Source: chiefmartec.com

Scott Brinker says:

Even I was surprised that the number of vendors nearly doubled from last year’s edition, which charted an already-staggering 947 companies…

My intention with this graphic is to visually demonstrate four points:

1. Marketing has unquestionably become a technology-powered discipline.
2. The quantity of martech ventures is a barometer of how much marketing is evolving.
3. The marketing technology field is heterogenous, with a very broad range of products.
4. To thrive in this environment, marketing should steadily develop its technical talent.

When you consider the implications of those four points, the “technology management” piece of this is non-trivial — but it’s definitely not the biggest hurdle most companies face. The real challenge is changing how firms think and behave in this hyper-connected, always-on, customer-controlled digital world. The nature of marketing has exploded from an ancillary communications function to the Grand Central Station of customer experience. And the…