What is a Marketing Technology Stack?

A marketing technology stack is a collection of marketing tools that are utilised by companies to plan and manage their campaigns. Marketers use ‘marketing tech stacks’ to improve their workflow, automate their processes, monitor their marketing spending, and measure the success of their marketing activities.

Due to the nature of competitive marketing campaigns in today’s digital world, marketers are required to use tools that give them an edge. The marketing technology space is growing exponentially and there are a variety of tools available to marketers. Chances are you’re reading this to figure out what exactly to use and how to build your own stack. We will cover how to build your own stack in our next post; for now, we’re going to focus on what makes these tools useful and what to look for while building your own marketing technology stack.

Top 10 Marketing Automation Tools compared on the basis of price, features and user experience. 

Customers are fickle creatures that need their daily dose of content, personalization, deals, and promotions to keep them happy. For a marketer to keep up with the changing trends in customer needs, the right tools can be a lifesaver. In 2011, data from MarketingLand told us that 150 companies were setting up marketing technology. In 2016, almost 4000 companies had invested in marketing technology and expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4%. Gartner predicts that marketing technology budgets will exceed IT budgets by 2017; this is because marketing now influences almost half of all purchases. These are pretty impressive numbers and that kind of makes sense as we live in a digital world. In fact, companies are starting to master Big Data to stay relevant and gain an additional competitive advantage. We will cover Big Data and its importance in a subsequent blog post.

Stacking things in your favour 

1. Content Management System  - Content is king. Especially in your inbound marketing efforts. A strong content management system will ensure that customers keep reading your website, blog or newsletter, and will also help you track your content plan. A strong content strategy is very important for most marketing campaigns.
2. Advertising Tools – SEM (search engine marketing), ad tracking, attribution software, display ads etc. You need powerful advertising and tracking tools to ensure your ads not only work, but work well.
3.  Email Management  - Most of the communication that you have with your customer is likely to be via email. That’s a lot of emails to keep track of and a lot of templates to customize. A good email management system will keep your work efficient and tidy.
4. Analytics  - As a marketer, if you’re not sending reports to your clients, you’re not doing your job. In-depth analytical tools will give you insights into how well your marketing is working, so make sure your tech stack has a good dashboard to measure all your digital marketing activity.
5. CRM and SEO  - While we have covered this in previous blogs, CRM systems give you deep insights into your customer base, and SEO is important to drive your content and it works closely with your content strategy. Having these tools is important for your inbound marketing efforts.
6. Social Media Management - Everybody is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. If your target market is particularly tech-savvy and familiar with social media, you’ll need tools to measure and track your engagement with them, the success of your social media campaigns etc.
   
   

Now that we have covered the basics of what is in a Marketing Technology Stack, all you need is information on the tools themselves before you get started on building your own tech stack. Look for our blog post on the most popular tools used by companies which will be up by the end of the week!