Less is more: how marketers can sharpen tech tools to unlock long-term value

In consumer goods, buying behaviours have shifted irrevocably, splintered across multiple platforms, channels and touchpoints. The journey from discovery to purchase is no longer linear, flattening traditional marketing funnels in the process, and blurring long-established boundaries between sales and FMCG marketing teams.

As these fundamentals of how and where to reach consumers have completely shifted, marketing teams in consumer goods have been left to navigate one of the most complex ecosystem changes in a generation.

All of which is transforming the way marketers work – and the expectations placed upon them.

As a result, technology – as a tool with which to understand and target this evolving consumer – is evolving rapidly, as marketers leverage the latest in AI or software to inch ahead of their competition. In fact, 95% of marketers revealed they had plans to up their investment in tech and AI in 2025, according to a poll by research firm Sago.

“As a small, agile team, we can’t afford to chase every new marketing tool. The volume of AI-powered martech emerging right now makes that impossible”

– Kerttu Inkeroinen, chief marketing officer, Lucky Saint

But technology is no magic bullet. Not only are marketing budgets squeezed from higher labour costs and, in some categories, diminished demand, but the proliferation of technologies at their disposal can leave marketers trapped in a spiral of endless experimentation with no demonstrable benefits.

Instead, marketing functions need to refine the fundamentals of their strategy, clarifying their challenges and putting in place some core foundations before layering on the latest shiny tech.

So, what does that look like in practice?

Problem first, technology second

At alcohol-free lager brand Lucky Saint, the starting point for any investment is always the problem they’re looking to solve, explains chief marketing officer Kerttu Inkeroinen.

“We’re a small, agile team, so we can’t afford to chase every new tool,” she says. “Frankly, the volume of AI-powered martech emerging right now makes that impossible for anyone. Every new platform with access to company data adds governance complexity, so there has to be a clear case for it. We’d rather go deep on a few tools that genuinely change how we work than spread ourselves thinly across lots of them.”

To do that, “we ask: where are we losing time, missing insight, or making decisions with incomplete information? If a tool addresses one of those things in a meaningful way, it gets attention.”

This approach was applied to Lucky Saint’s deployment of Triple Whale’s Moby AI, for example, a tool that lets the team interrogate its Shopify data conversationally, without having to build reports manually or wait on analysis. “For a small team, that kind of speed matters,” explains Inkeroinen. “We spend less time pulling reports and more time acting on what they tell us.”

“For us it’s about using retail media, first-party shopper data and more interactive formats in a way that genuinely improves the shopping experience”

– Jonathan Beinart, head of digital transformation for Europe, Diageo

Meanwhile, at Bold Bean Co, “having a clear north star matters more than any specific evaluation framework,” says Louisa Sorensen, the brand’s head of marketing and campaigns. “Ours is: does this tool help bring us closer to our customers?” Take AI as an example. “There’s enormous efficiency to unlock and we’re actively exploring where it belongs in our workflow – but we’re also very protective of the touchpoints that need to feel human.

“We’re a small, intentional brand and our customers know there’s a real person behind every email, every community reply, every piece of content,” she adds. ”The right martech lets us do that at scale without losing the connection.”

Even for the industry’s heavyweights, though, it is critical that each tool or technology is filtered through a “consumer-first” lens, notes Jonathan Beinart, head of digital transformation for Europe at Diageo. “For us, it’s about using retail media, first-party shopper data and more interactive formats in a way that genuinely improves the shopping experience.”

Creating a conscious framework

Once this business case is identified, marketers then need to refine how they pilot and scale solutions, says Nat Gross, head of media and marketing advisory at KPMG UK.

“There has been a unification of test and use cases over the last year and now it’s about scale,” she says. “If you’re going to scale, you don’t bring in more and more tools; it’s about consciously deciding what you’re going to deploy and where.”

Gross recommends applying a clear framework to ensure a more conscious decision-making process, focusing on three key metrics: complexity or ease of implementation; the value delivered; and the risk involved, including both regulatory and legal considerations. By mapping each martech tool against these criteria, it becomes far simpler to understand which are worth scaling up, which aren’t worth further investment and, crucially, where there is scope for further experimentation.

This also enables marketers to balance short-term needs with longer-term vision, says Gross. “It provides marketers with a matrix with which to balance risk and reward. One tool may add immediate value and have less risk associated. But the world is moving fast and if all you invest in are safe bets, then you’ll never be prepared for medium and long-term change.

Think of it like a “layer cake”, she suggests, with individual experimental tools easily swapped in and out at the top but underpinned by some baked-in foundations. “These criteria enable you to pinpoint where it’s worth experimenting, balancing the foundational and experimental in order to create momentum and build growth for the long term,” she adds.

“Our approach is about testing, learning and building on what works,” says Beinart. “We look to scale the activity that delivers clear commercial impact and can be rolled out more widely, while continuing to explore newer areas where the long-term value is still emerging.”

He points to the brewer’s recent work on Guinness Nitrosurge, which saw it launch an interactive video campaign with an online retailer that allowed shoppers to ‘Add to Basket’ directly from the video. “When we compared this to the same creative without that functionality, we saw a clear uplift in both purchase rate and overall sales on the site,” he says. “We were also able to use shopper data to tailor messaging between existing buyers and those who hadn’t yet purchased, which helped make the campaign feel more relevant to each audience.”

“One tool may add immediate value and have less risk associated. But the world is moving fast and if all you invest in are safe bets, then you’ll never be prepared for medium and long-term change”

– Nat Gross, head of media and marketing advisory, KPMG UK

The bottom line is that “martech is almost always a significant investment in financial terms, and an even more significant upheaval in terms of business process change, so doing your groundwork is essential,” says Andy Wickes, managing partner, creative and digital at Jellybean Creative. A few principles I always come back to are: Anchor everything to a data spine. Favour platforms with strong integration ecosystems. Run a structured audit before buying anything new.”

Start with the fundamentals

The pace of development in areas like generative and agentic AI will likely see the martech toolkit fluctuate considerably in the coming years, and the right tool for a task now is unlikely to be the same in 10 or even two years’ time. Whichever way they evolve though, there are some fundamental ‘no regret’ actions that companies can take now to ensure they don’t fall behind.

The first is data. “Effective use of tools like AI in marketing is impossible without robust data foundations,” points out Gross. Be it metadata used by martech to construct consumer profiles or provide demonstrable ROI for a digital campaign; data is now a “strategic asset” that senior marketers must prioritise. Remember too, “data is only valuable if you own it”, she flags, with overreliance on third-party platforms eroding that all-important sovereignty.

Second is moving out of operational siloes and instead positioning marketing as the “voice of the consumer”, with the function acting as an orchestrator for broader consumer-led change across an organisation. For example, in the case of fmcg brands “they need to be the one that connects into commercial teams, as they have the relationship with retailers,” says Gross. “They can act as the catalyst for change.”

Third, and final, is to cultivate a culture that can adapt and respond to the ongoing evolution of the marketing function and the shifts in consumer behaviour. “Marketing has got to be comfortable or at least institutionalise uncertainty,” says Gross. “The function has to build in agility and a willingness to test, learn and iterate.”

Without this mindset, marketers may find themselves stuck at a crossroads, unsure of which route to take and reliant on a tech stack that simply serves to impede their progress.