A recent report on marketing utilization found that marketers are increasing their use of marketing technology (martech) but are still struggling with certain martech applications. 

The report from Ascend2 shows that most marketers believe they are reaching their sought-after goals with martech utilization but, in reality, they are encountering obstacles in meeting those goals.

Detailed findings from the report include:

• The rate at which martech stacks are supplemented are:
  • Quarterly (39%)
  • Monthly (28%)
  • Twice a year, yearly, or longer (33%)
• Most effective types of martech:
  • Marketing automation, email and CRM (53%)
  • Marketing data, dashboards and analytics (43%)
  • Over one-third of marketers said that social and search marketing, CMS, optimization, personalization, testing and experience/relationship marketing were most effective.
• Most difficult martech types:
  • Optimization, personalization and testing applications (50%)
  • Experience and relationship marketing applications (40%)
  • Marketing data, dashboards and analytics applications (39%)
• While increasing marketing ROI, improving marketing efficiency, attributing revenue to marketing and improved competitive advantage are some of the main objectives for marketers, they also see these as their biggest challenges.
• Survey respondents reported a combination of in-house and outsourced resources as the most effective strategy for improving marketing efforts.
• 63% of marketers plan to increase their martech budgets at least moderately.