What if MarTech Isn’t Just for Marketers? An Interview With HubSpot’s Scott Brinker.

Scott (00:05):

The actual things these products technically enable are fantastic. But the problem is sometimes called this MarTech's law, that technology changes at an exponential rate, like Moore's Laws. I'll sample that. But humans and organizations, we think, probably more in a longer rhythmic rate, and so what we've had is this like 10-year period of this incredible rapid rise of the technology. But, like, even for the most well-intentioned, you know, and strategically oriented, you know, organizations trying to just keep up with that pace of change, there's just a gap.

Jim (00:43)

Welcome to What If? So What? the podcast where we explore what's possible with digital and discover how to make it real in your business. I'm your host, Jim, and we get s**t done by asking digital leaders the right questions. What if? So what? And, most importantly, now what? Hey everyone, I'm excited to have Scott on the podcast. He's the VP of Platform Ecosystems at HubSpot, and he's the editor of ChiefMarTech.com, which I would call a pioneering blog that you've been running since 2008. That's a long time, Scott, but tell us how you got here, what you're doing, what you're working on.

Scott (01:17):

Yeah well, thanks for having me, Jim. Yeah, I'd say I've always sort of had like two parallel paths. You know what I actually do for a living. So for many years I was running a MarTech startup myself. A company called Ion Interactive built a platform for interactive content.

Before that, I was running an agency, a web development agency back in the days when we remember web development agencies, you know. And then, sort of after I built Ion and it was acquired, I then joined HubSpot as their VP of platform ecosystem, which is really the mission about helping HubSpot move from being what was a great product company to really trying to be more of a true platform where it wasn't just what our teams built, but like integrations and apps built by well, what is now like over 1,700 other different companies well, what is now like over 1,700 other different companies. But why I've been doing that is sort of the way I earn my living, you know, in this space. Yeah, for 17 years here now I've been running this Chief MarTech blog, really trying to just look at that intersection of how the worlds of marketing and technology have fused. I mean, 20 years ago or so, like, you know, if you've gone to a high school guidance counselor, right?

Like technology would have been more than on the spectrum, marketing would have been on the exact opposite, right, right, you know, like having those two things like collide and entangle such a fascinating way in which is changing the nature of marketing and how we do it and who does it. And so, yeah, that's kept me. That is my passion project, you know, for the past 17 years.

Jim (02:46):

Well, we're excited to talk about it. I think you know we have a few questions for you, Scott, as you know, that are kind of along those lines and glad to see it going, glad to see a blog going this long. And I was kind of actually going back into blog history, and I was thinking, when did I become aware of blogs? And you know, I mean, you're one of the earlier blogs. I'll say so glad to keep it going. It's definitely a topic that continues to evolve a lot, you know, over the last couple of decades and to the point where I think sometimes it's even hard to tell where MarTech begins and ends. We've been having a lot of debates with Improvision about what's MarTech and what's commerce and what's a DXP, a digital experience platform, and we actually, you know, some of these debates I had to kind of, you know, throw some cold water on the fire because it was getting heated. So, it's kind of a foundational question. Like today, how do you define MarTech?

Scott (03:42):

Boy, there's so much loaded in that question, I know, I know. I would say, you know, it's funny. I've always taken a very broad definition of it, which is to basically say MarTech is any technology that marketers use to get their job done, you know, and so that to me, it always included, like we've maintained over, oh my goodness, like 13 years here this MarTech landscape trying to map out all these different tools, which is a total beast, you know. But we always have included even things like, okay, you know, adjacent sales tech, you know, that marketers end up working with sales components for or even things like project management software that marketers use to actually run them. It's not that project management software is designed specifically for marketers, but marketers use it, they rely on it, you know, for how they operate. So I would say that's a very broad interpretation, the wide-angle view of, you know, what Marquette could be.

Jim (04:34):

So, the question is, kind of, what are marketers doing? Because I think, you know, these days, because there's a lot, I think one of the things I've, you know, I talked to a lot of marketers. You know, there's a lot that they're asked to do, right, you know, there's brand-oriented things and sales-oriented things and even some service, and you know, I would say retention and loyalty. There's just a lot, and they have a lot of channels technical and digital channels that they have to get to now. So, they have to be experts in a CMS, and then they have to be an expert in email marketing and they have to be an expert in email marketing and they have to be an expert in what's the latest with LinkedIn and GenAI. So that role maybe, maybe that's where why we're struggling is, maybe the role of marketing is really what's changing?

Scott 05:13

Yeah, well, I think you put your finger on it. Every, every profession has changed. You know, over the past 20 years, and I think everyone sort of feels, you know, the pace of change has been accelerating. But boy, I'd be hard-pressed; I don't think I'm just biased on this; I would be hard-pressed to find another profession that has had to go through as much change in scope as marketing has.

I mean, you just look over all these changes, you know, even just over the past decade. You know all these different channels. You know how things have evolve with the web, and we've got our mobile stuff, and now we've got all these technologies on how we're orchestrating this behind the scenes and you know what are we doing, supporting both, not just sales, but how does this connect across customer service and product land growth and big digital behavior and it just and it's amazing, I mean I, you know, you know again, it's. It sort of makes me feel like, you know, marketing, really. Oh right, and this is the other thing I'm like rambling off on all these technology changes, but it's not like the core things that marketing was responsible for like went away.

You know, I mean even like the closet, like before peas, and you know, I mean like who's really understanding the market, and you know, I mean like who's really understanding the market and you know, driving our narrative and like all that is like they still had all those responsibilities. Just keep adding things on top of that. And so, I have enormous respect for, yeah, just the breadth of things that marketers as a whole are expected to have familiarity with, if not actual expertise.

Jim (06:42):

So, you're making a lot of friends with marketers right now, Scott. So, yeah, I cause I think, yeah, it is. It's a lot. I think you're right; a lot of things have changed, a lot of things have been additive in a lot of roles. You know, and I think the other thing we talk about a lot here again is these definitions change. And again, like, where does commerce begin in MarTech? And and I got another philosophy, maybe who cares right? Maybe it doesn't matter because, you know, we really have to kind of break down, just break down the role, like, let's start with what we are. What are we trying to do functionally, right? What does the business really need?

Some of this sometimes, I think is is certainly muddied by the vendor landscape, you know, and I don't mean to just, you know, disparage any technology companies, but there's a lot out there. You said it's a huge landscape, and it's a big machine, and there's a lot moving, and there's a lot, a lot of promise and, you know, a lot of hype, but it's a lot and a lot to keep up with. But you know, a few years ago, I think you know, maybe five to 10 years ago, when we saw some, some consolidation, we saw some bigger players, you know, kind of entering into this space. I would put Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce in that category. They were starting to buy up small boutiques, smaller niche MarTech companies, and growing these suites. They've become very complicated. I mean, it's, you know, we have whole practices dedicated to just one product or one cloud in one technology space. So, is this still going on? Do you see this kind of just continuing, this sort of consumption, this consolidation on the vendor side? Is that something we're continuing to see?

Scott (08:17):

One of the things that's always made this challenging. Because, like, year over year, that Art-Tech landscape graphic that I curate, because, like year over year, that Art-Tech landscape graphic you know that I curate, which started, you know, in 2011 with 150 technologies, that at the time seemed like oh my God, 150. Like, how will we ever keep track of them all? Surely, that's going to radically consolidate.

Jim (08:34):

That's a big spreadsheet.

Scott (08:39):

And it, yeah, it went the exact opposite direction. It literally had exponential growth year over year for a while, and it's now over like 14,000. And we don't even we don't even have all of them, you know, yeah. And so, I think people look at that and they're like, well, wait a second, like isn't this thing consolidating? Cause we hear about all these acquisitions, you know, and you know these top public companies, and what makes the space complicated is both things are true. Consolidation absolutely does happen.

I mean, like, if you took that MarTech landscape and instead of just looking at it as a subsea of, like, random logos, which very unhelpful, I apologize, you know, but if instead you like ranked it, you know of, like, oh, by size of revenue or, you know, number of customers or size of market share, it would be what they call a long tail. You'd have a very small number of companies that have the majority of the revenue and the customers, and it's maybe a little bit of like a torso, maybe, with a few hundred companies that are really the leaders in different particular categories, and then you have this crazy long tail of just thousands and thousands of companies. Yeah, and they each have a role to play. I think the changes that have happened in software were just the barriers to entry of people creating things. You know, I've been dropping steadily for the past decade, two decades, and now with some of these AI tools, like, oh my goodness, it's like continuing to just like lower those barriers. So, you have a lot of that, but there's still so much value to the companies that are at the head of that tail, but there's still so much value to the companies that at the head of that tail, because having a whole bunch of disconnected pieces of technology right, it doesn't work.

You know, what you kind of want in many ways is often the best of both worlds. It's like we want these like stable platforms that are at the center of our stack. We use these, you know, to orchestrate, and they often contain a ton of their own capabilities, and you know, we use what we do there. The simplest stack is best, but then, as we want to augment those capabilities with more specialized tools, it's increasingly like the key to that is making sure, like, okay, if I am going to bring in a specialized tool to do X, will it integrate with the platform that I have at the center of my stack? Because if it isn't going to integrate. Frankly, yeah, it's more of a headache than a help.

Jim (10:51):

And, Scott, is that sort of your architectural as a, you know as a, as an architect, is that sort of your philosophy? Is that sort of driving it HubSpot as well, just sort of this extensibility Is that? Is that?

Scott (11:02):

Yeah, well, I mean. So this is part of what got me the job at HubSpot is because, you know, I was I was an independent ISV. I was one of those companies on the long tail and this was a challenge we saw with, you know, our customers. I was maintaining that MarTech map, and you're seeing more and more of the you know, specialist companies come up is, you know, it's just very clear that, okay, in order for this to work, these things have to integrate around a platform, and what was interesting at the time was a lot of the major players you know that you'd mentioned. They actually weren't looking at it as an ecosystem. They were looking at it as, like, you know, we're either going to build or buy what you need and, like, you can just get everything from us, our sweet will to do everything you need, and like you can just get everything from us our sweet will to do everything you need, and for a long time. Like that really was the strategy they were executing against.

And one of the things that I was excited to join HubSpot was the founders there actually felt the opposite. They sort of lifted that and felt like, well, instead of trying to just ignore or compete or, you know, somehow like fud, uncertainty and doubt, all these other things. Like what, if you could find a way to, you know, harness some of that entrepreneurial energy and help be a platform? That again, like you know, there's always competitive overlap with different things in this category, but to allow these specialist tools to, you know, integrate to a platform, was a really, and that's why I joined HubSpot was they're like hey, would you like to help make that happen? I'm like, yes, you had me at hello, and I think you've now seen that, across the MarTech industry, most of the companies have recognized, like, okay, we're going to have a lot in our core platform, and suite, but we need to be able to be open and integrate with everything else that's out there.

Jim (12:42):

Yeah, yeah, I think it's to me. It kind of goes back to what is marketing and kind of leads to my next question because, you know, we're seeing MarTech being deployed in, I would call, sort of post-purchase use cases and experiences and operations, right? So, servicing and contact center. You know, long after the sale and long after the marketing team has sort of done their quote, done their job, and here's MarTech still working to keep the customer, you know, to service that customer. We did some research last year where we saw a big shift from moving from customer acquisition to customer retention post-purchase. Are you seeing the same thing? Do you think that MarTech is sort of being unlocked or redirected away from, let's say, traditional marketing and acquisition and into retention loyalty? You know, post-purchase types of use cases.

Scott (13:33):

Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of marketing technology is very horizontal, right? It's like, ok, data profiles of customers. How do we think about, you know, automation? You know, triggers and sequences. How do we think about, like, the right channels and sort of the content we want to deliver it? And so, you can apply that in a number of different scenarios. And there was I think you're right, there's, you know, it's not so much in MarTech so much as in marketing we kind of go through these cycles of, okay, where's the emphasis, what is the business most expecting out of the marketing department? And I think, hard to generalize.

But you know, for a while, so much of the focus was on the demand generation and the net new customer acquisition, partly because, yeah, I mean, you know, so many of these channels for customer acquisition were like that, do the law of experimentation, you know, so it makes sense. But at some point in time, you know, a lot of those channels became saturated. You know, the environment in a number of different categories started to shift where, wow, winning new customers is becoming harder and harder and this recognition of like, wow, okay, you know the value with our existing customers and making sure that they don't you know churn, or that they continue to, like, grow with us? Yeah, I mean, the math was just very compelling. And so, yeah, I think you've both seen a lot of people take those horizontal, you know, MarTech tools and start to apply them to those use cases. But again, you know, we were talking about the big, crazy, long tail of all things MarTech.

Jim (15:07):

There's a whole bunch of, like, specialized tools, just focusing on things around, you know, customer success and loyalty, and yeah, those are really helpful too. Yeah, is there an area of MarTech you see is sort of heating up? Like, is there a kind of a what's around the corner? We've got a lot of inquiry around CDPs, customer data platforms. It doesn't seem to be I don't know what the right word is sort of stabilizing or norming out. So, we feel like that's still pretty hot. Is there anything just from one of those categories MarTech categories or subcategories you think is heating up?

Scott (15:35):

Yeah, this is all you know. I often get asked that question when we publish. You know our landscape each year, and it's always a bit of a conundrum for me because, truthfully, when we like go through year over year and we look at, you know where are new companies arriving. You know, like, where's the churn, where's the innovation? It's, it spreads almost across every category and part of it, just because there's so much competition, every single one of these, you know, categories that for marketers I don't know all these companies it's almost like the classic thing of you know capitalism is, yes, it's incredibly hard dealing with that much choice. On the other hand, one benefit you get as a marketer, as a buyer, is having all those companies competing with each other, like the speed of innovation. You know that happens there. You know, increasingly the leverage that you know that happens there. You know, increasingly, the leverage that you know buyers have is a good thing. So, you get the two-edged sword.

But I'd say if I was going to pick one thing that I think is it's not so much category kind of is, but it's something that's impacting the entire landscape. I really do think it's a shift in what's happening at the data layer, and CDPs are one example of that. And one of the reasons CDPs, I think, are a bit challenged is all right, we started with a mode where every MarTech product kind of had its own database in a silo, and this became problematic as the number of MarTech products, the number of data silos started to proliferate. And then the CDPs they were initially conceived of as like, oh, what we really want is some sort of Switzerland, you know, that can sit in the center of that stack and they can pull the data from all these other different apps, and you can organize it and package it and then push it out and activate it.

Great concept, which is why the CDP space, you know that grew and like, caught on so quickly. But what's been happening is, at the same time, these things about broader data infrastructure inside companies, around cloud data warehouses and cloud data lakes, things like Snowflake and Databricks, you know, have really started to grow, you know, not just within marketing, but across the organization as a whole.

And so, you've started to see more and more marketing technology companies that now integrate their data directly to the cloud data warehouse, where they can pull data directly from the cloud data warehouse, and the fact that it's not just limited to marketing. This is a data layer that's exchanging data for functions across the entire company. I think it's actually one of the areas where CDPs are now wrestling because you're like, oh, do I need a CDP because, you know, or do I just do my cloud data warehouse? And the question isn't completely, you know, a foregone conclusion because, although we're getting all the data into the cloud data warehouse like we're breaking down some of the barriers of having data flow in our company, now we're finding the other problem, which is like, oh, I'm starting to get all the data in one place. Oh, wow, this is a lot of data. And what do I do with it?

Governed and organized, you know, and so there's very well maybe like a role of like how CBPs evolve that are helping to provide some of that organization and governance on top of that. But in fact, some of them call themselves composable CDPs, where they're like just keep the data in your cloud data warehouse, and you know, we'll help provide, you know, some orchestration capabilities on top.

Jim (18:52):

Interesting. Yeah well, I love, I love those kinds of problems because they kind of, you know, they tend to reveal some other problem. You know, like, well, I just, I need a CDP, or I need a CRM, right, and then you realize, oh my gosh, I have all kinds of other data issues. I have data quality, I have data governance issues, I have data stewardship issues I didn't even know I have. And then those go on to reveal, like other real business process issues, like, well, wait a minute, none of our sales teams agree on how we should work. So you know, maybe there's something there. So, yeah, I think these are fascinating problems, but you didn't say GenAI, thank you.

Scott (19:30):

Yeah. Because I knew you'd probably throw something at me.

Jim (19:32):

Yeah, I mean, it's there, right? I think we're in a second wave. I think we're trying to define, like, there was kind of an initial wave, you know, the initial sort of early, you know, 2023 wave we're calling it, and there was the reaction, and I think there's a second wave. We're trying to figure out what that is exactly, and so I'll tell you, right now, we're seeing a huge demand for AI-assisted development and product engineering. So, you made a comment earlier with some of the GenAI tools. You know, I could conceive one of those long tail applications this morning and probably have it running and sell and then on a marketplace this afternoon, because we're doing a lot of that work. You know, it's true, prompt engineering, but through the whole development lifecycle. Then there's some pretty cool stuff there. But, yeah, we're not going to go too deep into that. That's a whole series of podcasts so we can talk about that. Yeah, maybe just one more question, and we'll close it out, Scott.

I think this is, I hate to use the adage of like sort of keep ourselves, keeping us up at night, but sometimes we sense there's a little bit of digital fatigue, and I think some of it comes from this. It's overwhelming. Right, there's this overwhelming number of the burden of choice, you know, that you kind of allude to. But again, there are a lot of hype, there's a lot of promises, there was a lot of spending. You know, I think, disappointing utilization.

We buy these, we make these big investments in platforms and we utilize 10% of it. And it kind of goes back to the old adage, one of my favorites, you know, half of my marketing is working. I just don't know which half. You know. So maybe half of my MarTech is paying off. I don't know which half it is. So again, when customers are kind of thinking about this next investment, like, oh, how would you advise them? Or what would you do if you were going to give them something to think about in that next investment? How would you sort of guide them to sort of think about getting the best sort of bang for your buck when it comes to MarTech?

Scott (21:21):

Yeah, I mean, I think this is definitely one of the problems that, you know, this space has had over the past decade. Is there, was, I mean, truly revolutionary technology? I mean, like you know, we even now sort of take for granted things like marketing automation, you know, but the truth is like marketing automation was really revolutionary and like the set of capabilities that you know allowed us to do, and then we've had nothing but like a whole sequence of you know, other kinds of innovations and emergencies and the actual things these products technically enable are fantastic.

But the problem is like sometimes called this a MarTech’s law that, you know, technology changes kind of at an exponential rate, right, Moore's laws, you know, example that you know, but humans and organizations, you know, we change probably more in a longer rhythmic rate, and so what we've had is this like ten year period of this incredible rapid rise of the technology. But, like, even for the most well-intentioned, you know, and strategically oriented, you know, organizations trying to just keep up with that pace of change, there's just a gap. And I think there was a case. I don't want to, you know, throw the whole MarTech industry under the bus, but you know, MarTech vendors are in the business of selling MarTech software. So, you know, they certainly, like you know, were incentivized to paint the picture of what the technology made possible, without necessarily having to worry that much about, like you know, of course, are going to have to have, like your, enablement and training and practice and development, and that's going to take you five years before you figure that out. Well, you know, you'll discover that as you go along. You know, and I think it's unfortunate because people have discovered it, but I mean, there isn't a silver bullet to this. It's that you know we are having to learn and change how how we run marketing. You know everything from like down in the weeds of, you know, operationally, but also strategically, and how do we organize MarTech, how do we run and how do we collaborate, you know, with you know, the IT team. You know, these are all questions that I think that's like just to say.

One more thing on this is Avinash Kaushik. I wanted to get his name right years ago, like I don't know if you know him. He's like analytics guru for like Google Analytics and whatnot, years and years ago. I mean very prolific speaker and writer, and he would always have this thing. I think it became Kaushik's Law when like, ok, you're like, you know, if you have ten dollars, you should invest one dollar in the technology and nine dollars in the people, and I think that's actually the right way to look at this. We need to do more investment in the enablement, and that isn't just things like, you know, formal training, you know, although that certainly doesn't hurt, it's about like even giving people the space to like experiment and to try things because it's like it's a very experiential kind of learning. A lot of this is very context-dependent, you know, on your business and, I think, companies that are willing to make those investments in helping people develop the talent around this technology; that's probably the only path you have through it to saying like, okay, how do we get the utilization and return on this? We really expect.

Jim (24:29):

That's a great introduction. I have to sort of shake the cobwebs on that. I think I do know. I think I am familiar with that, but that's great advice, and I think that goes in. That's a whole other topic, gosh we can go into is how do people, how does anyone sort of adopt any technology, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm thinking of like tools I've bought, you know, like hand tools, where you have to kind of get out there and start, you know, cutting the wood or you know, just start making it happen, seeing it happen, like that's great. There's sort of the space to experiment and really get a hold of it.

Because I think there's a, there's just sort of an inertia, I think in business, where we set the goal, we make the justification, we got to go out and like achieve that goal and we're done. And agility, you know, for lack of a better term requires this multi-skilled flexibility and awareness and all that things. You don't get that until you just start learning it. So that's great advice, Scott. Any final kind of thoughts for the listeners while we have them, anything that you would, any advice or a next step that you would share today as they move on with their day?

Scott (25:33):

Well, I guess I would say two things. You know, just following up on your observation. There is; I almost feel like it's an inverse Lake Wobegon effect. Right, like Lake Wobegon, like all the children are above average, I think. And having spoken to so many marketers and people wrestling with marketing technology, every marketer feels below average in their marketing technology. And you're like below average in their marketing technology and you're like, well, wait a second. Okay, that's statistically not true, and I think, just sort of the reflection there is, you are not as far behind as you probably think relative to peers. There's just so much change that's happening here. I mean, for me, you know, I live and breathe this stuff, and literally every week, I'm coming across stuff like, well, I didn't know that was possible; what is that going to mean? How does this, you know, change these things? It's just, and so I think, if you recognize, it's not you, it's the state of, you know, the world. Hopefully you can, like you know, give yourself a little bit of a pass. But then like the question becomes like, okay, well, what do you do about that? And you know, the the only thing you can do is say like, all right, I can't take all these changes at once, but I can every day or every week be in a position where, like, okay, I'm going to push on the curiosity, you know, of trying things.

You know, a very specific thing is I follow a fellow named Ethan Mollick, who's a marketing professor, you know, has kind of become internet famous here over the past year or so because he just does a lot of experimentation around these AI tools and then writes about them and he's just constantly encouraging people to just, hey, listen, don't talk about this stuff, don't read about this stuff, but like playing with this ChatGPT and you know, or anthropic or things like that, not even for the sake of like trying to like turn that into, like production impact in your business, but it's like there are some really fundamental changes that are happening with this stuff and it's hard to truly get your head around it without actually getting hands-on and like playing with it and learning, like that. And so, anyways, I'm kind of stealing his next best, you know, action of what to do next. But yeah, I want to put a big plus one on it.

Jim (27:43):

So, yeah, I think that's a great theme, you know, around experimentation; I'm inspired here. I ran a weird problem through ChatGPT the other day, and I thought, oh, you know, it's the same thing. I didn't know I would respond this way, and this is. I was expecting one thing, and it gave me three more things. It actually got my problem a little further down the line, the analytics tools and a great, that's great advice. We love something that's actionable. We'll put in the show notes a few of these thoughts and then a few links. But, Scott, thanks for taking the time today, thanks for joining us. It was a great conversation. We've all been really looking forward to your perspective on some of our questions, and thanks for the blog and thanks for keeping it up.

Scott 28:24

Thanks for having me, Jim. Really enjoyed the chat.

Jim (28:26):

Take care, Scott.

Joe (28:28):

You've been listening to What If? So What? a digital strategy podcast from Perficient with Jim . We want to thank our Perficient colleagues JD Norman and Rick Bauer for our music. Subscribe to the podcast and don't miss a single episode. You can find this season, along with show notes, at Perficient.com. Thanks for listening.