ERP and CRM giants offer marketing automation as part of their broader offerings

Global enterprise resource and planning (ERP) services have been extending the capabilities of their cloud computing platforms to include marketing solutions. Most of these platforms have been pieced together by both in-house developments and acquisitions, offering customers an all-in-one marketing solution. Most firms focus on business-to-business (B2B) solutions while some firms, such as Adobe, Oracle, and SAP, have extended their capabilities into the business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing space. ERP firms tend to have an edge over pure-play MarTech firms (particularly in the B2B space), given their ability to offer an integrated platform that connects to a firm’s sales, operations, accounting, and other functions provided by the ERP.

Popular customer relationship management (CRM) services, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Sugar CRM, and Zoho, have also introduced solutions specific to marketing. As the unification of sales and marketing roles is a growing trend, CRMs (popular among sales teams) help bridge the information gap between the two teams via a single platform, giving such firms an edge.

Search engine operators such as Google and Bing (Microsoft), in addition to providing ad placement services, also offer their data analytics platforms. These have access to large customer data reserves for marketing teams. Meanwhile, ecommerce firms like Amazon and social media sites like Facebook have been improving the data analytics capabilities of their products to offer a more complete package.

A note on ad and marketing agencies: Ad and marketing agencies are external firms specializing in providing professional marketing services and have been mainstays in the marketing landscape for decades. Traditional marketing agencies (agencies that focus on traditional media channels and are typically owned by large holding companies) have witnessed a slowdown in their performance, while marketing automation has complemented the services of digital marketing agencies rather than completely replacing them. Many independent digital marketing agencies have positioned themselves to provide complete marketing solutions by developing their in-house marketing automation tools or partnering with marketing automation startups; others specialize in providing strategic consultancy services for marketing. A case in point is the marketing agency 3Q Digital, which provides complete digital market management solutions and strategic consulting.

Another service offered by marketing agencies is the implementation and training of marketers in the use of marketing automation, which has grown in complexity, while firms have cited a lack of know-how as a barrier to implementation. Adswerve is one such agency, offering a licensed marketing automation platform as well as implementation and onboarding services.

As such firms do not directly compete with the services offered by startups in the marketing automation space, we have excluded them as incumbents.