Do you have difficulty telling one marketing technology company from another? If so, you’re not alone. Differentiation is probably the single biggest issue for marketing technology companies today: So said a panel of experts discussing marketing technology at The Drum’s most recent Breakfast Briefing.

As one participant at this breakfast observed, “with 3120 marketing services and software companies how do you choose just one?” The crowdedness of this space has become a real problem for companies large and small.

There’s also a sense that ‘martech’ companies are starting to sell overly similar messages that are preventing them from standing out: Outlining what third party products your system can interact with is a critical, but functional, message. But beyond this there’s a risk of sounding a bit ‘samey’. “We can help you segment better”. “We can give you better access to your data”. “We’ve solved attribution”. “We can enable <insert fashionable marketing trend here>”. etc.

However, as one participant observed, a market with this degree of flux and uncertainty also represents a massive opportunity for the company with the right story:

“There’s a lot of confusion about where things are going in the world of marketing. *That* is the opportunity. If one company can figure out a story that clears that confusion, laying out a convincing narrative for where the industry is going, they’ll win all the business, and become a kind of consigliere for the rest of the industry.”

Frank Kelcz, Collider (a marketing and adtech accelerator)

Of course martech companies need to think big, be bold, and to search hard for their critical differentiators, (and establish credible proof points with customer evidence to back them up). But more than this, martech companies also need to outline a broad vision of where the world of marketing is going, how marketers can align with that grand ‘direction’, and how their specific martech product fits into realising that vision.

Wildfire’s own extensive and successful history of working with martech clients, big and small, has shown us that such campaigns today demand an increasingly creative approach, both in terms of their core ideas and their tactical realisation. In today’s market more than ever no-one can afford to end up with a ‘me too’ campaign: And in planning and executing these campaigns martech companies must engage with agencies that have rich history and experience of working in the sector.

You can read more about the sectors we cover and the work we’ve undertaken to better-understand how we might be able to help you with your marketing technology PR requirements.