Marketing teams are actively using just 33% of the martech stack capabilities they're paying for, down from 58% in 2020, according to Gartner's Martech Survey. That's not one failed rollout. That's most of the average marketing technology budget in North America sitting on a shelf. This isn't an argument to cancel your subscriptions. It's a look at why the gap opened up, and what businesses are actually switching to instead.
● Marketing teams use only 33% of their martech stack's capabilities, down from 58% in 2020.
● The average marketing team now runs around 121 marketing tools, up from 91 in 2022, while martech's share of total marketing budget has dropped to its lowest point in a decade.
● Underutilization is rarely a tool problem. It's almost always a missing ownership problem.
● Businesses are consolidating around fewer, better-connected platforms and pairing them with outside expertise instead of adding more standalone software.
● A quarterly stack audit, the kind a martech consulting services engagement runs as standard practice, catches shelfware before renewal instead of after.
91 tools became 121 in the space of a few years, and almost none of that growth came with a plan for who would actually use them. Martech now takes up about 22.4% of marketing budgets, its lowest share in 10 years, even as most CMOs say they intend to spend more on technology next year. Put those two numbers side by side and the picture gets clear fast. Businesses keep buying, and they keep using less of what they already bought.
It's rarely a bad decision in isolation. A platform gets bought to solve one specific problem, a campaign, a reporting gap, a competitor's feature. The purchase makes sense on the day it happens. What doesn't happen often enough is the follow-through, having someone assigned to configure it properly, train the team on it, and check back in three months later to see if it stuck.
That gap shows up in the data too. Roughly 60% of CMOs say they don't have time to properly evaluate the technology they already own, while a much larger share of their organizations keep pushing to expand the stack anyway. Nobody's auditing the middle of the funnel because everyone's focused on the next tool at the top of it.
Here's an opinion, not just a read of the stats above. Almost every underused platform we've inherited from a new client had the same root cause, and it wasn't the software. It was that nobody owned it.
A CRM without someone responsible for keeping the pipeline stages clean will rot in six months, no matter how good the CRM is. An ABM platform bought without a team to run the campaigns inside it becomes an expensive contact database. The tool isn't the problem. The absence of a person or partner accountable for making it earn its subscription is.
This is why businesses that get real value out of their stack tend to have one thing in common. They treat implementation as its own project, not a checkbox after the contract is signed. A dedicated salesforce implementation partner, for example, doesn't just turn the platform on. They build the automations, set up lead routing, and train the team that has to live in it every day, which is a different job than selling the license.
The trend we're seeing in client conversations isn't "cut everything." It's a shift toward fewer platforms, each one fully used, paired with outside expertise where a subscription alone was never going to solve the problem.
A few patterns keep showing up.
Consolidating around one CRM, properly configured. Instead of layering five point solutions on top of Salesforce or HubSpot, businesses are going back to basics and working with a salesforce implementation partner to make sure the core system actually reflects how the sales team works, rather than fighting default settings nobody customized.
Replacing standalone ABM software with an ABM team. An account based marketing agency that runs the targeting, sequencing, and reporting tends to outperform a self-serve ABM platform that sat half-configured for a year, because the software was never the bottleneck. The strategy and follow-through were.
Handing display media to people who manage it daily. Self-serve programmatic seats often go quiet after the first few campaigns because nobody has the bandwidth to keep optimizing them. A display advertising agency running the same channel full-time usually gets more out of the same media budget than an internal team checking in once a month.
Outsourcing the content that sales tools were bought to hold. Sales enablement platforms are frequently purchased to store proof points that never get produced. A case study writing service fills that specific gap instead of hoping the content appears on its own.
Bringing in one team to see the whole stack. Rather than five vendors each defending their own renewal, more businesses are working with a single martech stack agency that has no stake in any particular platform and can recommend what to keep, cut, or replace with a service instead.
A mid-size B2B client came to us with an ABM platform, a display advertising seat, and a customer data platform, on top of their core CRM. The audit found their team was actively using maybe a third of it, mostly email automation and lead scoring inside the CRM. The ABM platform had run one campaign in eight months. The display seat hadn't been touched in two full quarters.
We didn't recommend replacing everything with more software. We cut the ABM platform and moved that budget into a managed ABM program instead, redirected the unused display spend into an agency-run programmatic buy, and had a Salesforce specialist clean up and re-document the CRM workflows the internal team had never had time to finish. Total tool count dropped. Reported pipeline from marketing-sourced deals went up the following quarter, because the budget that used to sit idle was finally doing something.
The Old Assumption - What the Data Actually Shows
More tools means more capability - Teams use only 33% of what they already own, down from 58% in 2020
Buying the platform solves the problem - 60% of CMOs say they lack time to evaluate the technology they already have
Cutting tools means cutting capability - A smaller, fully used stack paired with outside expertise regularly outperforms a large, half-used one
Start with a plain usage audit. Look at which tools anyone has actually logged into in the last 90 days, and for what. Anything nobody can answer gets flagged for cancellation or replacement.
For what's left, decide honestly whether the gap is the software or the person running it. If it's the software, cut it. If it's ownership, that's the moment to bring in a partner, whether that's a salesforce implementation partner to finish a rollout that never got finished, or an agency to run a channel that's been sitting half-managed.
Put a name against every tool that survives the audit. No owner, no renewal. Then repeat the whole exercise every quarter, not once a year when the annual contracts happen to come up.
The stack isn't underperforming because businesses picked the wrong software. It's underperforming because buying a tool and using a tool have quietly become two different projects, and most teams only budget for the first one. The fix isn't a bigger stack or a smaller one. It's making sure everything left standing has someone, whether an employee or a partner, actually responsible for it.
We're Rovert Digital, a holistic digital growth agency built around the idea that marketing automation best practices only matter once someone's accountable for using them. Whether that means acting as your salesforce implementation partner, running martech consulting services to audit what you already own, or stepping in directly as your account based marketing agency, case study writing service, or display advertising agency for the pieces better handled by a dedicated team, that's the conversation we start before recommending a single new subscription. If your stack has grown faster than your team's ability to use it, that's worth a look before the next renewal cycle.
1. Why is the organization only using a third of the martech stack?
Underutilization is almost always an ownership problem, not a software problem. Tools get bought to solve a specific issue but rarely come with a plan for who configures them, trains the team, and checks back in later, so most of the capability goes untouched.
2. Should we cut tools or buy more to fix a bloated stack?
Neither, automatically. The right first step is a usage audit covering the last 90 days. Anything nobody can explain gets cut. For what's left, the real decision is whether the gap is the software itself or the lack of someone running it properly.
3. What's the difference between hiring a martech consulting service and just buying more software?
A martech consulting services engagement looks at your entire stack from the outside, with no stake in any one vendor, and tells you honestly what to keep, cut, or replace with a managed service. Buying more software just adds another line item nobody may end up using.
4. Is it better to hire an ABM agency or buy an ABM platform?
We've found that a fully staffed ABM agency running targeting, sequencing, and reporting often outperforms a self-serve ABM platform that sits half-configured, since the platform was rarely the bottleneck to begin with.
5. How often should we audit our marketing technology stack?
Quarterly, not annually. A quarterly review catches shelfware before a renewal locks you in for another year, and gives you a regular checkpoint to confirm every remaining tool still has a clear owner.
