Is the Marketing Cloud the Answer for the Dynamics 365 Marketer?

As the customer journey becomes more complex, investments in marketing technology continue to be an important factor in reaching a digital buyer through multichannel touchpoints. According to Forrester’s US Marketing Technology and Services Outlook, CMOs will spend more than $122 billion on marketing technology (MarTech) and services by the year 2022. In addition, a recent Gartner report suggests that technology now accounts for 29 percent of a total marketing expense budget, making MarTech the single largest area of investment when it comes to marketing resources and programs.

While these figures validate the need for marketing technology, more than 7,000 technology vendors compete daily to solve marketers’ challenges. So, while the options are plentiful, the modern marketer has the daunting task of finding, integrating and implementing the ideal MarTech stack to reach new and existing customers.

For Dynamics 365 users, there is an added level of complexity to finding the right solutions that integrate Dynamics and Microsoft’s Common Data Service. Both B2B and B2C companies choose Microsoft because they want to a single data layer for all their business applications, resulting in a more complete, unified picture of their business and customers. In addition to the need for integrated sales and marketing technology, companies also want “no-code” options for citizen developers to quickly extend applications for their business, making a common data foundation even more important.

To meet the evolving needs of marketers and help them reduce the current overwhelming complexity of the MarTech stack, B2B marketing automation technology leaders have evolved their offerings into marketing clouds, suites of cloud-based marketing tools covering inbound marketing, lead management, multichannel orchestration, campaign management, analytics, marketing services and more. Marketing clouds aim to reduce the complexity of MarTech stacks and provide a unified view of customers so businesses can create personalized multichannel customer journeys that result in a better customer experience.

As Dynamics marketers look for MarTech that fits their needs, below are considerations and insight to determine if the marketing cloud is the answer for your organizations’ needs.

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