How to Increase the ROI on Marketing Technology Innovations
The graph on the left shows the rate of consumer technology adoption for three technologies marketers on which heavily relied on in their marketing mix.
Landlines took over 40 years to be adopted by 40% of US households. After the introduction of mobile phones, the 40% adoption mark was reached in half that time and smartphones have reached the same threshold in merely 10 years. Tablets were adopted at an even faster rate.
Marketing technology
What this tells us is that any relevant technological evolution is extremely likely to attain a critical mass relevant to us marketers. So we need to remain focused on future technological evolution in order to be able to incorporate them in our marketing mix.
Since a few years industry leaders and trendwatchers are predicting artificial intelligence, augmented reality, marketing automation, etc. to become the next big thing.
How come that these technologies have not yet been exploited to the fullest?
The matter of the fact is that the upcoming technologies do not come cheap and require ever increasing budgets which in the meanwhile are already fragmented over all channels that have been developed in the past century.
The gap between technological evolution and adoption on the one hand and the increasing cost of implementing new technologies stresses the importance of ROI on technology investments.
This is exactly why I would like to call upon marketers to think strategically about technological innovation.
Only implement a new technology if you can answer the question why you have included it in your marketing mix and how it will contribute to your ultimate business objectives. Ask yourself the question whether Augmented Reality makes sense for your customer.
How can it add value? The hardest decision is not to invest in a technology everybody is enthousiastic about.
My expectation is that future succesfull companies are those who can focus technology investments on a very limited set of value adding innovations.
