How to Build Out Your Tech Stack
First of all – as with other areas of your marketing strategy – one size does not fit all when it comes to building the right martech stack for your company. Your chosen technologies will be impacted by factors like your budget and the type of business you have. One key factor to consider is your target market; for instance, B2C companies will likely require slightly different technologies than a B2B company since they each typically use different channels and techniques to acquire and engage with their customers.
So let’s take a look at the technologies I consider foundational to a tech stack, regardless of your target customer.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
This is often a focus for you B2B-ers. CRMs track all customer relationships and marketing attribution for you and your sales force. Ultimately, CRMs are essential to gaining in-depth insights into how your marketing efforts impact your sales pipeline.
[Tools to explore: Salesforce; HubspotCRM; SugarCRM].
Content Management System (CMS)
by now, for most of you, this is a basic element of your tech stack that you’re familiar with. A CMS is a technology that powers your website, blog, landing pages, etc. These web properties are often where you want to engage your customers.
[Tools to explore: WordPress; Hubspot; Joomla].
Advertising and SEO
This element is pretty vast, but search engine optimization and advertising is key to your customer acquisition strategies regardless of the type of business you run. Many marketers use a combination of software for keyword research, display ads, ad tracking, and attribution.
[Tools to explore: SEMrush, Google Ads; HasOffers].
Email marketing is still a very cost effective way to support sales, build brand awareness and gain trust with your customer base. Email marketing capabilities might even be readily available in other platforms in your tech stack; like in your marketing automation or inbound marketing platform, for instance.
[Tools to explore: : MailChimp; Constant Contact; SendGrid].
Social Media
Technologies for this space help monitor your social conversations, schedule posts or curate content. Specific networks like Facebook and LinkedIn also offer social media marketing opportunities that may be a valuable addition to your own tech stack.
[Tools to explore: BuzzSumo; Hootsuite; SproutSocial].
Collaboration
These are some of my favorite tools to add to a tech stack. Collaboration software focuses on working efficiently and transparently with your team. There are a number of project management tools to choose from, or even tools that focus more on the customer journey
[Tools to explore: : Trello; Asana; Slack].
Analysis and Reporting
Regardless of the technologies you choose to integrate with in your tech stack, you must always be able to access your data to measure your marketing efforts. For the most part, businesses will at least have basic website analytics tracking in place, which is a great way to start. But depending on your situation, you could explore building a full data warehouse to pull together data from various systems to make your reporting more accessible and rounded.
[Tools to explore: Google Analytics; KissMetrics; HotJar].