The trick is not to get sucked into one of the common mistakes even the savviest companies make when choosing martech solutions.

Falling for the promise of “easy integration.”
Buying too many shiny new toys.
Mistaking “bigger” for “better.”
Failing to get your internal team aligned.

1. "Poor messaging. 
2. Siloed data. 
3. Ineffective lead-to-revenue (L2R) model. 
4. Broken marketing processes. 
5. Mediocre product marketing. This is such an important barrier to marketing and sales success that I will write about it in detail in the next few weeks. Basically, the person(s) who owns product marketing is responsible for a number of important functions, whose critical failures will become apparent when technology is introduced.
6. Organizational roadblocks."

For large companies with large marketing budgets, top consulting firms such as Accenture and Deloitte now provide marketing technology services that range from strategy to implementation and management. These firms are smartly leveraging their IT expertise and experience to deliver a suite of complementary marketing services. 

With a stack framework in place, category/functional specialists and agencies can deliver exceptional value once you know what type of technology you need.  You can find experts in virtually every technology category. Agencies that are category/functional experts (e.g. SEO, Digital Advertising) will in many instances source and then deploy and manage technology on their client’s behalf. This is particularly helpful in resource- or expertise-constrained environments and virtually mandatory in a startup environment.

Here are four basic reminders to help you successfully implement MarTech before we discuss using it to improve performance.

• Know what you are trying to achieve.  
• All MarTech takes data.  
• Plan for configuration. 
• Practice your skills.