Decoding the Marketing Technologist: Bridging Creativity and Technology
The marketing technologist role has been slowly rising and changing the industry to face its constant challenges and trends. Marketing is now entirely dependent on technology. This rapid market evolution is, however, causing an increased skills gap within the marketing technology niche.
Why? To put it simply, a marketing technologist takes care of marketing strategies on a more thorough level. From spotting market needs and introducing solutions to tracking marketing efforts and ensuring full technological integration throughout the entire process.
This being said, marketing technologists commonly have an IT or business development background that helps them tackle issues regular marketers aren’t yet accustomed to.
While strong technical skills are an inherent demand for this emerging role, this does not mean all marketers in the future will be known as technologists. Today’s email, ads, content, and other specific marketing duties will remain, but a digital marketing technologist fits in your team as a liaison among them.
The marketing technology landscape is growing each year, with 2020 seeing a growth of 13.6% that accounts for a total of 8,000 MarTech solutions currently on the market. With the MarTech industry estimated at 121.5bn USD, there’s only one role that’s here to stay to solve the puzzling demands.
So what is a marketing technologist?
Let’s have a thorough look at its implications and what other marketing technologists share on their experience.
What does a marketing technologist do?
The creative vs, analytical marketing debate is no longer valid with the rise of this new MarTech role. Although independent creative and analytical roles are not going away any time soon, marketing technologists find their way in the best teams through their ability to reunite both creative and tech knowledge skills.
Thanks to their adaptability, you’ll see them working full-time jobs in diverse industries and settings, including SaaS companies, corporate environments, and marketing and consulting agencies.
So how does a marketing technologist distinguish itself among the other marketing jobs?
Marketing technologists ensure that the strategies they adopt are adjacent to the general business goals a company might have. They go beyond their own teams to collaborate with other tech professionals within their organization when it comes to choosing and implementing appropriate software vendors.
They are also reliable contributors to the development of business strategies as their role extends outside of the pure marketing realm. All this being said, you’re probably seeing marketers with similar roles in management positions already. The field is still not well-defined so you’ll see MarTech specialists under role names such as Marketing Analyst, Marketing Innovator, Marketing Technician, VP of Marketing Technology, Chief Marketing Officer, or Director of Marketing Operations.
To better understand how a marketing technologist thinks and acts, let’s take the following common question:
What is our conversion rate?
The chief marketing technologist comes in and transforms this question into:
What data do we need to measure our conversion rate?
A marketing technologist will look at all data available to conclude what the conversion rate is but they’ll also take all influential factors and KPIs into consideration. They thoroughly analyze all resources, tools, and data sources available before giving an answer. This way, they’ll offer an accurate measurement of the conversion rate, providing any other secondary facts that might influence the final business goals that lie behind the initial What is our conversion rate? question.
We analyzed over 200 job description from Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed to see what the most common day-to-day responsibilities for this role are:
- Build and maintain a collaborative relationship with stakeholders, clients, partner agencies, and vendors
- Work with partners and colleagues from other teams like strategy, development, or user experience
- Develop expertise in web platforms like content management systems or email service providers
- Continuously define and refine processes and best practices
- Offer training and support for the marketing team when it comes to implementing the company’s technology
- Develop new integrations for the existing marketing technology stack
- Keep track of data quality within marketing technology products and create quarterly reports to show their impact
- Analyze and put together all the business requirements that can motivate a marketing technology decision
- Keep up with technology innovation and industry changes
- Handle the technical reviews of marketing technology products
- Manage the digital marketing technology budget and negotiate future terms for new software purchases
- Make use of MarTech solutions to increase demand generation and customer acquisition effectiveness
- Act as the senior administrator for all marketing technology products
- Make actionable recommendations consistent with clients digital marketing goals and KPIs
- Create audiences based on a data-driven approach to support program consistency and effectiveness throughout the implementation process
- Develop business cases to aid future marketing plans, projects, and budget requests
After doing the skills gap analysis the challenge of this new role is filling in the marketing technologist skills gap. Having different types of marketing technologists on a team to cover the distinct requirements you’ll have seems to be the only solution if you’re looking for a complete list of skills for your specific goals.
The next two marketing technologist persona profiles will show you where the clear contrasts lie and help you decide which type of MarTech expert is right for your team. Keep in mind there are more types and hybrid roles you can create yourself to focus on technology, operations, branding, marketing efforts, reporting, content, email, etc.
The data-oriented marketing technologist
| Main goal |
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| Diving deep into the infrastructure to make use of all potential data that can be used for both marketing and customer intelligence. |
| Common tasks and duties |
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The operations guru marketing technologist
| Main goal |
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| Improving workflows, reporting, and tech stack use throughout all marketing departments to aid marketing efforts. |
| Common tasks and duties |
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What skills does a marketing technologist need
Depending on the gaps a marketing technologist will fill, the skills will vary. Strong working knowledge of software development might not be necessary if you’ve already got the people to take care of this within your team. Instead, you’ll want to focus on finding a true creative or someone who can effortlessly bring all business matters together.
On the opposite side, you might need a tech-oriented professional to lead your marketing plan and instruct your non-technical marketers on using better platforms and crafting better strategies. After all, the goal is to create a wholesome customer experience where the digital marketing technologist’s core role is reimagining current campaigns and buyer journeys so they embody both creative and technical aspects.
To see what points of your past marketing strategies are lacking, have a look at your past reports. If prospects enjoy your messaging and branding but you’re not getting to as many as you want due to poor communication patterns, that’s a sign you might need a marketing technologist on your team to bring both sides together.
Here’s a complete list of marketing technologist skills to look for:
- Experience in building digital platforms
- Knowledge and experience of web architecture +ability to read and understand HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Working knowledge of varied technology platforms like content management systems, marketing automation tools, or email service providers
- Teamwork and strong communication skills
- Attention to detail and problem-solving capabilities
- Critical and research-oriented thinking
- Ability to manage multiple projects and teams simultaneously
- Self-starter mentality who can adapt in a fast-paced environment
- Creativity and innovative thinking that’s oriented towards keeping up with trends
- Strong time and project management skills
- Ability to motivate, train, and manage others
Note: Your requirements might be different from those above. Feel free to select only the ones you deem necessary for your business and add on complementary roles and skills you expect from a professional that will take care of these duties.
All in all, a marketing technologist is responsible for understanding customer needs and translating these into actionable solutions with the help of marketing technology platforms. By having a look at existing insights and gradually gaining more information on a company’s ideal clients, they’ll be able to both craft strategies that help you reach your general goals and teach others to do this.
