MarTech is a set of technologies and marketing applications helping marketers in their daily tasks and boosting marketing campaigns. The problem is that marketers are overwhelmed with a number of applications and choices that come along with it. How can you limit the stack and choose only the best solutions?
First of all, you have to ask yourself what is the reason for using this kind of software. For email automation, reporting of users’ behavior or sending ‘thank you emails’ to people subscribed to the newsletter? No matter the cause, you have to carefully analyze the pros and cons to create a stack.
What features should MarTech stack have?
· It has to have specialized tools or…
· … those that have a modular architecture, suited for many industries
· It should behave tools that complement each other and work with already existing solutions in your toolbelt…
· … or can easily integrate with it, thanks to Zapier, for example
Approach your stack design with a clear strategy in mind:
· Know for what areas of marketing will you be searching for the tools for
· Think about what areas needs special attention – maybe some applications need to be replaced at once?
· Analyze the pros and cons of already owned applications
· Think about if you really need all the applications you have right now
· Think if at least some of them shouldn’t be replaced with new versions or with entirely new software
· Analyze functionalities of owned tools – which ones will you use, which ones will complement software that you plan to buy?
Areas of MarTech you should think about:
· Research and data analytics
· UX/UI
· E-commerce
· Social media
· AdTech (for advertisements, mainly video tools)
· Applications for mobile platforms
· Strategy
· Marketing management
Always start with the challenge. Think about what questions can be answered with the tools you’ll buy? What areas will be taken care of? You can choose between:
· Marketing automation
· Cooperation between marketing and other departments in your company
· Centralization and data processing
· Data analytics
· Organic qualified leads
· Paid qualified leads
· Keeping of already existing clients
· Campaign creation and management
· Customer experience
· Content marketing
Pay attention to an element that is often missed. Cooperation between the marketing and sales departments and other divisions are often missed in MarTech. MarTech works only when you’re ready for its adoption. The flow of information between marketing and sales, business intelligence, a growth hacker, and other people responsible for revenue, is crucial. You have to know that while thinking about the client, the company can’t forget about internal communications. It’s very important for integrated, internally consistent and predictable operations that you can report on.
And since we’re talking about reports…
The Gartner report from 2018 shows that companies between 2017-2018 spend 22% of their budget on marketing technologies. It’s less than in 2016, when the budget reached 27%. The Vidyard report from 2019 shows, however, that the trend is going to bounce back in 2020. Important data:
· 7040 – at least that many marketing tools are already on the market
· 80% of American marketers want to use integrated ad and marketing tools, coming from one vendor
The report from Bain & Company points out a very important dependency between time and marketer’s actions. The organization of marketing processes should, according to the company, take place with a particular pattern in mind. You should answer all of these questions for yourself:
· What can I do to make my data usage and have an internal, logical structure?
· How can I gain a better reach and engage the user?
· How can I react to the user’s behavior and connect with him in a reasonable time?
· How can I scale, optimize, personalize and automate these processes?
It’s very important because choosing the right MarTech stack is only a part of success. Technology without the awareness of what you want to do, with what methods, and especially why is worthless. That’s why, aside from cooperation between marketing and sales, there’s a need for cooperation between marketing and IT. You can’t accept the situation where your technology stack is working halfway and its inefficient. Remember that even the best and though-out solutions with a great architecture (modular, adapted to various industries) have to be supported and internally maintained.
While choosing your MarTech stack, focus on your needs, functionalities of the tool, and practical use of its solutions.
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