed more weight on vendor websites or blogs (89% said they were very or somewhat influential) and vendor content (86% found it to be very or somewhat influential).  Trust, though, was placed in peer recommendations (63% very influential), online reviews (44% very influential), and analyst reports (33% very influential).  Of the eleven information sources they asked about, vendor’s social media accounts were the least influential with 48% saying they had no influence on their decisions.

The Martech data aligns closely with a Conference Board study which found that 57% of the purchasing decision is made before reaching out to a sales rep.  Only 14% of purchasers reached out to sales early in the process (zero to twenty percent completed) and only 46% raised their hands to vendors before completing half of their decision making process.  A full quarter of purchasers are eighty percent complete with their purchasing decision before contacting vendors.

The report noted that “Marketers are doing so much of their own technology research that many have already made a decision and are ready to purchase before contacting a sales rep.”  In total, slightly over one-third of decision makers didn’t self-identify as a purchaser until they were at the decision or purchasing phase leaving little opportunity for companies to actively influence the decision.

Walker Sands advised marketers, “Your customers are almost to a decision before they even contact you. The key is to make sure that your technology is fully represented within the content they’re consuming and that this content is aligned with reviews and other news articles online. Buyers will rule you out if they can’t find the information they’re looking for or are confused during the discovery and research phases. Once you make it to the decision and purchase stages, make sure that you understand the prospect’s needs and why your product is right for them.  Remember, they already know the basics, so you’ll have to sell them on why your product fits their unique needs in order to convince them to make that final decision.”

As to publications, the top five sources of information on marketing technology are all business, technology, or general purpose publications: Forbes (44%), Wired (37%), Wall Street Journal (35%), BusinessWeek (31%), and New York Times (31%).  Only three advertising and marketing publications were seen as go to resources by at least ten percent of those surveyed: AdAge (30%), eMarketer (17%), and MarketingProfs (13%).

“Understanding the New MarTech Buyer Journey” was based upon a July survey of 313 marketing professionals.  21% of the respondents were Managers, 26% Senior Executives, and 31% Coordinators or Specialists.