Your Modern Marketing Stack

Marketing technology is increasingly affecting all businesses and being technologically savvy is now considered an essential basic marketing requirement.

The Marketing Technology Council survey from over 300 senior-level marketers reveals that the majority are struggling to cope with the growth in the martech landscape (currently over 5381 solutions offered and growing). 

Chronic problems across company sizes and industries include: a lack of integration and the use of “too many technologies” resulting in poor ROI. There is digital pressure to stay ahead of the marketing curve. The cost of falling behind is too high. And, keeping pace with the introduction of new marketing technology is not slowing down.

To support members the Council released three recommendations for building and managing a marketing stack. A marketing stack is a group of technologies that marketers leverage to execute, analyze and improve their marketing activities. This includes all technologies that marketing teams use, from marketing automation to data enrichment and analytics. 

Recommendations for building and managing a marketing stack can be found in the right column of this article and a full list can be found at this link (registration required).

#1 Align Sales and Marketing data, digitalroadmap® and strategic priorities

What type of data enrichment will enhance your decision making and sales objectives ? Over 70% of marketers see their top business goal as providing more leads/sales and increasing customer acquisition/retention, but only 12% say the technologies they use help them with their goals. Most companies report sales and marketing are misaligned. Resolve this issue by defining mutual objectives for sales and marketing and by defining the mutual data needed to measure and meet these objectives.

#2 Buy Technology Strategically

Ensure your marketing tech (such as marketing automation and CRM) meets your aligned needs before you buy. Establish a formalized process of identifying where and when a new technology is required; whether it is possible to integrate, the top vendors, and how best to do so.

#3 Start by Improving Productivity

Make martech acquisitions that automate or speed up the repetitive, tedious elements of your work a first priority, so you can focus more on doing things technology can't do—such as building and executing creative campaigns, content marketing and big data analysis. Ultimately technology should improve our business lives and allow marketers to carry out tasks more quickly and effectively.

Bottom Line: Review your marketing automation plans. Help your creatives and marketers:, adopt and manage new technologies. Implement the best martech to achieve your Marketing Stack Strategy.