75 Tools, 1 Marketer: Master Your Marketing Tech Stack

image cover for article 75 tools, 1 marketer: master your marketing tech stack

We’ve all been in that conundrum where we think a marketing activity should take 15 minutes. But then, 4 coffees, 4 hours, and 4 meltdowns later, we’re still trying to get the technology to work. 

💡Did You Know: The typical marketing team uses 75 tools and applications

Whether those systems work together or are at odds across IT, Marketing, and Sales matters. Even if you are a one-person team, what marketing tools you pick can have a HUGE impact on your productivity.

What Is It? 🤔

A marketing tech stack typically includes tools for advertising, analytics, content management, social media management, and email marketing automation. The relevance of various tools in your marketing tech stack may vary depending on your business size and what you are trying to accomplish in marketing. Organizations of ALL SIZES have a two-tier Marketing Tech Stack. 

As an example: 

B2B – Email Tool > CRM 

or 

Ecom – Email Tool > E-commerce platform

It’s a knotted mess of legacy tools and budget compromises…

expectation vs. reality

Is There a Simpler Way Forward for Marketing Tech?

PSST: Tip Incoming 🔥…

Lucky for you, we’ve put in the hours, money and made all the mistakes. So we’ve discovered some hot tips when it comes to selecting easy-to-implement tech into your marketing mix.

We suggest adopting a ‘three-tier model’. If you are a small business, I would add a tool like Zapier as my middle layer. Why?

✔️Works with 6550 Applications from Gmail to SQL

✔️It is easy to learn and use

✔️Prevents lock-in from tools that may kill the feature you need to run your marketing campaigns. So it’s easier to move your data to a Google Sheet, Database, or new tool

✔️You can try it for Free! And for most business, it’s economical to keep using as you scale

✔️Zapier Autoreply feature in Professional plans and above can be a LIFESAVER if one of your tools goes down. It happens.

✔️It makes automations like this 👇 possible with the right processes and tools:

automation process

What Exactly is a Marketing Tech Stack ‘Martech Stack’? 🫣

75 tools, 1 marketer master your marketing tech stack - what is a marketing tech stack

The great thing about a Martech stack? It streamlines your day-to-day processes and helps your team execute your marketing strategy more efficiently. It can be composed of various tools such as web analytics software, CRM, social media and ad tools, email platforms, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.

Role in Marketing Operations 

75 tools, 1 marketer master your marketing tech stack - bridging the gap

The Martech Stack bridges the gap between marketing, IT, and sales departments, good data, and collaboration across different teams. By utilizing a well-designed Marketing Tech Stack, you can optimize your marketing campaigns, track key performance indicators (KPIs), and make data-driven decisions that help your brand grow in the age of AI.

Some important aspects to consider when building a Martech Stack include integration between tools, scalability, and the overall digital experience of your brand

📈 To create a stack that grows with you, consider the following:

✔️Choose tools that easily integrate with each other

✔️Opt for solutions that can be scaled up or down depending on your needs

✔️Ensure that the tools provide the necessary data and insights to make informed marketing decisions

✔️Use our quiz to find curated AI Tools for your needs (we only recommend tools we use ourselves)

💡Remember: The primary goal of a Martech Stack is to help your team work more efficiently and effectively in executing your marketing strategy. Keep it simple and expand as you gain confidence in managing the technical aspects of marketing. 

🕺Let’s Talk More About Our Three-Tier Marketing Tech Stack

CRM Software 💻

Your customer relationship management (CRM) software should be at the core of your marketing tech stack. It helps you manage your customer data and interactions. A CRM system enables you to:

✔️Store customer profiles and interactions

✔️Track leads and opportunities

✔️Manage marketing campaigns and communication

The Three CRM Systems We Use (and Recommend):

  1. Hubspot has everything you need to grow your business, has limited free options but you can get 2 users for $20 a month on their Starter Plan
  2. Active Campaign 
  3. Pipedrive

Marketing Automation Tools 🔧

Our Recommendation: Zapier

What it does: Zapier is a widely-used marketing automation tool that facilitates integration between various tools to automate tasks and processes. 

With Zapier, you can:

✔️Automate data flow between different platforms

✔️Set triggers and actions to perform tasks automatically

✔️Create custom workflows to streamline your marketing efforts

Budgeting? Try IFTTT. It’s a lower-cost option working with 600+ integrations with good support .

SEO Tools 🔬

Our Recommendation: SEM Rush

What it does: Semrush is our choice for an all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility and discovering marketing insights. Its tools and reports can help you with: SEO, PPC, SMM, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, PR, Content Marketing, Marketing Insights, and Campaign Management.

To optimize your website for search engines and improve your organic reach, SEM Rush is a powerful SEO tool that helps you:

✔️Perform keyword research

✔️Analyze your competitors and their strategies

✔️Monitor backlinks and find outreach opportunities

✔️Audit your website for technical issues

Email Marketing Tools 📩

Our Recommendation: Klaviyo

What it does: Klaviyo is an email marketing platform that supports personalized messaging and automates campaigns. It helps you:

✔️Segment your audience for targeted messaging

✔️Create automated email sequences and drip campaigns

✔️Monitor metrics, such as open rates and click-through rates

Content Marketing & PR Platforms 😎

Our Recommendation: Brand24

What it does: Brand24 is a tool that can easily help you monitor and analyze the online buzz about your brand. It collects online mentions of your brand and presents them to you. This cuts a ton of your own time searching for mentions.

Quality content and public relations (PR) efforts are vital for establishing your brand authority in your industry. Content marketing and PR platforms help you:

✔️Plan and create engaging content like blog posts, videos, and infographics

✔️Distribute content across various channels

✔️Manage PR campaigns and press releases

✔️Monitor your brand mentions and industry news

Social Media Management Tools

Our Recommendation: Later

What it does: Later is a calendar-focused social media scheduling platform with a drag-and-drop interface. Their planning and scheduling tools make it super easy to visualize your social media management. You can edit photos, publish stories and reels, as well as analyze performance. 

To effectively manage your social media presence, you need social media management tools that enable you to:

✔️Schedule and publish posts across multiple platforms

✔️Engage with your audience and respond to messages and comments

✔️Monitor your social media performance and identify trends

Reporting Tools

Our Recommendations: GA4, Supermetrics, Swydo

Finally, having effective reporting tools like Google Analytics 4, Supermetrics, and Swydo in place ensures that you can measure the success of your marketing efforts. These reporting platforms allow you to:

✔️Track your website’s performance and user behavior

✔️Analyze marketing campaign performance across different channels

✔️Create custom dashboards and reports to share with your team

Get your own MarTech stack checklist. ✅

Data in your Martech Stack

It’s easy to let Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon keep all your data inside their proprietary walls. This seems fine until they shut you off for some perceived random violation and your marketing tanks.📉

How do we prevent this?

  1. Own your email lists;
  2. Get SMS too;
  3. Gather as much of your own data as you can into tools like Segment/Twilio, LiveRamp, or Ruderstack.

These tools above are called Customer Data Platform (CDP) which are an advanced component of your marketing tech stack. It helps you collect, unify, and manage customer data from various touchpoints, such as website visits, social media interactions, and email marketing campaigns. By properly utilizing a CDP, you can create a holistic view of your customers, allowing you to deliver more targeted and personalized marketing experiences.

Consumer Privacy 😶‍🌫️

In today’s digital landscape, consumer privacy has become a crucial consideration when building your marketing tech stack. With multiple states passing new Privacy laws, the burden falls to Marketing to ensure our tool partners comply with each state’s laws.

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AI, Automation, and Efficiency 

We are all being asked to do more with less. AI and automation are how we get that done. Whether you have a one-person marketing team or 300, AI and automation are here to stay, and without the proper tech stack, you are at a disadvantage to automate the boring from your day-to-day.

While the average number of apps for marketing (~75) is lower than the company-wide average of 83, AI-powered innovations can help streamline marketing processes and take the daunting out of digital marketing.

We will cover AI more in future Newsletters, but if you don’t have the raw inputs it becomes hard to automate them.

Don’t Forget: Measure Your Success ⚖️

Once your martech stack is in place, measuring its success is essential. Establish metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the impact of the new tools on your marketing efforts. Benchmark your performance before the implementation and compare it with the results after integration. Metrics can include conversion rates, lead generation, return on investment (ROI), and more. Regularly assess these numbers to ensure your martech investments are driving the desired outcomes.

Key Takeaways

✔️A marketing tech stack is a collection of software and tools used by marketers for better management, execution, and optimization of marketing efforts.

✔️Choosing the right components for your tech stack can increase efficiency, streamline processes, and improve data-driven decision-making.

✔️Combining data analysis, automation, and AI capabilities can lead to more personalized and effective marketing strategies.

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© 2024 True and North LLC

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