The Strategy-First MarTech Stack

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present today's episode, I am beyond thrilled to announce that our second in-person CMO Super Huddle is happening November 6th and 7th, 2025. In Palo Alto last year, we brought together 101 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness, and we're doing it again! Same venue, same energy, same ambition to challenge convention, with an added half-day strategy lab exclusively for marketing leaders. We're also excited to have TrustRadius and Boomerang as founding sponsors for this event. Early Bird tickets are now available at cmohuddles.com. You can even see a video there of what we did last year. Grab yours before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out, and it's going to be flocking awesomer!

You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddles Studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders of CMO Huddles. In this episode, Kathie Johnson and Kris Salazar share how they're getting more from their martech by regularly auditing their stacks, dropping tools that don't deliver value, and making sure the ones they keep actually get used. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Welcome to CMO Huddle Studio, the live streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B greatness. I'm your host, Drew Neisser, live from my home studio in New York City. And I have a confession: I suffer from bright, shiny tech syndrome, particularly when it comes to AI tools. I hear about a new one and I rush—I gotta download it on my computer, get it onto my phone. I'm like a sumo wrestler at an all-you-can-eat sushi bar. Inevitably, I never learn to use one of—you know, I'll have 10, and I'll never learn to use all of them to their full capacity, and I'm unable to merge most of them into my work habits. So I might be a metaphor for martech buyers across the board. It could happen. We've had a lot of conversations about way too much tech, but let's find out and explore it with some folks that are really making these purchase decisions. And so, helping you get the most out of your martech stack, with that, let's bring on Kathie Johnson, CMO of Sitecore, and a returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss pipeline playbooks and structuring marketing departments. Hello, Kathie, how are you and where are you this fine day?

Kathie: Hi, Drew. So great to be back. Thank you for inviting me. I am outside of San Francisco today.

Drew: All right. Well, we've got East Coast and West Coast covered, so that's cool. So let's talk about your overall approach. I mean, it's a big topic, but you know, managing and optimizing your approach at Sitecore.

Kathie: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the overall approach to managing martech is so critical for every CMO, right? It's one of the first things I do when I join an organization. I joined Sitecore about 14 months ago, and it's something I look at over and over again, Drew. Like, the first thing I always do is build that visual map of all of the martech that we have. I really like to have that big picture understanding, and how does it tie to my strategy, right? I think, Drew, every CMO would tell you, make sure your martech stack ties to your strategy. And I really want to identify where we are, where do we need to go? And there are four key questions I always ask. Like, do I have the right core, right? What are those critical elements tied to my company strategy? And for me, I always start at that center of that experience, which is our website. That's our digital front door. And so I evaluate CMSs, and then I look at all the other essentials around it. The second thing I look at is, is my martech stack complete? Does it align to my strategy? Are there gaps that I have that I need to consider? Do we have duplication, right? That is such a great way to streamline if you have duplication. The third thing is connected—really, what is that data flow that you have and that data access that you have? Looking at that visual map, how is it tied to your website? How is it tied to your CRM? What's integrated? What should still be integrated that you haven't integrated? And the last thing, and you fed into this a little bit—like, is it current? Is it scalable? Does it have AI that I should be leveraging? Does it have AI that I shouldn't be leveraging, right? But ensuring they have a stack that can scale with me and the company. So that's a lot, Drew.

Drew: It is, and let's unpack it. Let's go through some of those pieces so that—it's a great overview, and I love it. So core—you put the website at the core. I don't know if everybody puts a website at the core, but maybe they do. Is there anything else that you see at the core?

Kathie: Yeah, so it depends if you're looking—I really look at it from a sales and marketing perspective. So that CRM and that CMS, for me, are super core, right? And the reason why I put the CMS at my core is I'm thinking about it as a marketer. Like, I love when Gartner stated this at their event last year, that the one thing marketers can uniquely own that nobody else can own is their differentiation. And so that's the storytelling, the messaging, but it's also the delivery of that content and messaging, which is why, for me, the CMS is so core, because that is where you are serving up all the core content of differentiation to individuals. But yes, if you're going to look at it fully, like the CRM is absolutely also core.

Drew: So all right, so we've got CRM and CMS, and I'll link CMS—I totally buy that that is your window to the world. And yes, differentiate it. So now Sitecore is a CMS company.

Kathie: Yeah, not just CMS—it's everything from content strategy all through to publishing.

Drew: I'm guessing that your CMS is Sitecore.

Kathie: Drew, you're so smart.

Drew: I know, it's unbelievable. It's like, it's a Friday and I am on it. So you probably didn't have a choice there. But let's just talk about that. If you're another CMO and you're looking at it, and you're looking at your CMS, because this is not the only CMS you've worked with—what criteria would you give to another marketer when looking at a CMS? What does it need to do minimally and ideally?

Kathie: I think the first thing is, again, always tying your martech stack back to your strategy. What is it you fundamentally need to do? Are you trying to build engagement, build brand, build pipeline, right? So really important. Second, are you able to really personalize that experience for everyone coming? We all know that that's the nirvana of what we're trying to do, and I'm sure we'll get into this, but AI helps drive that quite a bit more. Third is, is it scalable and composable? Meaning, can you connect it to all those other pieces that are so important in the martech stack, and will it scale with you? Can you go to multi-sites, right, as opposed to individual sites? So it's everything from, hey, tying it to your strategy, understanding what you're trying to accomplish, making sure that it's scalable, making sure it has the latest technology in it, right? So if AI is important to you, and I believe it should be for everyone, does it have that capability or AI embedded in it in a safe and secure way?

Drew: Okay, so when you said from a strategy, do we want engagement? Yes. Do we want brand building? Yes. Do we want pipeline? Yes. I felt like at that moment, it was all three. I can't think of a marketer in our community that wouldn't want all three of those. So fine, we got to be able to do all of those with the website. Personalization is really interesting, and we're at an interesting moment in time. So I want to go there for a second, because there's this dance that we're talking about where it's like, hey, it's Kathie, she's arrived on cmohuddles.com. How do I deliver, like, an extraordinary, personalized experience because she's part of our community? We know a lot of data on her. And then there's, hey, possibly anonymized person, I'm not sure who you are, who comes to the website. What's state of the art for personalization in your mind right now that specifically CMOs should be thinking about or setting as a goal?

Kathie: Yeah, I think it's the ability to constantly test and improve all along the way and making sure—like, interesting, you said, am I using Sitecore? Absolutely, I'm using Sitecore. But when I joined Sitecore, Drew, actually, right away, we migrated to all of the latest technology, right? Because we were running the on-prem solutions, we moved to the SaaS solutions, and one of the things we made sure that we did is that the data access was both accessible and leverageable in our solutions, right? Because personalization is only as good as the data that you can bring in, right? So ensuring you have that CDP that's connected in the right way to your website, and you have the personalization capability in order to do all of the testing and constantly improve it as you go through all different levels of personalization.

Drew: And it's sort of remarkable. I've talked to a number of experts in this area, and not everybody has a CDP. Can you just explain what a CDP is and why it's so important for a company like yours?

Kathie: Sure. Yeah, so CDP is a customer data platform, and we use it where we store—it's our primary source of our customer information that we use within our website. So we're pulling in all that information right through our website, so that when people are returning back to our site, we're leveraging all of that knowledge. Every individual, each of us, have an expectation that our customers, our vendors, the sites that we visit—that if we've been there before, that they know a little bit about us. And that's what we're permitted to do, leveraging a CDP.

Drew: Right? And again, we get back to generative AI and uses of generative AI. Without this data, you have no hope of taking advantage. I mean, it is as simple as that. Good data, great data. I shared this recently, and it's so funny because at one point in time I spent working in a direct marketing agency, and the business model was pretty simple: 60% was the list, 30% was the offer, and 10% was the creative in terms of the effectiveness overall. Bad list? Forget it. So CDPs are the way.

Kathie: I wanted to correct one other thing. The other thing that's really important is that housing of their data right in your digital asset management system, because what you're doing is you're pulling through the right content to the individual. So it's really that interconnectedness between your CMS, your CMP, your DAM, right, as well as your DAM and your CMS, right? All those pieces all together—that's when magic happens, and that's when you can really help make personalization come to life. And with the ability of AI, right, which, you know, is embedded in all of our offerings, from, you know, brand-aware AI through co-pilots and workflows, right, then you are able to do that in a more seamless and connected and cost-effective way.

Drew: Okay, so just to make sure I'm going to clarify this, and I may state it wrong, but so we have content over here, which could be anything from product content to content about it. And I'm—so you're on the Amazon website, and hey, it's Drew and you've shopped before, and I know what size shoe you wear, so I have content that might be able to be of interest to you about the shoe. I have data about past purchases. And of course, I have CMS, which is basically able to bring the two together so that we can have this profoundly personal experience.

Kathie: Correct. And then you have the CMP which is managing that whole flow of all of your content.

Drew: The CMP, which stands for content management, right? Right, right. Okay. And there are certain just assumptions or connected dots based on past behavior. It gets trickier when it's the new person.

Kathie: Right. I mean, you do have some off-site behavior, perhaps, that can come in, or you have behaviors around where they went on your current website already, right, and then serving up content based on what they've already visited.

Drew: Right? So assuming they've been there before, you should have some knowledge that you've been able to store, assuming they didn't remove all the cookies and all that. Good, exactly, right? Exactly. So they gave you permission to track and then so forth. You can do it in a way that is both effective but not creepy, which is kind of the tricky part of all of this stuff—but not creepy. Effective, but not creepy, all right. Well, with that, thank you for that. That was a great overview. We're going to come back to you, but I want to bring on Kris Salazar, who is the VP of Marketing at Appcast, who's joining us this show for the first time. Hello, Kris, and welcome. Hey, Drew, how are you, and where are you today?

Kris: I am doing great. It's a Friday. Can't complain. I'm located outside of the Washington, D.C. area.

Drew: All right, we've got San Francisco Bay Area, New York City. We have got Washington, D.C. We are covering all of the important places in the world right now. Talk to me about your overall strategy for ensuring that your MarTech stack is, you know, aligned with the business.

Kris: Yeah, that sounds great. Kathie brought up some wonderful points there that I think some of us will probably be reiterated when I think about, you know, answering this question. I first think about having knowledge and deep understanding of what the current MarTech stack is, which I think Kathie also mentioned. When I think about that in more depth, it's like, why do we use these tools? How much are these tools costing us? Who uses it inside the team? Is it also a tool that other parts of the organization inside of marketing use? For example, do the SDRs use it? Do the Salesforce account teams use it? Do they like it? Right? I think opinion matters because sometimes we buy tools and we think it's great for marketing, and it's a useful case for teams that we will work with, and they may not like it, and getting that raw feedback is actually helpful from the team that's actually using it in the marketing team. Do we like the tools? Do we still feel like it's the right tool for us for what we need to do on a day-to-day basis? And then also know the issues. Every tool has a pitfall, or pitfalls, plural. You need to have an understanding of what those are, because you can oftentimes spend too much time finding a replacement for that pitfall, and there's no replacement for those pitfalls, and just knowing the ins and outs of your MarTech stack are helpful. Also knowing the ecosystem outside of the MarTech system. So what did the sales teams use for their tech stack? What does the business operation team use for tech stack? Because some of it already exists. Kathie brought up a great part about duplicate processes and tools. And there could be things that you could borrow from those teams, and you don't have repetitive use cases of tools.

Drew: So what you described sounded like a classic sort of MarTech audit. And I'm just curious in terms of how often, you know, do you actually do that exercise in terms of auditing? Because you talked about, you know, just basically going through every tool, doing an ROI analysis of that tool, who's using it—a user analysis? How often do you do an audit?

Kris: My perspective is at least once a year. And the strategy around that is also around not locking ourselves into multi-year contracts with tools. As we all know, especially with the dynamic business environment, macro environment, your goals will change year over year. You don't want to be stuck with a three-, five-year contract. So for me, I force ourselves to have one-year contracts. Always figure out: is that still the right tool? Is that the right tool, especially with the evolution of AI tools? Other vendors are keeping up pace. Some vendors are staying still. And you know, staying flexible is important in terms of your MarTech stack. A lot of times that deals with contracts, unfortunately.

Drew: No, and it's really smart. I mean, I think a lot of the MarTech brands try to get you to do a two or three year by offering you a special discount, because they know the longer the contract, the more likely you are to stay. But to the extent that you can limit these to one year and you're not locked in—another thing I've noticed, and this is, you know, the cost of ownership of a piece of software is a lot higher than the software itself, in the sense that you've got a lot of people that need to use this tool, and some tools—a lot of people like Salesforce, if that's, you know, what you're using as your CRM. You know, sales is using it, obviously, every day, in theory, and marketing is using it all the time. Not an issue. But there are other ones that you add that add, like, a nice-to-have piece of data. One person is using it, and they're barely taking advantage of it. So I'm wondering, as part of the audit, do you sort of look at how much of that particular application are we actually taking advantage of?

Kris: Absolutely. I think there's two components. I think I'll answer for that is, one is the staffing part. Each of these tools are not automated machines that you just leave. You need people that actually know how to manage these tools. And part of that is understanding: do they have the bandwidth to manage these tools, right? So sometimes we over-purchase tools, and then we have this kind of Batman problem, where we have a tool belt of all this stuff, and you only use like two or three things out of the ten. So I think that's a component of it—making sure you have the right team and right knowledge to manage all these tools. The second part of it is around the usage and features, making sure you're actually using what you bought. And if you have a chance to once again review—like the renewal period—of review tools, just buy what you need. Don't buy all the bells and whistles, because oftentimes the use case will trump all the features, right? Like, you get 100 features and only use five and may have paid for 100.

Drew: I have to ask, can you explain the Batman problem again? I missed the metaphor.

Kris: Yeah, for all those—you know, I like comics. Batman has a tool belt. He has a bunch of stuff in there. He'll throw a bunch of stuff and use it if you ever watch comics. And maybe he'll use one thing, which is his little grappling hook. That's my analogy that doesn't carry too much. Only carry what you need.

Drew: But you never know what that emergency might be. I just might need that. I don't know what else he has on his tool belt, but the spray that he used sometimes anyway. Okay, good to know. It's about the tool belt, not having too much on it. This is an uncomfortable question at the moment, but you know, a lot of brands have gone through staffing cuts in the last 12 months, and that crosses over to marketing automation, and suddenly, the person who was responsible for or had the most knowledge of it is no longer with the company. They leave and suddenly you're vulnerable. How have you sort of managed that? Or how would you recommend folks manage against this challenge of, we have this technology but we don't have anybody who knows how to use it now?

Kris: And you know, it's a great scenario to talk through, because it's very common, and I've experienced this already myself. First and foremost, goes back to our original point about understanding. Is this a core tool? Do we really need this? So that's first part. Second is who in the team has the knowledge, and who in team has interest in getting the knowledge so you can upskill them. I think that's a critical component. And then who has bandwidth for it to actually take this on? Are there things that these folks are doing that maybe it's not as priority? You know, it's figuring out that staffing component and part scale, part time, and then part interest.

Drew: Yeah, well, and it's funny. I think I remember, in one of these shows, we talked about a martech audit, and the champion had to present the tool to the group and say, "How is it being used and why?" And if a tool doesn't have a champion, there's probably an issue, which I thought was a great perspective on it. And so if you happen to get rid of the champion of that tool, well, make sure on the exit interview you know what those are linked to. I'm curious if you can share a recent win or lesson learned from a martech investment that you added or dropped?

Kris: Yeah. So a lot of the vendors I use—it goes back to my earlier point about providing feedback. Do the same thing with our martech providers. You know, we push them to improve the product. So I join all the monthly calls for these martech providers. I give them my raw feedback, what I'm hearing. I push them. I think that's one thing you want to do as a leader, is push them for improvements. If I know the roadmap that you're trying to build up, push them and say that doesn't help me solve my business problems, provide real recommendations so that they can bring it back to their product team and build something for you. And I've seen that in multiple instances, where in the past year, I've pushed the vendors to improve these certain aspects, and they've done it even though it's not on the roadmap. Like develop your roadmap and just say, "You know what? This is what we really need. I'm pretty sure this is going to help solve most or all the customers' problems."

Drew: By the way, I'm amazed that you're talking about vendors who have multiple, you know, maybe hundreds or thousands of customers, and you raise your hand and say, "Hey, we could really use this," and they actually bring it back to you. That's kind of phenomenal.

Kris: It's part of understanding the roadmap. And I bring that up because it's important, because, you know, a lot of vendors will build stuff, and they may build stuff that the customers won't even use, right? And if you acutely know their product in and out, you can provide really valuable feedback. And then part of the feedback, though, is you need to quantify, like, why this is helpful? Will this help me solve these problems? And this is probably, you know, based on what you know about their customer base. Will this be applicable to not just me, because they're not going to solve one little product feature for you, but if you think it's going to help solve it for the greater grid, sort of the customer base, then they'll listen.

Drew: Interesting. Well, are you martech vendors out there who are doing this? When you get that random request, it may, in fact, not be a random request. It may be a request that is actually 30, 40, 50% of your customers are in there. And even though your tech lead thought we should be going here, maybe sometimes it pays to listen to the customers. I will tell one famous story where Dell computer polled all its customers. They all said, "We want a Linux laptop." So they said, "Okay, fine, here's a Linux laptop." Nobody bought it. So Mr. Tech vendor, I suppose you do have to be careful about what you decide to add. All right, with that, we're gonna take a quick break. It's time for me to talk about CMO Huddles. We launched in 2020. CMO Huddles is the only community of flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders, and that has a logo featuring penguins. Wait, what? Yes, well, a group of these curious, adaptable and problem-solving birds is called a huddle. And the leaders in CMO Huddles are all that and more. Huddle together to conquer the toughest job in the C-Suite. There's a little pun there, but it is a tough job. And I think everybody who has that job knows how hard it is, and it is hard to go it alone. So Kathie, Kris, you're incredibly busy marketing leaders. I'm wondering if you could share a specific example of how CMO Huddles has helped you. Oh, Kathie, why don't you start?

Kathie: Okay, great. This is actually a fairly recent example. I've been part of CMO Huddles now for for years, Drew, and I think it was just a few months back, I called you and said, "Help me. I'm talking about changing our attribution model. Can you connect me with some folks who have done it recently?" And you connected me with a few folks. I got on the phone with them, and I was able to just get real-time information. One person I talked with before, and the others I'd never spoken with before. So it was so great to build new connections. So thank you for that, Drew.

Drew: I love it. No, then that story I remember in the moment, and it was so happy. Folks responded, and it feels like there was a happy ending in that moment, in the sense that you were able to use some of the data that you got to negotiate. That's awesome. I love it. And Kris, you're relatively new to CMO Huddles, so hopefully we've delivered some value in one way or another to you.

Kris: Tons of value. Actually, I have two specific examples. One is, you know, we have a Slack thread. I generally ask for recommendations or feedback on "Hey, has anyone checked this out or that out?" And it's been a really engaging community. And the second example is that when I posted one of those, I actually ended up connecting with one of the Huddles on a one-on-one conversation, and we got really detailed feedback on how they were using that product. Did they like it or not? Help make a decision for us and using that product.

Drew: I love it. And the key thing here is, in both of these cases, these wonderful people actually ask for help and so, but because you have to ask. In our business plan, just so you know, is two words: help, huddle. Or so, if you happen to be a CMO in the community, just remember, you can always ask for help. Send up the bat signal. We'll see you. If you're a B2B marketer who wants to build a stronger network, gain recognition as a thought leader, and get your very own stress penguin, please join us at cmohuddles.com. Okay, all right. Here's a tough one. I said at the top of the hour, I love generative AI tools. I've got them. I've got 10 of them on my phone. How do you avoid bright, shiny object syndrome when it comes to evaluating these new tools? And I'll let Kris start.

Kris: Yeah, I think going back to the main objective, like, is this going to solve a problem? And I always think with addition or subtraction. Like, is it going to add something in terms of new insights? Is this going to increase my pipeline, volume, exposure, awareness? And then when I think subtraction, is it going to reduce the manual processes? Is it going to reduce time-consuming tasks? Save the team time? It's got to do one or the other. It can do both. That's great, but it has to lead back to the initial set of conversation, which ties back to goals.

Kathie: Yeah, I really struggled with this question, Drew, which is interesting, but I'll tell you why. You know, obviously AI is really disruptive for marketing and for many organizations. And I started an initiative with my team that I called Project 30, which was that everybody in my organization had to improve pipeline, reduce costs, or improve efficiency by 30%. And you can't give that challenge without also giving the permission to test new things. But I think the key is to test them, see if they work, and if they don't, don't continue to engage. So I do want the testing to be part of it, but then I want to only what I call nest the technology that really is tied to our strategy, tied to that ROI that we want to achieve, and only include those pieces. So test, but don't be 100% distracted.

Drew: Right? And I think there's a big difference between buying every tool you see and trying every tool that you see. And I think that you are definitely describing a try-before-you-buy approach. And the other part of this, and I think both of you sort of spoke to it, is it's not just that it helps you do this one thing—it's possible, which, in theory, will save you time or money, or, you know, make you more efficient or more effective. And so it's a multi-dimensional evaluation. It's not just that new feature, which is really important. So let's talk about this, because I'm seeing this a lot, and particularly right now, we're obviously in a period of uncertainty. Economically, everybody's tech stack is being scrutinized, and there have always been platforms that have lots of products, some of which are not quite as good as others. Best of breed versus platforms. And I'm wondering, is this the moment where people are sort of leaning into platforms and leaning away from, sort of the tools, the best of breed, just because, you know, just ease from a procurement standpoint, perhaps ease because we've got it already, and maybe it's not 100% as good, but it's good enough, and there's the other side. So where are you thinking about platform versus best of breed?

Kathie: It goes back to, for me, what I stated at the beginning, right? What is core to our strategy that we're trying to accomplish, and those might be more platform-oriented, best of breed, but then there are other pieces that you're just trying to do—a tactical piece of your connection with—and that might be less strategic, that might not need to be connected to your CMS, need to be connected to your CRM, right? So I really think it's the balancing act of what are those core pieces of technology that are core to your strategy, and then those that are less core might be the ones that don't have to be best of breed.

Drew: Interesting. What do you think, Kris?

Kris: I totally agree with Kathie's points. It goes back to what's most important, and sometimes the smaller ancillary tools for that use case are helpful. And like you said, Drew, it's a multi-faceted type of approach. You also have to determine cost and time of using that tool. Sometimes, you know, buying a $1,000 product can help you save 50 hours—like that's worth it, even though it's not connected to the rest of our beautiful ecosystem, so to speak.

Drew: These tools are only as good as the people that use them. And, you know, Kris, you talked a little bit about, are they—do they like using it and so forth, and it is rare in the world of software. And you can even look at it from just Microsoft Word—like you don't use all the features of Microsoft Word or, you know—and how do you look at this from a usage standpoint and track it to sort of say, we've got this tool and two people are using it, but everybody else isn't, or whatever. How do you sort of think through that on the utilization of software challenge?

Kris: First, what I go back to is my point earlier about gathering feedback from the teams, and you can kind of do this in multiple ways. Generally, what I see work is you ask the whole group that uses it, you send out surveys, and then you also do the one-on-one outreach. Just talk to folks individually, because some folks would rather tell you the nitty-gritty, the good, bad, and then the ugly. Sometimes you need to really hear the ugly to figure out, like, does the ugly outweigh the good? Is the good outweighing the ugly? So I think that helps. And then the second thing that comes to mind for me is just repetition—like, keep telling folks about the value of this. We bought this because of this. You want this because of that. And that tends to really help increase adoption and make sure people are aware that, like, we have this nice, shiny car. I also do this tactic, which is, if you don't use this shiny car, I will return it to the dealership. Say, use it, or else it goes back to the dealership.

Drew: I love my Ferrari. Don't take it away. Cool. And I'm thinking of Kathie. It's funny, in sort of content or asset management systems, there's a classic complaint that sales isn't using any of the content, right? Yeah, you've heard that, right? And it could be that they don't like the content. It could be that they haven't actually looked on—they're like, "We did that piece of content." They just asked for a new—"No, it's there already." So as a CMO, do you think about this? I mean, look, you have so many things that you have to think about. This is yet another one, or maybe you delegate it to somebody else. But it feels important, because I'm going to get to this budget question really quickly. Talk a little bit about your approach. And again, as a software person, you probably have insight into the usage of your own products and how deep people go.

Kathie: Of course, yeah, I'll share two things. First one I'll share, which is not my product technology stack—specifically within what we sell. But you mentioned this earlier: have a champion for every technology piece that you have in your stack. But then secondly, one of the things that we were finding internally at SiteCore was that not everyone around the organization was using our social media advocacy tool. And so what we did is we started—this was an idea that the head of social media came up with on my team—every week we started a "pause to post" that the CEO sends out. So then everybody in the company has one particular post. It's being highlighted by the CEO, and we're seeing that ramp tremendously, both in tool usage and in posting. So I think there's something around creating an initiative like that, rallying together that can make things happen. Specifically on content that you raised—you know, we do use our own technology, and we do look at our asset library and the uses that sales is using. We also ask for feedback, right? I was having QBRs today and said to my team, like, "Have you asked the sales organization, is that the best way that they want to receive that competitive insight?" For example, so just what Kris was saying—making sure we're going to the stakeholders and getting that feedback directly as well is also important.

Drew: And I would think if I were a software vendor, I would want to be providing utilization reports, absolutely, right? And the best of breed, and even if they're low, I would put that on a red side and get my AEs working on, "Oh, we need a new training program for these things," or "We need to bring them together too," right? I mean, so—but how many of the software companies where you're the buyer actually do that and pay attention to utilization?

Kathie: We absolutely look at utilization. We look at it when we do our martech stack reviews. I have a particular form everybody has to submit on that champion talks through utilization—not only numbers, but frequency—and then we just look at it overall. In terms of—Kris, you alluded to this, right?—we look at if somebody hasn't used a tool in a period of time, we're going to take that license away and see if they complain, right? Because every license you get in most technology tools, you're paying per seat at some level. So if it's not being used, I'd rather reallocate it to someone who will use it.

Drew: Yeah, it's definitely a "use it or lose it" scenario. And I know there are actually companies that sort of embed themselves in between all the softwares and all the employees that also look at utilization, and that probably pays for itself. I'm going to throw out something that—so in my mind, I feel like what's happened in the last 10 years is that more dollars have gone to martech and the stack, and less dollars have actually gone into programs. That number, in some cases, is as high as 20%—probably, you know, again, depending on where you read, it's 15 to 17% of total marketing spend is going into martech. Now, some also get that number down because Salesforce is covered by something else, right? So there's some sort of, you know, moving things around, and maybe we have to look at this as percent of marketing and sales budget. My point is this: I think marketers in general are spending too much on martech, because once that number gets above 10%, it creates less dollars for marketing, which is what we need to do—marketing—because technology, in most cases, is not marketing. So I'm curious, as I throw out this thing and say, wouldn't it be—if I were saying, "How could I find more dollars?" I would say, "How much are you spending in your martech stack and reduce it?" I don't know if that would be your answer to this thing, but I'm curious, as I throw out that kind of harsh point of view, push back on me and say, "No, you're wrong, Drew. That's a wrong number. It's a wrong goal." So help folks understand what they should be thinking about when it comes to martech as a percent of budget.

Kathie: Drew, I can't look at it in isolation without also looking at people, right? To me, it's those three ranks together that are so important, right? The people, programs, and tech stack. I will tell you, the tech stack is absolutely one of the first things that, like, my board—when I first joined, I had to do a deep dive on the tech stack. My spend is actually a lot lower than industry standard, even inclusive of the products that we use that are our own. So I agree with you in the sense that you have to have enough program spend to make an impact in the business. Absolutely.

Drew: Okay, so Kris, do you have a rule of thumb?

Kris: 10% I think is a fair number. I tend to go leaner as well in terms of the tools, because I do find that some of the tools are just overly blown up in terms of number of features, and you don't need to buy, like, the A1, you know, type of product. Sometimes it's the B2 that actually solves the problem. Going back to the problems and goals that you need, and generally, I try to steer away from buying the best thing, because generally those things include the 100 tools, again, that you're not going to use—you're just going to use 10. So just be mindful of the use case, and you don't always need to buy the best thing.

Drew: Yeah, I'm just going to throw this out there. We haven't really used the term total cost of ownership, but there is a total cost of ownership with every software, and that's something that you have to keep in mind. And so Keith, you brought up this notion of people, and there are tools that are more people intensive than others. It's funny, because I think the promise of AI is in theory that it might remove some of this people-intensive usage of the technology, and so that's a good place to transition at this moment. Are you seeing the impact of AI in terms of actually making it require less manpower for certain applications, certain uses? In theory, if generative AI is doing all its work, I'll be able to get more out of the technology that I have, and therefore without people, without as many people. I mean, a very simple example is, in theory, a great writer can get three, five times - 5x the amount of content out the door than they could, you know, pre-generative AI, for example.

Kris: Yeah, I'd say the tools are generally impactful in terms of time savings. That's how I kind of use - that's how I see generative AI right now and most of the AI tools. I also say that the AI tools right now are in infancy, and when you dig deep into the use cases, is it really impactful? A lot of times it maybe saves you 5-10 minutes and, like, maybe that's not enough to buy that product.

Kathie: You know, I'm old enough to have been around when the website first became a thing, and I built the very first website for a company that had been in business for 30 years. Like, this is a moment in time similar to that that I think every marketer needs to be attuned to, you know. I mentioned that I have this initiative in marketing called Project 30, and I'm in my QBRs, as I mentioned today too. So everybody in their QBRs has to report out on how close are they to that 30% improvement in pipeline, decrease in costs, or improvement in efficiency. And it's incredible on the efficiency side for sure. In addition, we also have AI-enabled tools that we build internally that we're leveraging. And so having that brand-aware AI ingested right into everything you do makes a tremendous difference. So I think it is a complete game changer. The other thing I'll mention Drew - I've been working with Lisa Adams, who I think, you know, and I'm working with Microsoft, and I actually have designed an organization that's two-thirds human and one-third agents that we're building. And this will fundamentally change how marketing organizations function, how they're structured, you know, how AI augments the capabilities for marketers to deliver things more efficiently, you know, at a lower cost for sure.

Drew: Wow, that's exciting. Oh, I can't wait to hear about that and where - it's funny, I just sent a note to Lisa saying, "Hey, join us again at this at the Super Huddle," because I suspect that may have been where you saw her or another time, and she's doing interesting things with digital twins, which is on my list of things I gotta build. But so I have a - this question came in for you Kathie, which is, what's the most common misconception you see marketers have about personalization today, especially in B2B?

Kathie: I think the most common might be not knowing where to start, right, and recognizing that you just start somewhere and then grow from there, right - test and learn. And so I think the number one thing is that I get asked, as you know, "I don't know how to start." The misconception is "I can't start." And I would highly recommend that you look at your technology stack, make sure you have the functionality to do it, the data connection to do it, as we talked about earlier, and then just start.

Drew: Right. So you can't start without data. So you have to have some data source. And so in theory, you could start with some data source and some executional area, which you could have, but as your data gets better and you fill out your data platform, in theory, the options of personalization are kind of unlimited. In some ways, it's very exciting. And then, you know what blows my mind is just trying to think about avoiding death by 1,000 paper cuts, and how at the same time that you're doing all this personalization, there's still a layer of trust building and reputation building that sort of adds up to a whole, not just as a splintered idea, and that, I have no idea how that works.

Kathie: Yeah, and if I can just add one thing to that Drew, and I think the team on my team, who really drove this within my organization, did an incredible job looking first at the data flow. The access and the flow is so important. So I would just recommend take a step back and not only look at the visualization of your martech stack overall, but look at your data flow and access to make sure that you structure it so that you can take advantage of it for personalization.

Drew: Okay, Kris, I'm going back to you with that, with the AI question. I'm just, is there any part of this that you're excited about?

Kris: I'm actually very excited about it, because I see that we're just at the cusp of this, like, starting, and for me, this is where, like, we have to keep pushing these vendors and saying, like, "What is this going to help me solve? Tell me what's coming up. Understand the roadmap," because this can help you make decisions that, like, maybe I want to review this vendor, or maybe I need to go find the other vendor to see what's - which one's developing further. That's why I feel like this is an exciting time, like Kathie said, it's super interesting right now. I think the use cases, as Kathie mentioned, the efficiency, the time savings, these are all core things happening right now. But I see the opportunity for impacting the other aspect of business, which is scaling growth, like, when those tools can really help us do that? I think that's going to be wonderful.

Drew: It's so interesting, because there's so much AI washing right now, right? Everybody's suddenly an AI-first tool, right? And it's almost like you can't help it. And it's so problematic from a customer standpoint, because really, last month we were talking about, you know, content management system, and now we're talking about the AI future. So it's tricky. I admit it, and it's two-sided, because there is probably no way for both of you that you can't go to market without some AI-infused aspect of your product. So that's got to be tricky. I'm just wondering how you think about that, in terms of, for other brands and martech in the space as they are infusing AI into it, what's the key here, from a marketing to marketers standpoint, because they'll, you know, they'll see the smoke. Any thoughts on that? Kathie, in terms of, how do you walk that line?

Kathie: I think I actually feel so fortunate to be marketing to marketers and to be working with the product team that, you know, will take our input so myself and people across my organization work hand in hand with the product team to give feedback, right, and input on what we would use and not use. So I'm hoping that what people see in our products and technology is what they're really looking for and need, because we're bringing all that customer feedback in.

Drew: I love it. All right. Well, we are now at the point where we're going to ask you for your final words of wisdom for other CMOs when it comes to managing and optimizing your martech stack. Kris, you are first - final words of wisdom.

Kris: Yeah, thanks, Drew. Aligning your martech stack to your objectives. Just know what you're using it for. Kathie's point, know where the lead flow is. The data flow is, because if those pipes lead to a dead end, you probably have leaks in your martech stack, and constantly evaluate your existing stack and what else is out there. I think it's always important to stay ahead of the curve and making time to evaluate tools, even if you don't intend to purchase them. It is important to understand the landscape and the new tools that could be coming in, because maybe you don't need it now, but maybe one year from now, you will.

Drew: Can never put your head in the sand. All right. Kathie, final words of wisdom.

Kathie: Let's see. I agree with everything Kris said. So thank you for that, Kris. So I'll say what he said, but plus, I'll add to that make sure, and you mentioned this earlier, I'm a big believer of having a champion for each of your tools and making sure you're really carving out that time to do the evaluation, and one of the things I try to do is incorporate as much of my marketing team in that evaluation as possible, because it's a great opportunity to upskill your own organization, to ensure that they understand what each tool does and doesn't do, and that they're also feeling empowered to bring suggestions or recommendations for tools that might fill the gaps you have.

Drew: Interesting. I love it, and part of that is, it's not just - it's just not here. It's like, you're handed a laptop or you're handed a tool, and you get "this is you are part of the process and decision group that decide, do we keep moving forward with this?" And so you're really helping them grow as individuals. And I think this is going to be really important moving forward, because, you know, I think everybody wants a license at their desk for a GPT, and CFOs are looking at that going, "Wait a second, 20 times 1,000 employees. I don't think so." "Man, I don't want just ChatGPT. I want Claude too, and maybe Perplexity." So now it's 60% and so you've got this massive thing, so it's going to be a really interesting moment for all this technology and so forth. The one thing is clear, you can't do this role without a good stack, because you just can't track the information you need to justify your budget to help actually move things through the pipeline. There's so many different areas, and I didn't really touch on any of that, which is the value that these things can bring. All right? Well, with that, thank you, Kathie, Kris, you're both great sports, and thank you audience for staying with us.

 

To hear more conversations like this one and submit your questions while we're live, join us on the next CMO Huddle Studio. We stream to my LinkedIn profile—that's Drew Neisser—every other week.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!