How to "Pre-lease" vertical space in the Martech landscape

Jobs-to-be-Done in Action

For more context, see my previous post where I layout the entire model for developing a qualified lead

The Martech landscape is exploding!

People have built careers around a specific industry or technology; but are those days over? We used to build careers within a single company. With the increasing pace at which new technologies are developed, people are constantly switching gears to get a foothold into something that can quickly disappear. Seemingly great ideas suddenly vanish because the great idea could not find a problem that enough customers wanted to solve...they couldn't zero-in on the location of new value.

We need to find a way to align these new developments to problems that customers are trying to solve more quickly, and more accurately to bring some stability to an increasingly unstable environment

The Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2020): Martech 5000 is actually 8000 brands that are trying to win in a confined space. They are trying to incrementally improve upon the theater of marketing and it would seem that there is so much opportunity that more and more companies rush into the space for a land grab. But, is there really any land left? Are they going vertical? How much higher can they go in the little space that remains without collapsing or getting blown over?

The solutions available grew by 13.6% last year, but did the problem grow? If you take into account the 619 that went away between 2019 and 2020 (disappeared or gobbled up and disappeared) which represent a 9% departure, then the number jumps to 24.5%. So, only nine percent failed. Others were aquired by non-martech companies, so they aren't included in the failure rate because they weren't consolidated. So that must mean that 91% are wildly successful!

The answer must be yes, because the Martech Landscape is growing.

Here’s what you don’t see

We have to ask ourselves if the growth in solution options is equivalent to growth in revenue and profitability for each of those options. Are customers looking for more capability, simpler user interfaces, a chance to test an unproven concept, or what?

Another problem we face is that there is not an infinite supply of customers, as the following chart demonstrates...

The fact is that the long-tail of the Martech Landscape has an increasingly small install base. It’s very much like the long tail of your website…the pages that no one goes to. So all of that vertical space we think we have is actually unleased. In the world of commercial real estate lending, you would normally ask for a pre-lease threshold before lending money to the builder. The investment community clearly has not implemented this level of underwriting. Let me be clear:

The horizontal space - as defined - is full. The vertical space - as defined - seemingly has no value - or no one knows where to find the elevator - which is why these thousands of companies cannot get the install base needed to survive in the long run.

Note: I did not say short run. Investors prop these failures up for far too long.

The article above goes on to justify all of this, which is really a disservice to anyone that is actually looking to achieve long-term growth, and not just ride it out with solid operations. That may work for your family business, but it won't work in the public markets.

What questions aren't we asking?

• What are we doing now that we need to do better? This is a good question, because there is usually something you can do better. The sub-questions are a) do you know how to define it, and b) is their enough opportunity to justify allocating resources to?

• What are we not doing now that that would help our current customers are trying to accomplish? This is a better question because customers always have to cobble together methods, tools, and services to get the real job done. The real job is not campaign management, or contact management, or opportunity management, or marketing resource management. These functions are incomplete solutions when viewed through the lens of jobs. Lest you think a portfolio of them enables a complete job, think again. I’ve already dismantled that case in earlier posts.

• What data or assumptions are we working with that could be wrong? Many of us are forced to work with watered down "analyst" research that attempts to a) stroke egos and b) serve all audiences at the same time. They also ask hypothetical questions of hypothetical customers. This happens in marketing departments as well. Ask me how I know. This does nothing but give us false confidence in bad decisions. What I find amazing is that we keep repeating the process.

• What type of research do we need to do to identify what we're not helping with so we can learn more? Should we focus on our current capabilities, or do we need some stretch goals? Do our researchers have what it takes to do this? Are we able to get out of our comfort zones to find real opportunities for growth, identify near and long term outcomes that we may need to grow into, and then roll our sleeves up to execute on what we can, when we finally can? If the answer is no, I bid you farewell...[exit here]

Where does Jobs-to-be-Done come in?

I knew you'd ask me that!

As I pointed out in "How Does the MarTech Stack Stack Up?" there are many capability gaps on the front-end of the Job "Develop a Qualified Lead", for example. And that's just one job.

What are emerging vendors successfully addressing?

True Journey Analysis and Orchestration engines (abstraction layers, not the ones erupting out of a silo) are addressing these steps to varying degrees:

1. Engage with prospects regarding your offering

2. Validate a prospect's level of interest

3. Increase a prospect's level of interest

4. Filter out disinterested prospects

5. Conclude your marketing activities

In addition to the success metrics I'm about to highlight, products like “Thunderhead One” have solved the integration problem in a new way; meaning there is no need to rip-and-replace your existing stack - or build an expensive integration hub - just so you can see interactions from anonymous-to-customer and well into the post-customer journey spectrum. They get it done differently, which is why the can do things no one can do, quickly and more accurately.

But let's dive into some specifics to understand this more clearly; even if from a purely qualitative perspective. One step can show us how to better understand vertical value.

The map above highlights job steps that Thunderhead targets for delivery [black]. They attack multiple steps in the job (horizontal value). They don't get the entire job done, but they've found new value in the vertical space (get a step done better) while also making moves in the horizontal space (more steps - especially that last one). It's still a hard battle against entrenched brands with deep moats. But, what TH sees is more of the horizontal space, where as others seem constrained to a single box (or a little bit of a few boxes) - usually an execution (theater) step with a bit of monitoring thrown in.

So, let me show you the theater step and where they are adding new value.

Engage with prospects regarding your offering

Thunderhead excels in this step (not to diminish performance in other steps). Assuming they have all the correct inputs, they can execute better than anything I've seen. The real question is how much consulting it takes to get all of the inputs necessary to configure the platform to live up to its promise? Systemizing the up-front consulting can be viewed as opportunity knocking. You just need to know where to look.

1. [Know the information you captured from prior interactions, e.g., access to a system of record, transaction history, preferences set, etc.] - TH can do this. It has the ability to read/write to any system. I've seen this and it's real. It can talk to all systems or it can pull data from a centralized warehouse (obviously simpler)

2. [Use the information from your prior interactions] - this is where the orchestration part comes in. They can put relevant content in front of [known | unknown] users who are interacting with touchpoints in real-time, and they can also put data into systems that need to be updated

3. [Coordinate resources across channels, e.g., messages, tools, etc.] - since there is a centralized set of rules and content they are able to ensure that it gets to the right place, and in the right format

4. [Coordinate resources across touchpoints, e.g., messages, tools, etc.] - I see the days of landing pages coming to an end (sorry agencies). Users don't need to bookmark landing pages to find that offer they noticed last week. The system knows where they left off (even if anonymous) and puts relevant content right back in front of them regardless of the touchpoint they are interacting with...until they determine it's no longer relevant based on continuing interactions

5. [Monitor the prospect across channels] - imagine visualizing the movement of a prospect or customer across websites, apps, and even physical stores. You don't have to anymore. It’s real

6. [Monitor the prospect across touchpoints] - Tracking movement within a channel - no matter which channel - is also a reality

7. [Analyze the prospect across channels] - since you can track it, you can analyze it. They have advanced AI to help us mere mortals out

8. [Analyze the prospect across touchpoints ]- ditto

9. [Offer resources to help your prospect make decisions, e.g., information, tools, human assistance, etc.] - you have a complete set of interaction data that you can use in conjunction with other information to ensure that the prospect has what they need, when they need it, to make the decisions they need to make. Decision journeys are a real thing

10. [Capture information from your prospect interactions] - Oh, I'm not going into detail here. There are lots of hidden gems.

11. [Store information from your prospect interaction] - Identity is stored and built up as well as all of the interactions that go with it. Ultimately it links it to a customer (new or existing). More importantly, it can store data in other systems to ensure continuity - or make it available when necessary so there is no duplication. Integration struggles can melt away. In latter job steps, it can also close the loop on sales to ensure that a CRM system is updated with the data needed to evaluate the lead development process (but I'll cover that in another post)

Each of these is performed in a superior fashion to other options. Why? Because they understand the importance of being able to accomplish these things quickly, and more accurately than the competition. The fact that you get the same fidelity regardless of the underlying technologies is what makes this so powerful. Most siloed vendors that claim these capabilities lose fidelity the further they get from home.

They had to see the problem differently and ask themselves “What if we could do that?” Then it was a simple exercise of figuring out how. I’ve heard too many people come back with “it can’t be done” and it gets tiring. It can’t be done now. But if you don’t identify the objectives of your customers now, someone else will solve the problem later.

This serves to explain how to identify and address vertical value where it was seemingly mature. Don’t let a technology vendor tell you that you need to invest in their entire stack to do what something like Thunderhead can do. We all know that many of these stacks are cobbled together through acquisitions and rarely work as promised. The answer to the problem (today) is an abstraction lay with a light touch. More bang, less bucks.

The key to all of this is to identify the performance metrics end users use to evaluate the job they are trying to accomplish, not the performance of an existing solution. In the next post I’ll do a brief overview of finding the horizontal value, where adjacencies are seemingly hard to find.

---

Is it helpful to view jobs, steps and metrics with regard to current solutions? Let me know and may I will take deeper dives to bring you something most analysts cannot.

Please don’t forget to like, subscribe, comment and share!