How to Market your Adtech Company: Trends and Opportunites
The adtech and martech space is crowded and fast-evolving, so how can vendors market themselves effectively and stand out from the crowd?
In this article, AZK Media speak with Gai Le Roy, CEO and director of IAB Australia about the challenges and opportunities for adtech businesses who are serious about growing in the APAC region.
IAB represents and works with media owners, agencies, advertisers and ad-tech to drive an effective, diverse and sustainable industry.
Target Market host and AZK Media's senior content and communications specialist, Athina Mallis, speaks with Gai about how now is the best time for digital marketers to rethink strategies and how martech and adtech vendors can get noticed within the APAC region.
The digital advertising space is quickly evolving, what are some of the challenges and opportunities for digital advertisers?
This brings us to the second point in that they're trying to manage more with fewer resources. Whether that's internal or through their agencies.
Another challenge is the changing world of identification and regulation, cookies, Apple changes - all of that. All the marketing plans that people had in place are not only changing due to Covid, due to economics, but also due, to technology and regulation.
One thing we saw some really smart marketers did at the end of last year, which is a smart thing to do in any down market, was to change and increase their investment compared to their competitors. There were some really interesting companies that were able to grab a larger share of voice, and consequently, they feel they're able to grow their market share.
There's still opportunities to do that as the market is still quite fluid.
Then the last one, and the most important one is marketers have to gain trust from their consumers or clients, depending on if they're a B2B or B2C marketer. That's the number one - so either retain or gain trust from the market and their markets.
We’re seeing a lot of discussion around privacy and the cookieless future - what does this mean for advertisers in Australia?
There are two sides to this, but it all comes from the same place and it all stems from privacy. Particularly consumer markets being sensitive to the use of data and tracking across the net.
Marketers really need to look at how they're communicating with their clients, and how they 'patch together' their marketing activity. Are they using cookies as that glue to work out frequency and reach across different campaigns, effectiveness, attribution models?
There are going to be certain metrics that won't be available in the same way. Marketers, particularly ones with larger budgets will have the opportunity to if we think about digital marketing, often we're very much bottom-up, we're building all these bits and pieces from different campaigns, different bits of spends, different activity and spending a bit more time looking top down.
The martech and adtech space seems to be getting more complex and competitive every year. What advice would you give adtech vendors trying to grow their presence in Australia? How can they stand out from the crowd?
Some of this advice is evergreen for want of a better word. Treat everyone with respect and relationships will be number one. Deliver on your promises, which sounds really basic. But we are used to a lot of spin, we're all marketers at heart, but make sure the messages that you're out in the market with, particularly with adtech and martech. It's the shiniest, brightest, new, innovative, market-first type initiative, which is fine and it's great to gain interest. But make sure you can deliver on those promises and get better at marketing and selling adtech/martech on the clear economic benefit that the company has in working with you.
As a tech-focused media and marketing agency, we work closely with a lot of global martech and adtech firms to help them grow in the APAC region. What are the common mistakes you see adtech vendors make when trying to get noticed and market themselves in the region?
Where it leaves your potential clients is in a really tricky situation.
I'd say go gently, point out your benefits, possibly scrutinise techniques, rather than individual companies.
Then, this advice has been around for a while, but I think we're still pretty guilty in the industry of overusing buzzwords. Use simple language, make it feel approachable and easy to implement.
What are you looking forward to in terms of digital advertising?
There's a lot of exciting things, I think we were all exhausted at the end of 2020. We've all had to take a bit of a deep breath to get it to get excited again.
I'm really excited to see what those marketers make of those different investments, if they've gone into podcasting, if they've gone into gaming, if they've gone into programmatic digital out of home. If they felt those investments, gave them good ROI, and what that means for their marketing mix in 2021. I think there's going to be a lot more experimentation in 2021.
When delivery from overseas was a problem, we had some really interesting, smaller brands being able to sort of step into that gap that we normally would have relied on overseas markets. So I think we're ready for a lot of good news stories that feel very human. That feels very positive and very inspiring.
Finally, what should martech and adtech vendors start doing? And then what should martech and adtech vendors stop doing?
Start telling those good stories, don't tell your own story, always tell your client stories. The markets are ready for good news stories. The martech and ad tech companies can bring them to life. They're often working with small innovative brands that are doing great stuff.
Be that brave marketer who does drop the jargon and tell your story clearly, cleanly and not be afraid to have those conversations. You'll be surprised how that opens up that C-level conversation. You'll be more likely to be invited into a boardroom, if you can tell that story in simple language and in business language than if you do it in, in adtech or in martech language.
Tell good stories, simplify, hire great people. Again, these are all classic, you know, business stories, but there are a lot of great people that were let go from the market last year. Rebuild your team, with the right people with the right skills, who are going to bring the right energy you need to drive successful outcomes.
Tune into the full podcast here.
Target Market, a podcast series by AZK Media, where the world’s most premium thought leaders across technology, marketing and data come together to share their insights. Hosted by Athina Mallis.
