Gestalt: Martech and ‘marchitecture’ — customer first

by Leeya Hendricks (@LeeyaHendricks) When was the last time you had a memorable customer experience, be it the purchase of a product or service? How has technology enabled that end-to-end engagement, building an all-inclusive eco-system that makes you truly part of and feel integral to the entire journey?

For example, I went for jog on my way to my yoga class, and realised I’d left my bottle of water at home, along with my wallet. However, I had my smart watch. This allowed me to

1. use Apple Pay to purchase another water, so no card needed and
2. simply stop, use Siri to access maps as part of my run and allocate the nearest corner café for a quick purchase of a new water but
3. More importantly, as intended, use to track my fitness goals for the day so it just added to edging closer to achieving my daily exercise activity and through an effortless, seamless experience.

What is ‘marchitecture’?

Delivering a great customer experience is more important than ever before. Business leaders need to keep pace with the connected consumer and a customer journey which is increasingly mobile and voice-enabled. So, what is a ‘marchitecture,’ and why should it be an essential part of your customer strategy?

It can bridge the gap between your technology infrastructure and your customers’ needs. A marketecture (or marchitecture) is a high-level representation of software or hardware architecture that has been designed with marketing requirements as a primary consideration. ^[1] To build the agility to transform the digital organisation and keep pace with the connected consumer is vital to having a strategy for developing an effective “marchitecture”, a programme and plan to ensure that your product and technology are positioned to stand out from the crowd and may easily be absorbed by prospects and customers. An effective marchitecture may help you provide customers with experiences that satisfy them on their marketing journey and boost your overall martech positioning and performance.

What is ‘martech’?

Martech is the blending of marketing and technology. Virtually anyone involved with digital marketing is dealing with martech, since digital, by its very nature, is technologically-based. ^[2] As organisations begin to align more with their customers and their needs, this will result in potentially less-siloed initiatives and a convergence of spend across technology, data, media and content. This better serves the development of martech stacks and drives deeper personalisation, enriched experiences and improved engagement across all stages of the customer journey. However, the convergence of spend across martech and ad tech only reaps real rewards if the right technology architecture and marchitecture are in place.

One of the biggest challenges is how to make your organisation stand out in the overcrowded and increasingly complex martech ecosystem. There is a huge gap in the market where marketers and vendors need to communicate more clearly how their technology or offering meets market demand and the customer’s needs.

This is where a sound marchitecture helps bridge the gap between technology infrastructure complexity and a customer-centric solution. It’s the convergence of the technology you offer and the way you market to simplify your offering in a language that your customers can understand.

Marchitecture for success

Building your marchitecture is a journey and, as your organisation grows and evolves, your marchitecture will evolve, too. Going through a rigorous value proposition and marchitecture build helps you analyse and uncover competitor challenges and identify new opportunities.

An ideal marchitecture focuses on how your martech product solves problems for buyers. This allows business leaders to plot their solution in the marketing stack and deliver messaging across the whole organisation to sell, in line with key business objectives, like the simple example I shared earlier on with my wearable:

• a seamless experience and solution to a problem
• no inconvenience to the customer
• the customer’s needs are ultimately satisfied through delivering on the product and service value proposition.

[1] Ian Gorton (2006) Essential Software Architecture. Second edition, Springer. US.
[2] Margaret Rose (2016) What is marketecture. Techtarget. UK

 

Leeya Hendricks (@LeeyaHendricks) is a chartered marketer, global marketing strategist, a digital driver and a Women in Tech leader. She joined Oracle South Africa in 2016 as marketing director SADC, responsible for leading integrated modern marketing strategies for the business across the southern African region, and is currently marketing director for the ECEMEA region, based at Oracle UK, responsible for driving digital strategy, demand generation and transforms portfolios to develop sustainable revenue growth. Leeya contributes the new monthly column “Gestalt”, about putting customer first for sustainable business success, to Marklives.

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