(And what it really says about the state of marketing)
According to a recent Gartner’s MarTech Survey, average MarTech utilisation has dropped to just 33%, down from 58% in 2020. That means two-thirds of the platforms and tools marketing teams are investing in are sitting idle or underused.
Let that sink in: despite the explosion of marketing technology over the last decade - and all the promises of automation, personalisation, and data-driven brilliance - CMOs and Marketing Ops teams are using only a third of what they’re paying for.
So, what’s going on here?
The obvious answer is complexity. But the real reasons go deeper. And they reveal something uncomfortable about the way marketing is structured, resourced, and led today.
Let’s unpack it.
The MarTech market has outpaced human capability
MarTech vendors have been shipping software like there’s a race to cover every pixel of the customer journey. With every product release, a new dashboard, AI feature, or “next-gen” integration promises to fix some broken piece of the funnel.
But here's the problem: humans are still required to implement, integrate, and operate these tools - and there simply aren’t enough skilled people (with time!) to do it all.
Most organisations don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to squeeze ROI out of more than a handful of systems. And while the CMO may have a shiny MarTech stack slide for the boardroom, most of it gathers dust in the shadows of Excel and PowerPoint.
Tool buying has become political, not practical
Let’s be honest: a lot of MarTech gets bought not because teams need it, but because someone senior wants to be seen as “transformative.”
You know the story. A vendor pitches a slick demo. A few buzzwords get dropped (“real-time orchestration,” “AI-powered personalisation,” “composable CX”). A few competitors are name-checked. And suddenly, you’ve got a new platform that doesn’t integrate properly, doesn’t fit your processes, and now needs five new headcount to operate.
What’s left? A team that uses 10% of it while trying not to get fired.
The integration tax is real - and it's killing adoption
You don't just buy a MarTech platform. You marry it.
And like any marriage, integration is where the real work begins. But unlike actual marriages, no one wants to do the hard parts here.
Getting different systems to talk to each other - cleanly, securely, and usefully - is still one of the biggest barriers to utilisation. When data isn’t flowing, automations break, dashboards lie, and everyone defaults back to manual workarounds.
This is where so much MarTech dies: not in ambition, but in execution.
Change fatigue is throttling even the best platforms
In theory, new platforms should unlock new value. In practice, they often trigger process chaos, retraining burdens, and morale decay.
The average marketing team is on its fourth or fifth "must-have" platform this decade. And after a while, every new implementation feels like a threat, not a win. Ops teams grow jaded. Users disengage. Features go unexplored. Projects stall out halfway.
The result? Tools get blamed. Adoption drops. Utilisation follows.
(Spoiler alert: the next shiny platform won’t fix this either.)
There’s a lack of strategy - and even less orchestration
One of the most damning insights from the Gartner report wasn’t just the drop in usage. It was that only 24% of marketers said they had the capabilities to fully utilise their stack.
That’s not a MarTech problem. That’s a marketing leadership problem.
Too many orgs treat their stack like a list of features instead of an interconnected system of capabilities. There’s no strategic orchestration. No roadmap. No measurement beyond basic campaign metrics. And definitely no real process for rationalising what gets added (or removed) from the stack.
In short: We’ve bought the tools without defining the jobs.
So what now?
If your MarTech utilisation is under 40%, you're not alone - but you are wasting budget, time, and opportunity. The fix isn't more tools. It’s more focus.
Here’s what leading orgs are starting to do differently:
Audit ruthlessly – Identify what actually gets used, what’s delivering value, and what’s just legacy tech debt. Kill or consolidate the rest.
Design around outcomes – Build the stack backward from business goals, not vendor hype or peer pressure.
Empower Marketing Ops – Stop treating MOPs as IT’s sidekick. Let them lead on architecture, governance, and adoption.
Invest in enablement – Platforms don't drive value. People do. Budget for training, change management, and adoption as much as licenses.
Slow down to speed up – Fewer tools, better used, always beats a bloated stack full of features nobody knows how to turn on.
Final thought: Maybe it's not MarTech that’s failing. Maybe it’s us.
MarTech isn’t going away. If anything, AI and data ecosystems are only making it more powerful - and more complex. But technology alone doesn’t transform marketing.
People do.
Until we stop treating MarTech like a silver bullet and start treating it like a discipline, the utilisation rate will stay low - and the real cost of underperformance will stay high.
It’s time to stop buying tools we can’t use, and start building strategies we can actually execute.
