Martech: A Comprehensive Guide for Marketers

If your new year’s resolutions included getting your marketing house in order, let’s start with your martech stack.

Not sure what, exactly, that is? Not sure if you have what you need? Or if you have more than you need?

Let’s get back to basics and take a look at a few of the most important components of your martech stack.

Why martech?

The goal of a martech strategy is to increase efficiencies within your department to optimize your audience reach. This streamlined approach provides you with a connected system for the creation of content as well as the analytics and insights that allow you to determine which channels are yielding the best results.

What is a martech stack?

A martech stack is a collection of technology that enables you to create, distribute, and manage marketing campaigns. It also includes testing functions, surveys, analytics, and personalization.
This grouping of marketing technologies you use to manage your daily workflow, creation tools, campaigns, and analytics is how you influence and shape customer behavior.

How should I build my martech stack?

Ultimately, what you choose to include depends on your business goals. A local shoe store will have different needs than a regional healthcare provider. However, there are a few important components that are fairly standard to all successful martech strategies.

SEO and Content-Optimization Tools – Your website is a critical first-contact with your customers. Getting your website and associated content ranked highly in search engines is key to outpacing your competition. These tools help you understand the semantics and keywords that will engage your audience and enhance your online visibility. Use these tools to stay one step ahead of your competition.

Content Management System (CMS) – Your blog and website work hand-in-hand with your SEO strategies so adding a CMS to your martech stack really is common sense. Your CMS should integrate smoothly with a variety of other tools in your martech stack, allowing you to manage your blog, social media, even basic e-commerce easily and efficiently.

The team at ACS Creative provides detailed, instructive screencasts to our clients to help them maintain their websites. This puts the control of your most important digital access right in your own hands and ensures you can update what you want, when you want.

Social Media Management – Scheduling posts. Creating content for posts. Social listening. Campaign analysis. Taken individually, these tasks are overwhelming. A social media management program that integrates with your CMS is a vital tool in your martech stack.

Customer Management System (CMS) – One key component to look for in a CMS is its ability to seamlessly integrate with your sales software and email management tools. Capturing, tracking, and analyzing interactions with various customer audiences enhances your opportunities to personalize your communication and drive sales.

Email marketing and personalization – Customized and personalized communication yields higher conversion rates than mass, impersonal communication. Email automation is a necessary part of your martech stack because it allows you to create impressive, interactive email campaigns. Today’s email creation and management tools offer pre-crafted templates or easy-to-use interfaces to create and customize your own templates. AI and machine learning embedded in the programs provide deep analytics for better decision-making.

Team Communication Tools – More than ever, online collaboration and communication are how marketing gets done. When accessing, or building, your martech stack always include this important piece. We tend to always be sales-focused and sometimes forget that internal communication and workflow management are the building blocks of every successful business.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – right???

Not necessarily. The biggest issue facing marketing departments today is tight profit margins. Increasing profits, usually through sales, is critical. It’s probably a good idea to review your martech strategy and stack to ensure you’re operating at peak efficiency to maximize your budget and grow your bottom line.

The digital marketing team at ACS Creative will help you review and craft a digital strategy to achieve your goals. We listen and get to know your objectives, then recommend the best digital tools for the most efficient and effective strategies. From technology to creative, we’ll help you shine in the new year.