Getting MarTech Right
Marketing technology has come a long way from the Mad Men days of marketing and advertising. While we may still be using some of their strategies today, most companies have adapted to a digital world—in fact, it’s almost impossible not to have. Marketing teams have had to adapt their processes and tactics in order to keep up with the changes that come with new technologies like met averse, AI, chatbots, and voice interfaces.
The good news is: you can do this! However, in order to get started on your MarTech journey correctly, you need to consider all aspects of your strategy before executing any new initiatives (or upgrades). Here are some key areas where many organizations miss the mark when thinking about their marketing technology stack:
Do a maturity audit.
As you consider your own MarTech strategy, it’s important to first understand where your organization stands in a marketing maturity audit. Understand how your organisation stands with respect to customer strategy, data strategy, tools and technology and people and skills.
Today’s customer journey needs to be understood.
At the very beginning, you need to clearly understand the customer journey. It’s a key part of any successful MarTech implementation and it’s one that’s often overlooked. For example: What data points do you need to gather from users on their way through the funnel? And how will those data points be used by each part of your stack—from lead generation, to nurturing leads into customers, to post-purchase engagement or retention activities?
A well-defined customer journey for your business can be incredibly valuable in helping you to understand where in their journey every single potential customer is at any given point in time. In other words, it allows you to map out exactly where each prospect is as they interact with your brand across all channels – from social media advertising through to direct mail or even face-to-face sales calls from an account manager who has already been assigned them as a lead. This information helps shape how you communicate with prospects at each stage of their interaction with your company.
Data flow and intelligence gathering.
One of the biggest challenges in any company is collecting, analyzing and acting on all the data that's available. Data is the new currency for your marketing team, so it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to using it effectively. Gathering information from multiple sources is critical: customer experience, sales and marketing performance.
Customer experience data - Collect customer data and feedback through CRM, social media, emails, surveys and more. Use the data to improve your product or service offerings.
Sales performance data - Track sales activity by campaign, salesperson and more to see what's working and what isn't.
Marketing performance data - Track campaigns, attribution, and channel-wise performance to understand what works
All of this data needs to be be combined and the flow of data needs to be understood before deciding on tools.
Define use cases for your MarTech stack.
When you're considering a MarTech stack, it's easy to get caught up in the hype. But before you start spending money on solutions for problems that may or may not exist, it's important to make sure you have clear goals and expectations of what your business needs from its tech. Otherwise, your attempts at improvement could end up being wasteful or even counterproductive.
Don't worry about what other people are doing—set your own goals based on what matters most to your company's success (and remember: if they aren't measurable/quantifiable yet, make sure they can be). Be ambitious but realistic; don't set yourself up for failure by overreaching with unrealistic expectations!
Map out use cases and corresponding features expected in tools, to ensure that what you finally choose meets your requirements.
Plan a tech stack to meet your needs.
Before you begin to look at any of the options on the market, it's important to plan a tech stack that will meet your needs. This means defining the problem first. What are you trying to accomplish? How do your goals align with this product? Prioritise your list of features that would make it easier for you and your team.
Once you have a handle on what is important for achieving these goals, start looking at some of the more popular options in MarTech today. As an example, if one of those goals is getting more users onto your website so that they convert into leads or customers, maybe an analytics tool helps collect data about who is visiting and where they're coming from—then let's say we want to target them with ads on Facebook or Google AdWords because those platforms have better reach than other channels like email marketing campaigns, the kind of investments you make will differ or perhaps retargeting ads on social networks like LinkedIn or Instagram (which could be good options depending on how many existing customers are using them) are important, in which case your investments need to be prioritized there.
Basic marketing tech organization.
A marketing tech organization is more than just a department or division. It's an organizational system that unifies the functions and employees of a company, no matter their role or title.
A traditional marketing department works with messaging, branding, advertising and other tasks to sell products or services. A marketing tech organization takes all of these things into account but also integrates technology into the mix—everything from CRM and lead databases to e-commerce platforms and mobile apps.
The key components of a marketing tech organization are:
Technology-focused teams that work together on specific tasks like SEO, social media management or web development with roles such as copywriters/marketers/creative directors etc.; this helps ensure that everyone is trained in new technologies so they can adapt fast when they're needed .
Cross-functional collaboration between teams led by senior leaders who report directly up through C Level Leadership; this ensures everyone has access to information about what's going on across departments so there aren't any silos within your company's infrastructure where problems could go unnoticed for too long before someone notices them and fixes them.
Ensure that you have the right team structure to support a modern marketing function.
To ensure that you have the right team structure to support a modern marketing function, it’s important to align your team with the role of the marketing function. A good mix of skillsets will help you to support all aspects of your business.
In addition, by creating well defined roles for each member of your MarTech team, you can provide more opportunities for people to develop and grow their careers over time. This will help them feel valued within the organization and ensure that they stay motivated when working on projects.
When recruiting new members or expanding existing teams, think carefully about which skillsets are needed in order to complement each other across all areas: customer insight; data analysis; campaign planning and execution; creative design; media planning and buying; sales enablement etc
Need more guidance? Get in touch for a consulting enquiry.