How marketing and technology teams can collaborate for business success

Traditionally, marketing and tech teams were taken to be essentially very different. But over time, both the verticals have collaborated. In the present hour, marketers will need to decode the new rules of engagement brought on by groundbreaking new technologies and fresh platforms.

At e4m’s Martech Summit 2023, held in Gurugram, industry stalwarts like Devanshu Bhatia, VP-Marketing, Oberoi Group, Mayank Bhargava, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Fortis Healthcare, Nikhil Kumar, Vice President, India and South East Asia, mediasmart, and Pooja Baid, CMO, Versuni India got in a discussion to explore how both marketers and technologists together can synergise to achieve common goals.

Rahul Poddar, Head - MarTech, Narayana Health, who chaired the session, set the context of the discussion and said, “If we rewind about 15-20 years from now, the conversations around marketing and technology used to be very different. Now, both of them are on the same platform and will need to collaborate and communicate.”

But how can these two teams collaborate effectively? Since the common language used in the two verticals are very different and their journeys of development over the years have been very distinct too.

Bhatia opines that today one of the core and most fundamental common languages is to have that common objective which is aligned between both the stakeholders. Until and unless there is no synergy or a common KPI between the two ecosystems, that common language cannot form.”

Bhargava added, “If the marketing and the tech teams need to collaborate, having a common or a shared language is extremely necessary. This has been between business and tech domains since decades but marketing has now joined that stream where technology is getting much more ingrained into the overall ecosystem.”

It's important for marketing and tech teams to understand each other’s vocabulary which helps organisations have more effective communication and explain their point of view better.

“For collaboration to exist not just on paper but in real action too, it is extremely important that the teams understand what the other team is trying to put forth which is where language is one of those forms that becomes necessary,” the Fortis executive added.

Versuni India was earlier opting for traditional marketing methods but now most of their campaigns are tech-enabled. Baid shared the transition journey and said, “Consumer durables was one of the first industries to realise the power of tech and data. This was majorly because, as a product forward industry, the consumer durables sector has a stronger connection with technology as a space.”

Speaking of how organisations can understand the importance of technology in marketing. Kumar highlighted when you look at it simplistically, marketing and technology coming together has been happening forever. When Mark Zuckerberg introduced advertising on Facebook ages ago, that was Martech too. When 10-12 years back all brands wanted to get onto social media, clearly the old age traditional media was translating into social.

The mediasmart’s VP added, “Especially during Covid, everyone became more educated about tech. SInce we all had wifi at home, we learnt what poor network or internet speed meant because we had to attend meetings from home. Now this has nothing to do with marketing and yet everything to do with it since consumers had to be reached separately during the pandemic and targeting changed too.”

Marketing has always been a function to drive consumer sentiment with the right messaging and drive brand favorability which further translates to intent to purchase and eventually to purchase. Now, the vehicle could be offline but technology has enabled that vehicle to move faster into the consumer’s houses.

But when it comes to making the final decision, is it the CIO or CMO who gives out the final word?

Kumar said, “It is never one shoe fits all because if your purpose of using the MarTech stack is media optimisation, then probably the CMO is a more powerful person on that. If the objective is to create a CDP then you would need a CIO to be a part of that decision-making process.”

As a recommended tip for the partnership between marketing and technology to thrive successfully, Bhatia advised that depending upon the lifestyle and ecosystem of the company, it is very important that they sit down together and develop a roadmap to walk that road together.

Bhargava said, “Understanding each other, explaining ideas, understanding the pain points and having a common language is very necessary.”

Kumar added, “Everyone's cup of tea is not your cup of tea. Some teas are there to make you go to sleep while others are there to wake you up. You have to understand what is the purpose of your marketing and which technology is solving that. Also your current ecosystem should be ready to adopt that technology as well.”

The Versuni executive said, “Define your picture of success, what is it that you really want to achieve out of this partnership. And secondly, ask a lot of questions so you understand more about technology and MarTech stacks. Lastly, be open to hearing genuine answers of the questions you are asking.”

Poddar concluded by adding a tip. “Co-owning some KPIs would be really helpful since the KPI for both the teams is very different.”