• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 26, 2014

Consumers want consistency as they move between the Web and mobile channels and stores and digital devices, but more than half of brand marketers participating in a study released this week said their companies have yet to link technologies beyond the most basic integration. The reality of fully optimizing technology stacks remains a distant goal for too many marketers because of the complexity of the task.

Signal this month conducted a global online survey of 281 brand and agency marketers spanning 16 industry verticals to explore the challenges faced by marketers when it comes to technology and tools that really deliver a cross-channel experience. Technology is one factor, and staffing is another -- reaching the goal requires hiring or training the correct people with the skills, from search to social to display, video, online and offline point-of-sale systems, as well as those with IT experience who understand digital integration.

The findings reveal that 61% of survey respondents feel marketing technology is evolving rapidly Less than 1% of survey respondents spend less on technology today than they did three years ago, with 53% saying they have been steadily increasing or have made a big jump in their investments over the same time period. In the rapidly changing landscape, 60% of marketers are extremely active in evaluating technology. Some 48% continually reevaluate marketing technologies, 23% passively follow the market, 17% said only when they need to change, 12% have a specific team evaluating the technology, and 1% rarely evaluates it at all.

While 90% of marketers agreed that integrated marketing technologies could boost their key capabilities, only 4% admit to having a completely integrated marketing stack. Some 51% report managing their tools and data separately or have loosely integrated systems, and 24% have integrated their core tools to satisfy the majority of their integration requirements. About 38% of marketers report having some sort of cross-channel capabilities, but only with the tools that have cross-channel features.

Marketers agree that connecting technologies would improve their capabilities -- helping them to harness the data, improve customer engagement and loyalty, and drive conversions and sales. Those that want to drive a successful cross-channel initiative should rank technology integration as a top priority, make their data easily available across their disparate technologies, and work on realigning their organizations to become customer-focused rather than channel-focused. Few marketers do enough.

The online advertising industry continues to experience many struggles, as seen in the electronics industry during the 2000s. The U.S.-based electronic component distributors supporting manufacturers like Samsung, IBM and Intel began expanding overseas through acquisition to support the original equipment manufacturers taking manufacturing to China, Vietnam and other Asia-Pacific countries.

The advertising industry faces typical growing pains, and following the steps taken by other market segments before them would make it a lot less painful.

Connecting disparate technologies becomes daunting for several reasons, per the Signal study. Separate tools have unique technical foundations. They are designed for use in distinct channels rather than working in concert with tools across channels; thus the reason for middleware or APIs. Signal's internal research reveals that the average marketing stack consists, on average, of 17 tools, requiring dozens of custom integration projects that few marketers have time or budget to support.

When marketers were asked where integration could help, nine out of 10 survived had positive feedback in improving customer relationships and loyalty; driving more return on marketing investment; understanding and measure marketing outcomes; improving marketing agility and innovation; and using more relevant with greater impact.

"Woman on Rock enjoying view" photo from Shutterstock.