The obsession with stacking more martech doesn’t come from nowhere — ironically, it’s baked into the psychological tactics of modern marketing. Digital leaders aren’t buying their third tracking tool because they’re bored. They’re doing it because the entire industry whispers, shouts, and sometimes screams: “You’re just not doing it right. Here use this new technology, you’ll fall behind if you don’t.”

Every week, another headline promises a “major shift” — AI Decisioning etc. I won’t rattle off the list, you know what I’m talking about.

At every conference there’s always that brand-side practitioner on stage — the one who looks like they’ve got their sh*t together more than anyone in the room — showing off a stack of sweet, sweet tools, all neatly wrapped in a presentation quietly and in-directly sponsored by a billion-dollar martech vendor.

B2B vendors thrive on this pressure and urgency, positioning every new platform (heck even new feature) as the missing piece. The subtext: if you don’t act now, you’re not only out of date, you’re irresponsible.

This creates a cycle of professional FOMO:

Psychologically, it’s the marketing version of chasing a new diet fad. Each promises transformation and a sense of progress. Each feels easier than admitting the treadmill in the garage — or the tools in the stack — are already more than enough if we’d just use them properly.

Ironically, more often than not, these purchases complicate the very problems they’re supposed to solve. Integrations multiply, teams get spread thin across platforms - paying the context-switching, QA and data movement tax, and inevitably adoption barely scrapes past minimum utility.

Yet the cycle continues because the industry has conflated buying tools with buying credibility.

I’ve been around long enough to know that this isn’t always the martech leaders fault either. Often they’re the unlucky ones who find out very late in the day that they’ve just had a new enterprise monolithic platform foisted upon them by the CMO, CTO or even CEO.

The truth is simple but hard to swallow: it’s not the martech that’s failing us.

We’re failing it, by letting fear and hype dictate buying decisions and overwhelm crash adoption and utility.

Most discussions about martech wastage stop at the depressing bit: bloated stacks, wasted spend, and Gavin who insists on sending an email instead of ticking the box in platform. Truth is, cutting the dead weight and fully adopting the right platforms doesn’t just save money — it creates competitive advantage.

Here’s a few reasons to pick-up that holy water and get to work.

Every redundant licence retired is real budget freed up. For digital leaders under pressure to “do more with less,” eliminating shelf-ware is the easiest cost win available. Better still, when tools in use are clipped back to basic feature sets that actually drive value and are working for you, not only do you save money - teams can end up spending less time navigating complexity and more time actually marketing.

Upside: Lower costs, leaner operations.

Marketers don’t need more dashboards; they need clarity. A trimmed stack means fewer logins, fewer overlapping attribution touch points and workflows, and less training fatigue. It also means teams can master a smaller set of tools, unlocking capabilities and ‘hacks’ that were previously not even considered.

Remember: Constraint is a gift to innovation.

Upside: Teams become more skilled, confident, and productive.

When half the stack sits idle, finance sees waste. They may not fully understand it, but they can smell it. When leaders cut fat and demonstrate discipline and strong adoption, they earn trust. A lean, well-used stack signals authority over your craft — that marketing isn’t dazzled by shiny objects but grounded in driving value for the business. In budget conversations, credibility is currency. When you tell your CFO, “No, we’ve had a good look at that part of the stack and we can see savings there”…. their heart races.

Upside: Stronger influence, credibility and defensible budgets.

When platforms are fully used, they deliver the outcomes they were originally bought for — sharper insights, better, more on-point personalisation, faster execution — and most of all clarity in operation. Full utilisation means martech stops being a grudge workflow and starts being a growth driver.

Upside: The tools finally deliver the impact they promised.

The wastage problem isn’t just a liability for you to quietly sweep under the rug or smother in the dead of night; it’s an opportunity to demonstrate leadership.

Leaders who tackle it unlock efficiency, team focus, credibility, and impact — the four things every marketing department is desperate for. The next step is moving from theory to practice: how to actually bring your martech back from the dead.

So, the opportunity is clear: but how do you do it without sparking a mutiny from your team or a guilt trip from your vendors? Here’s the pragmatic, no-nonsense playbook from the guy who’s broken more than a few vendors hearts (don’t worry we’re still friends).

Turn Gut Feel into Hard Evidence with a Simple Scoring Matrix

If you’ve ever been involved in a martech audit of any kind, you know that they start all tough guy, “Mr. objective” to begin with but over time it gets vague, complicated and almost always ends with a spreadsheet full of vibes.

To turn that chaos into clarity, score each tool simply and objectively. A simple 1–5 matrix works wonders.

For every tool, give a score out of five on each of the following attributes:

While you’re at it, include a field for listing out all the key functionalities it includes - dont go too deep, just a list for now. This will be handy for later.

How to interpret scores:

This matrix cuts through bias and politics. No it;’s not perfectly scientific, it’s directional in nature. But suddenly you’re not debating opinions — you’re looking at a calibrated playing field. The conversation shifts from “Do we like this tool?” to “Does this tool deliver measurable value?”

Every marketing stack has feature overlap — it’s unavoidable. The goal isn’t to eliminate it entirely but to understand it.

Once you’ve mapped overlaps, decisions on what to keep or cut become strategic, not emotional.

Use three filters for every tool:

If it fails two of the three, it’s probably ready for retirement.

This is where most stacks collapse. Buying the tool is easy; embedding it is hard. Practical tips:

Another really important aspect of this is enthusiastically challenging your team to ‘hack’ their tools. Ask you group to find ways to push this product beyond what it’s planned capability is.

This helps your team to not only push themselves, but positions the tools and unique competitive advantage makers for the business. Powerful stuff.

Before buying a new platform — or keeping an existing one — tie it to measurable KPIs such as:

If the tool can’t demonstrate impact within six months, it either needs a recommitment plan or a proper burial.

Done well, this process doesn’t just save money. It builds a culture where tools are genuinely embedded into marketing execution — proof that martech can finally live up to its promise.

Let’s be real: most digital teams don’t have a technology problem — they have a utility problem. The average stack already has everything it needs to perform brilliantly. It’s just buried under years of shrinking enthusiasm, inertia, and vendor promises.

Solving martech waste isn’t just a cost exercise. It’s a credibility one. Every dormant licence is a message to the CFO that marketing doesn’t know how to manage its toys. Every unused feature is an opportunity cost — a capability you’ve paid for but never leveraged to drive growth.

But the moment you get your stack under control, the whole dynamic shifts. Suddenly, conversations with finance stop being defensive. Your team stops feeling overwhelmed by tool fatigue. Your dashboards start reflecting real data, not noise. And your marketing starts to move faster, leaner, and more intelligently.

Here’s the paradox: by having less, you’ll achieve more. Cutting the clutter brings focus. Focus drives confidence. Confidence earns successes. And success gets you the one thing every digital leader craves — trust from the top.

So, before you approve that next shiny new platform, ask yourself one question:
What would happen to our performance if we used 90% of what we already have — instead of 50%?

Because the smartest digital leaders aren’t building the biggest stacks. They’re building the most used ones.

If you enjoyed this edition, please forward it to a friend who’s looking to level-up their growth game - they’ll love you for it (and I will too) ⏭️ 💌

Troy Muir | The Ladder

PS. Don’t get the guy who last week was MC’ing a carpet industry conference. If you’re in marketing, CX or digital I can help make your conference a memorable delight for your attendees.

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