What Is Martech and When Should You Hire for It?

TL;DR

Martech is the combination of people, processes, systems, and platforms used to support marketing across product, growth, engineering, and marketing teams. Early startups can manage these responsibilities collectively, but companies often need centralized ownership around 100 to 150 employees, when data flows, schemas, contracts, procurement, legal concerns, and first-party or third-party tools become too complex for a shared approach.

Transcript

From 2010 to 2020, we had the golden years of  deterministic matching where it was very easy to run an ad and understand with precision who  installed the app. Maybe you didn't know their name, but you actually would know their IDFA  and you could tie that to their PII. You can't   do that anymore. So, what that means is these ad  networks are beco... Read More

Key Insights

• Martech is a cross-functional discipline combining people, processes, systems, and platforms across product, growth, engineering, and marketing. It is not merely a collection of software tools, because its practitioners must also coordinate ownership, operating practices, data movement, and internally developed capabilities.
• A martech practitioner is comparable to a product manager whose product is the marketing technology system or platform. The role can cover third-party products, first-party solutions built internally, or a combination selected and managed to serve the company’s marketing needs.
• Martech ownership is often shared at companies with 30 to 40 employees or fewer. Growth acquisition specialists, product managers, engineers, and marketers may collectively configure CDPs, analytics products, ad-network connections, and custom solutions because using those systems is part of completing their primary jobs.
• Centralized martech ownership often becomes necessary around 100 to 150 employees. At that scale, someone needs to understand how data moves through tools, maintain schemas, manage systems and platforms, and address contracts, procurement, legal considerations, and the liabilities created by weak oversight.
• Martech can belong to several organizational functions depending on company needs. Austin Hay has seen it managed through product operations, IT, a dedicated marketing technology unit, a broader business technology unit, growth, revenue operations, or a marketing product function embedded within marketing.
• B2C martech often fits naturally within growth because the acquisition funnel moves users into the product, which then takes over the experience. In this structure, a customer data platform may serve as the source of truth without requiring an additional CRM for managing business accounts.
• B2B martech often appears within revenue operations or a systems function because the company must support both incoming funnel users and the businesses served after acquisition. This environment may include advanced CRM products such as Salesforce alongside marketing systems and business technology responsibilities.
• Modern attribution increasingly depends on probabilistic reasoning because marketers can no longer rely on the deterministic matching common from 2010 to 2020. One proposed approach is to build a model from available information covering 30% of a population, then use it to extrapolate patterns across the full population.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is marketing technology and what does a martech person do?

Marketing technology is a cross-functional discipline at the intersection of product, growth, engineering, and marketing. It combines people and processes with systems and platforms. A martech professional acts much like a product manager for marketing infrastructure, overseeing third-party tools, internally built first-party solutions, data movement, schemas, and the operating practices required to make those capabilities useful across teams.

Q: When should a company hire a dedicated martech professional?

A dedicated martech professional often becomes valuable when a company reaches roughly 100 to 150 employees. Before then, teams may operate marketing systems collectively. As the organization grows, someone must become accountable for data flows, schemas, platform behavior, contracts, procurement, legal requirements, and system ownership. The exact timing still depends on the company’s stage, complexity, and business model.

Q: How is martech different from a growth team?

At a small company, martech and growth may be nearly indistinguishable because an acquisition specialist might configure a customer data platform, send information to ad networks, and operate analytics tools as part of running campaigns. The distinction becomes clearer with scale, when systems require centralized ownership beyond campaign execution, including data architecture, governance, procurement, contracts, and coordination with product and engineering.

Q: Where should martech sit within an organization?

Martech has no single required organizational home. It can sit within growth, product operations, IT, revenue operations, business technology, a dedicated marketing technology team, or a marketing product function. The appropriate structure depends on company size, stage, system complexity, and whether the business primarily serves consumers or other businesses. Postmates placed it within growth, while Ramp separates business technology and marketing technology inside revenue operations.

Q: How does martech differ between B2C and B2B companies?

In a B2C company, the funnel can be relatively direct: marketing acquires users, brings them into the product, and the product takes over. A customer data platform may therefore become the source of truth, making growth a natural home for martech. B2B companies also support business customers after acquisition, so martech more commonly connects with revenue operations, systems roles, and advanced CRM platforms such as Salesforce.

Q: Why does shared ownership of marketing tools stop scaling?

Shared ownership stops scaling because increasingly complex systems require clear accountability. Someone must know how information travels among tools, how schemas are defined, which platforms depend on one another, and whether contracts are being managed properly. Procurement and legal responsibilities also grow with the tool portfolio. Austin Hay warns that poorly managed contracts can create substantial liability, making informal village-style ownership increasingly risky.

Q: How should marketers approach attribution without deterministic data?

Marketers should become comfortable making decisions with probabilistic information when deterministic attribution is unavailable. Austin Hay describes finding other information that can support a model for 30% of a population, then using that model to extrapolate across the full population. This approach responds to a market where ad networks are becoming more sophisticated while precise knowledge of where each person came from has become harder to obtain.

Q: What changed in advertising attribution after the deterministic matching era?

From 2010 to 2020, deterministic matching made it comparatively easy to connect an advertisement with an app installation. Marketers could use an IDFA and associate it with personally identifiable information, even if they did not know the individual’s name. Austin Hay says that capability is no longer available, so marketers face more complicated ad networks and less certainty about how their spending produces results.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Martech sits at the intersection of product, growth, engineering, and marketing. Austin Hay describes its practitioners as product managers for marketing systems and platforms. Their scope can include third-party software, internally developed tools, operating processes, data structures, and coordination among the teams that use or maintain those capabilities.

• Martech ownership changes as a company grows. At startups with roughly 30 to 40 employees, growth, product, engineering, and marketing may collectively operate tools such as CDPs and analytics platforms. Around 100 to 150 employees, centralized ownership becomes important because data flows, schemas, contracts, procurement, and legal responsibilities require sustained attention.

• Organizational design depends partly on the business model. B2C companies may place martech within growth because acquisition feeds users directly into the product and a CDP can serve as the source of truth. B2B companies may house it within revenue operations or systems teams because they also manage business customers and advanced CRMs.