To make the most of marketing tech stacks, keep it simple

In a world of almost infi­nite infor­ma­tion, the right mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy stacks are key to com­mu­ni­cat­ing brands and prod­ucts to con­sumers. There are a range of options for mar­keters, but one rule stands out – keep it sim­ple.  

Mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy stacks are seen as the gold stan­dard for inte­grat­ed meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The tech­nol­o­gy helps mar­keters reach cus­tomers quick­ly, effi­cient­ly, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, with­in a bud­get. 

Also known as a ‘martech stack’, the approach sees com­pa­nies col­late a series of tools to opti­mise their mar­ket­ing across dif­fer­ent plat­forms. This can include con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems (CMS), social media and email, cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM), and search engine opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO). By con­dens­ing a series of mar­ket­ing tools into one stack, the aim is to cut the time that teams spend mov­ing from appli­ca­tion to appli­ca­tion, automat­ing cer­tain jobs, and col­lect­ing real-time data. 

“Using mar­ket­ing tools that help cus­tomers under­stand who you are is impor­tant, but hav­ing a stack that works cohe­sive­ly togeth­er and that’s built for speed is what sets brands apart in 2022,” says mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant Rachel Cham­bers. “If it takes your team hours to ful­fil basic tasks with­out real-time ana­lyt­ics it can real­ly set you back.”

Essen­tial­ly, the stacks allow mar­keters to do more faster, accord­ing to brand and mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive Sophie Water­house. “It’s not fea­si­ble to expect mar­keters to com­plete repet­i­tive but essen­tial tasks like pulling and inter­pret­ing data or updat­ing spread­sheets if you want to remain com­pet­i­tive,” she says. “By automat­ing data tasks I can see close to real-time feed­back on my con­tent and adapt what I cre­ate in line with what cus­tomers want. Mar­ket­ing stacks allow you to deliv­er, track and react to cam­paigns with­out need­ing a team of thou­sands and an end­less bud­get.”

On paper this seems sim­ple, but martech stacks can become very com­pli­cat­ed.

Making the right choice

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is an ever-expand­ing indus­try. Know­ing how to pick the right tools in a very crowd­ed mar­ket could save com­pa­nies hours of pre­cious time, mon­ey, and frus­tra­tion. 

Scott Brinker cre­at­ed the Mar­ket­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Land­scape info­graph­ic in 2011 to chart the growth of martech star­tups. He ini­tial­ly plot­ted 150 com­pa­nies. In 2020, it had grown to around 8,000 martech solu­tions. 

“In prac­tice, find­ing tools that inte­grate togeth­er and work as one strat­e­gy can be real­ly dif­fi­cult and very expen­sive,” says Water­house. “You’ve always got to keep your final goal or cam­paign in mind or you can get lost down a rab­bit hole of new tech­nol­o­gy.” 

Depend­ing on the size, func­tion and cul­ture of a com­pa­ny, the martech stack may look slight­ly dif­fer­ent. First, there’s the ‘best-in-class approach’, where a mar­ket­ing team selects indi­vid­ual soft­ware pack­ages to ful­fil spe­cif­ic mar­ket­ing needs. This allows CMOs to invest in tools that their team have expe­ri­ence work­ing with and aren’t restrict­ed by the capa­bil­i­ties of one ven­dor. 

How­ev­er, it can be dif­fi­cult to inte­grate tools that aren’t specif­i­cal­ly designed to run along­side one anoth­er, and it can take time and cost mon­ey to cre­ate a cohe­sive strat­e­gy. 

“Best-in-class might sound appeal­ing, but it can be a night­mare to man­age,” says Water­house. “When you’re try­ing to man­age a bud­get and a team who might not be trained up on every piece of soft­ware, attempt­ing to pull togeth­er so many dif­fer­ent tools can end up being less effi­cient. Build­ing this kind of stack takes seri­ous plan­ning and tri­al and error.” 

Next is the ‘sin­gle-provider approach’. This sees a mar­ket­ing team pick one tool or ven­dor to ful­fil every part of the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. 

“Look­ing at the dig­i­tal land­scape now it feels like more ven­dors are mov­ing towards offer­ing mul­ti­ple ser­vices in one tool. I opt to auto­mate email mar­ket­ing, man­age social media plat­forms, main­tain CMS ana­lyt­ics, and col­late data for SEO all in one place,” says Water­house. 

Using one provider for many tasks plays into the idea that martech stacks can stream­line cam­paigns and poten­tial­ly save a lot of time. How­ev­er, the sim­plic­i­ty of this method can also be its biggest chal­lenge. There’s less room for spe­cial­i­sa­tion and nuance when work­ing with one ven­dor.

“You need to have a con­ver­sa­tion about whether the tool can deliv­er every­thing you want,” says Cham­bers. “Mar­ket­ing is char­ac­terised by change and inno­va­tion. If you’re buy­ing into a tool and spend­ing mon­ey now, are you going to feel left behind in a year’s time?” 

And final­ly, there’s the hybrid approach, under which brands try to com­bine the best-in-class and sin­gle-provider options to get the best of both. This may mean find­ing one ven­dor that has many of the tools and soft­ware oppor­tu­ni­ties that are need­ed, but sup­ple­ment­ing this with a best-in-class approach for a spe­cif­ic area.

When cre­at­ing a hybrid ‘martech stack’ Water­house says: “For me, automat­ing the way that com­pa­nies col­lect, inter­pret and use data has been cru­cial to under­pin­ning all of the oth­er work I’ve done. Hav­ing a martech stack that has that at its core has enabled me to devel­op cam­paigns that react to what cus­tomers want. How­ev­er, everyone’s pri­or­i­ties are dif­fer­ent.” 

Keep it simple

Com­bin­ing indi­vid­ual tools with soft­ware that solves mul­ti­ple mar­ket­ing issues could be the way to build a per­son­alised mar­ket­ing stack with­out over­com­pli­cat­ing process­es. 

How­ev­er, there’s no clear-cut answer on the best way to build a clear, suc­cess­ful but sim­ple mar­ket­ing tech strat­e­gy. And the land­scape is get­ting more com­pli­cat­ed.

Research pub­lished in the Chief­martec study found that 48% of com­pa­nies select the best-in-class approach, while 21% pre­fer to work with a sin­gle ven­dor. The oth­er 31% of brands said they have worked out a hybrid approach that fits their com­pa­nies. 

To move for­ward, Water­house says brands need not be afraid of incor­po­rat­ing new tools into their mar­ket­ing stacks. This could mean a greater focus on social media and influ­encer mar­ket­ing to increase vis­i­bil­i­ty and sales or an increased empha­sis on affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing and prod­uct place­ment. 

As dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing tools con­tin­ue to inno­vate, it puts pres­sure on mar­keters to adapt their strate­gies, says Water­house. “Peo­ple expect more from brands now. Social media and clos­er brand and cus­tomer rela­tion­ships builds the idea of trans­paren­cy.”