What is a marketing technology stack?
A marketing technology stack is the group of technologies brands use to improve and optimize their marketing activities. This can include a variety of apps, tools, software, and platforms.
A brand’s marketing tech stack helps the marketing team to understand their customers better and deliver personalized marketing content based on real-life customer insights and behaviors. It also improves collaboration and digital asset management (DAM), streamlines workflows, and enhances campaign performance.
For ongoing success, it is important to rely on robust integrations and APIs to enable a smooth-operating content lifecycle, capture metadata and enrich assets, and ultimately, distribute and track assets. By creating more efficient work processes and reducing the likelihood of error, there is more time to focus on core work and business growth.
The best digital marketing technology stacks enable busy marketers to automate processes while delivering bespoke, personalized campaigns.
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How to build your ideal digital marketing technology stack
The kind of martech you need depends on the nature of your business, your customers, your budget, and what your business goals are—both now and in the long term.
- Identify your strategy and goals. Think about where your brand is now and where it needs to be. What channels are performing well, and not so well? Which lead generation tactics would benefit from optimization?
- Conduct your research. Take a look at the market and find which elements of a marketing technology stack will help you achieve your objectives. For example, if you’re struggling with engagement on Twitter, you might benefit from a social media management tool. If you’re struggling to rank for your brand’s keywords, you need a tool that can help with SEO.
- Assign budget. You can choose to approach this by tool or by marketing goal that you have identified. Whatever you decide, make sure your investment is sound and that it integrates with the rest of your stack, with minimum intervention or management. You also need to take into account the number of licenses or users you are allowed and how your needs might change as your business evolves.
- Create workflows and assign responsibilities. Your marketing technology stack will only succeed if people know what they need to do and when. It’s a good idea to consult key stakeholders before you set up workflows to make sure all elements of your plan have been considered. There should be a clear owner for each tool and someone who has their back when they are out of the office. Make sure the whole marketing team is briefed on each element of the marketing technology stack so they understand how it all fits together.
- Monitor performance. You might not always get every addition to your marketing technology stack right. There could be integration problems or they just might not do what they said on the tin. Audit your tools on a fairly regular basis and keep up to date on new tools in the marketplace. Always prioritize your marketing objectives and strategy over the tools themselves and you shouldn’t go far wrong.
