The aim of this post is to introduce the core components and purpose of a Marketing Technology Stack. Most of the current literature is aimed clearly at large organisations whose CIO\u2019s, CMO\u2019s and CTO\u2019s are very busy dealing with mega integrations of multi-user software solutions. It\u2019s fascinating to read, but not very applicable to the 60% or so of us who work for slightly smaller companies.<\/p>\n Because you already have one! Without realising it, almost every business no matter how small will have some form of marketing technology stack. And it will naturally grow with your business. If you don\u2019t plan now, you are likely to end up with a tangle of disparate systems all churning out data \u2013 none of which you can combine and measure.<\/p>\n Do you have a central database of customer information? Do you send marketing emails? Do you have a website? If yes \u2013 you have a three tier marketing technology stack. Add social platforms, analytics, a CMS, Display and Retargeting Ads, and a Marketing Automation platform and suddenly that is a LOT of data. In fact, the average company\u2019s marketing tech stack now consists of 17+ tools (Radius)<\/a>. If you don\u2019t consider how they interconnect at the start, you could end up with a lot of employees working in expensive and unconnected silos. And that is without considering other useful customer data you may have in accounting, events and sales software, amongst others.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve established that a solid marketing technology stack will allow you to optimise your spend, time and effort. To achieve this you need a solid foundation to bring together and measure your various tools and components. Getting this base component right at the start, and ensuring it will integrate with your core elements, will allow you to measure each new tool you bring in, as you grow.<\/p>\n Once you have your base component, which will typically be a CRM solution but in some cases may be a Marketing Automation platform, you can choose the tools to integrate into your stack. These may include:<\/p>\n Linking marketing efforts to the remainder of the business, and especially sales and their pipelines \u2013 CRM should be your belt and braces in the technology stack. Integrate marketing and non-marketing technologies and you have your core system ready to go. Most CRM\u2019s will offer enhanced reporting, instant dashboards and enough functionality for Sales, Marketing & Customer Services to work in one system together. It\u2019s also a lot easier for management if all departments use a central system offering board level reports, fast!<\/p>\n Check:<\/b> Does your provider offer integrations with your key business and marketing software?<\/a> Better still, can they offer custom integrations? If yes, you know they can grow with you.<\/p>\n Marketing Automation is essentially the ability to automate a number of processes. Typically it pulls together a bunch of previously stand-alone marketing solutions such as email marketing, lead management and lead scoring and provides them in one integrated package. Most marketing automation solutions are aimed at the lead generation and qualification stage of new business, and stop at the point you would pass a lead over to your sales team.<\/p>\n There is a very wide range of solutions available on the market for every speciality. Some contain website CMS, others specialise in content distribution. Each business will need a different solution which may be a big (and expensive) market leader, or may be a combination of smaller tools integrated together.<\/p>\n Check:<\/b> Can your marketing automation and CRM platforms integrate? If not, you are missing the point of the technology stack, and you are setting up your marketing and sales teams for a lot of misaligned conversations over lead follow up!<\/p>\n A Content Management System allows you to create, publish, store, edit and collaborate on website content. Typically it is the back end of a company website. There are many options out there, from DIY WordPress websites, through to professional designed sites hosted on the big players such as Drupal, Joomla or Magento. Alternatively you may choose a custom CMS created by a website agency, or a CMS sitting within a Marketing Automation provider. I\u2019ll assume all readers of this blog already have a CMS \u2013 as in today\u2019s business world we all need a website!<\/p>\n Check:<\/b> Carrying out lead generation or customer support through forms? It\u2019s worth ensuring your CMS can integrate with your CRM\/marketing automation solution.<\/p>\n An oldie, but a goodie! Email marketing is going to be with us for a while yet so ignore all those blog posts exclaiming \u201cEmail is dead!\u201d Automation in marketing is largely email based, used to distribute content and contact leads when they hit a desired score. Make sure you have an email marketing solution that meets your needs.<\/p>\n Check:<\/b> Before spending on an email solution do check with your CRM and marketing automation providers. Both are very likely to offer email marketing solutions that are already fully integrated! Bonus! No new training or integration spend required.<\/p>\n Website analytics for B2B now comes in two forms, which I\u2019ve nicknamed Analytics and Tracking. Analytics allows you to analyse (almost) all of your website visitors as a mass of unknown companies. You can identify where website traffic comes from, how it moves through your sites and carry out goal analysis on forms. It\u2019s great to help you work out how well your website is converting visitors to leads and to identify which traffic sources are most valuable to you. Google Analytics is the most popular, and free!<\/p>\n Tracking is a newer technology. Like analytics it uses IP addresses to track, but unlike analytics it only shows you information on the IP addresses it can identify. Using tracking software allows you to work out which company the website visitor is from (expect to be able to identify 10-30% of all traffic), and target them accordingly. This may be a direct sales approach, but more often (and more successfully) it is a great way to score existing leads and measure their interest.<\/p>\n Check:<\/b> It\u2019s nice to integrate website analytics into your stack, but it isn\u2019t essential. As website analytics is a mass of unknown website visitors you cannot tie it up with lead and customer data, so it isn\u2019t the end of the world to work on this data outside of your technology stack. On the other hand, IP Tracking is only valuable when it is fully integrated with your lead and customer data.<\/p>\n If you have ticked off the above as a fully integrated solution \u2013 congratulations you\u2019ve got a solid tech stack! Ad Technology isn\u2019t quite a clear. In a large enterprise you would want to manage this within your stack for control purposes, however in smaller organisations you will often have just one person managing your online PPC ads, display ads and retargeting. In this situation it is fine to manage these in their own platforms \u2013 as long as you are pulling the data in! If your central base can identify where your traffic is coming from, you are able to measure, compare traffic sources and plan accordingly.<\/p>\n This will have differing levels of importance to different businesses. If you manage customer service via Twitter \u2013 you will need high-level integration, especially with your CRM alerting functionality. If you have a presence and carry out the odd post, it isn\u2019t as important. However, almost all marketing technology will integrate with the main social platforms. At the minimum ensure you can search hashtags and mentions of your brand, and you can measure incoming website traffic from social.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve bundled together two gigantic topics here, as this blog isn\u2019t going to go into the depths of SEO or content marketing. Both sit nicely in the \u2018inbound\u2019 marketing sphere, and both become more and more relevant the further your tech stack has evolved. Content makes up the lifeline of automated lead nurture email series, and the kind of content and frequency of it will largely depend on your industry and team size. SEO is essential for us all, and there are many blogs across the internet to get you started. It\u2019s worth ensuring you have the basic tools in your CMS to manage these, and as your abilities grow you may find you want to integrate technology into your stack to manage both SEO and content.<\/p>\n What is it? Does it matter? Do I already have one? Marketing technology is exploding. Scott Brinker\u2019s Marketing Technology Landscape showed 947 companies in 43 categories in 2014 \u2013 which seemed overwhelming. Then in 2015 it jumped to 1,876 companies. …..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":70573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_glsr_average":0,"_glsr_ranking":0,"_glsr_reviews":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[850],"tags":[1264],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"martec\"](\"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/martec-.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhy should I be thinking about a 'MarTech Stack'?!<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/marketing-technology.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOK, I have a stack... and I need to plan my stack...<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/b2b-markeitng-stack.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCRM<\/h3>\n
Marketing Automation<\/h3>\n
CMS<\/h3>\n
Email<\/h3>\n
Analytics & Tracking<\/h3>\n
Ad Technology<\/h3>\n
Social<\/h3>\n
SEO & Content<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media.licdn.com\/mpr\/mpr\/shrinknp_400_400\/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAlaAAAAJDE1ODA4ODI0LTkyNzctNDJiZC05MzE5LTcyZGI1YWUwYzA1Yg.jpg\")
Thanks to Penni Pickering<\/a>\u00a0for sharing her advice and opinions in this post. Penni is the Marketing Manager at Gold-Vision CRM<\/a>. You can follow Gold-Vision on Twitter<\/a> or\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>, and you can find Penni on Twitter<\/a> too.<\/div>\n