Make your martech investment pay.
Growth Lab helps you get more from the marketing technology you already own. We help you use customer data and AI to make your marketing more effective, reduce wasted spend and decide where to invest next.
We identify the biggest opportunities, set clear priorities and work with your team to make it happen.
Win more customers.
Keep them
longer.
Grow revenue
more efficiently.
Four ways to work with Growth Lab
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Fix
Martech Health Check and Fixes
Get more from the platforms you already pay for
What you get
A practical outline of what is broken or unused, ranked by return. Then we make the fixes with your team.
What we look at
- What you pay for against what you use
- The customer data that never arrives
- What slows your team down
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Grow
Customer Journeys and Lifetime Value
Keep customers longer and earn more from each one
What you get
A lifetime value map, the journeys that matter most built and live, and proof of what each one earns.
What we look at
- The moments that decide lifetime value
- Who might leave, and who is ready to buy
- What each journey and offer earns today
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Automate
AI Production Workflows
Produce campaigns in days, not weeks, with AI your team controls
What you get
AI workflows your team uses every day, from brief to first draft, review and reporting, with your rules built in.
What we look at
- Where the time goes from brief to launch
- The content you produce most
- The brand and compliance rules it must pass
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Decide
Martech Strategy and Investment Case
Know what to buy, renew or replace before you sign
What you get
A peer benchmark, your investments ranked by return, a roadmap and a case your executive can sign off.
What we look at
- Your stack against 1,634 benchmarked stacks
- Gaps, overlaps and spend across your platforms
- The use cases that would earn the most
What 1,634 real martech stacks can tell you about yours.
Through MartechTribe, Growth Lab brings the world’s largest independent benchmark of real martech stacks to South African businesses.
See how your technology compares with relevant peers, where you could get more from existing platforms and which investments deserve priority.
Where you sit against relevant peers
Each business is placed on two dimensions: martech presence, the capabilities of its technology, and martech performance, the organisation’s ability to use them.
For your business, we select the relevant industry peers from the wider research base of 1,634 stacks.
Retail example
Retail example of 25 retailers. Apex Martech Matrix by MartechTribe and the CMO Council.
What your position means
Your position helps identify whether to focus on technology capabilities, your team’s ability to use them, or both.
Retail example
Overbuilt
More technology than the team can use
Focus on skills, processes and adoption to get more from the platforms you already own.
IKEASainsbury’s
Powerhouse
Broad technology, used well
Protect what works, and keep capabilities and skills developing together.
Amazon
Underbuilt
Behind on both
Start with the use cases that matter most, building skills and capabilities step by step.
Fossil
Precision
Fewer tools, used very well
Keep the focus on execution, and add capabilities only where a clear gap holds you back.
H&M
Positions from the same retail example.
Your Apex Score and priorities
The score shows how closely your stack, and the way it is used, aligns with relevant peers. It measures benchmark alignment, not ROI or a revenue forecast.
Illustrative example
Example starting score: 63/100
Potential score: 87/100
Priority improvements+24 points
- Events, meetings and webinarsSkills and tools both trail your peers+10
- Social media marketingTools in place, but underused+10
- CollaborationYour team is ready, the tools are not+4
Already strong
- Affiliate marketing
- eCommerce marketing
- Video ads
Illustrative example, based on the Apex Martech Score by MartechTribe.
From findings to implementation
Growth Lab turns the findings into a sequenced plan with clear owners, then works alongside your team to put it into practice.
Illustrative example
- Phase 1
Events, meetings and webinars
Train the team on the event tools you have and connect event data to your CRM.
Owner Marketing operations
- Phase 1
Social media marketing
Make full use of the social tools you already license, with training and a clear publishing rhythm.
Owner Social media lead
- Phase 2
Collaboration
Agree what the team needs to plan and approve work together, then choose the right tool.
Owner Head of marketing
- Phase 3
Progress review
Measure the change against the plan and refresh the benchmark.
Owner Growth Lab with your team
Illustrative plan, based on the example priorities.
- 1,634
- real stacks benchmarked. How companies like yours actually built theirs.
- 15,505
- solutions analysed. The whole market, including the ones your vendor does not mention.
- 1,345
- features indexed daily across 49 categories. Current to the day, not last year’s report.
- 9 years
- of independent research.
Research used by 200+ global brands, including
See the opportunity. Know where to act.
Use cross-industry research and your own data to identify opportunities, prioritise investment and plan the next steps.
Technology Strategy Workshop
Benchmark your stack. Prioritise your investments.
Use the Apex Martech Score™, GrowTechHQ, and independent benchmark research to compare your technology with industry outperformers, identify bottlenecks, and build a practical technology roadmap.
“AI won’t save a broken technology stack. It will expose it.”
“The best performing martech stacks are not the most complex, but the most aligned.”
Ideal for
- CMOs
- CIOs
- Marketing Technology
- Enterprise Architecture
You’ll leave with
- Benchmark analysis
- Technology priorities
- Investment roadmap
- Executive recommendations
Value Engineering Workshop
Turn marketing initiatives into boardroom business cases.
Three interactive mornings using your own company data to quantify business value, calculate ROI, and prioritise investments. You’ll learn the Value Engineering methodology developed through dozens of business cases at Nyenrode and Beeckestijn, and leave with a board ready business case and a framework you can apply again and again.
“A missed opportunity is not a line item on the balance sheet.”
Ideal for
- Marketing Operations
- Digital Marketing
- RevOps
- Marketing Managers
You’ll leave with
- Quantified business value
- Board ready business case
- Investment priorities
- Executive presentation
Experience that moves you forward.
Neil and Frans combine customer experience strategy, martech research and hands-on implementation to help you turn insights into results.
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Neil Botha
Founder and Strategy Director, Growth Lab
More than 20 years turning customer experience strategy, data and martech into measurable growth for South African organisations.
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Frans Riemersma
Founder, MartechTribe
One of the leading international thinkers in martech. Produces the MartechMap and co-authors the annual State of Martech report with Scott Brinker, drawing on more than 30 years of consulting experience.
