For any business, marketing is extremely important and as a matter of fact, the market is huge. Hence, to stand out in the market, companies must make optimum use of marketing technologies aka ‘MarTech’.
Marketing technology continues to hold one of the largest portions of a company’s marketing budget.
Further, the pandemic has triggered a rapid digital transformation for several businesses due to which businesses are adopting digital technologies to cope with the shift in consumer behavior and communication.
In this article, we have tried offering you a wider perspective of the Martech stack and how companies are using the latest marketing technologies to level up their businesses.
Let’s start!
What is a Marketing Technology Stack and Why Does it Matter?
A marketing technology (or MarTech) stack is a collection of technologies that businesses can use as leverage to conduct marketing activities and improve them. Marketers use a marketing technology stack to augment their marketing activities and optimize them.
It is also used for,
- Analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns
- Streamlining internal collaboration and
- Conducting personalized communication with customers
Coming to why Martech stack matters, the first thing that deserves a mention is that there’s an eruption of marketing technology.
The Marketing Technology Landscape showed 947 companies in 43 categories as of 2014. In 2015, it jumped to a whopping 1876 companies and in 2016, it became an incredible 3500 companies. Further, in 2017, almost 5000 companies competed in the marketing technology space and by 2020 it was over 7000.
So, the growth is overwhelming, and hence, marketing technology matters extensively in the current scenario.
Whether you realize it or not, every business has a marketing technology stack, irrespective of size. And it is pretty obvious that it will grow with the business. For example, if you own a website and use email marketing, well then, you own a 2-tier marketing technology stack.
As your business grows, you’ll add social media platforms, analytics, a central database of customer information, etc. and thus, your MarTech stack will invariably grow.
So, don’t you think the Marketing Technology stack is significant in the current market and you should plan well for it?
5 Smart Marketing Tools for the New-age Marketers
With marketing technology rising to popularity, there are several marketing tools that the new-age marketers are being bombarded with. Among these, a few can help you strategize your marketing plan and help you level up your performance.
Here’s a list of the top 5 Smart Marketing tools for your business.
1. Google Ads
Google Ads- an ad tech tool that’s currently ruling the market. It is a fantastic means for a marketer to drive traffic to a company website.
If you’re planning to increase your website traffic with qualified leads, then Google’s search, display, and video ads are the most popular and best ways to achieve the desired outcomes.
Google Ads undoubtedly helps you to target the audience who show specific interest in your products or services. But it also serves as the first point of contact for strategies like remarketing, conversion optimization, and email marketing which nurtures lead.
So, why not make Google Ads a central tool for your B2B marketing?!
2. Content Management System (CMS) – WordPress
This tool is highly reliable for content creation and publishing. A Content Management System (CMS) enables you to create, edit, store, publish and collaborate on website content.
There are several platforms out there that can be helpful like WordPress (for DIY WordPress websites), Magento, Joomla, Drupal (for professionally designed websites). In fact, WordPress is that CMS that powers over 32% of all websites that exists on the internet.
An amazing CMS like WordPress lets you get everything done, from building blogs to complete websites with several themes to choose from. A major plus-point of WordPress is that it makes website building super easy and accessible to anyone. Even if you aren’t a developer, you can easily build a website on WordPress.
3. SEO Checker – Ahrefs
How to drive massive organic traffic to your website? Here’s a tried and tested recipe to successfully drive organic traffic.
- Step 1: Choose a keyword or a topic
- Step 2: Create a fantastic price of content covering the topic
- Step 3: Promote it. Insert links to it and rank it.
The process or formula (whatever you call it) is simple but only if you have the right tools to carry it out.
One such tool is Ahrefs. It houses several SEO tools that help companies, websites to grow their search traffic, conduct in-depth research on competitors and keep a track of their niche.
Ahrefs lets you find out,
- The keywords that you should be trying to rank for.
- The number of links you need to build a rank for the specific keywords and so much more.
4. CRM – HubSpot
Customer is king and if you’re looking to grow your business, you must have customer-oriented marketing strategies.
Coming to customer-focused marketing, any form of CRM is a necessity for all businesses, no matter what the size of the business is.
HubSpot’s CRM solution helps you with the means to gather customer data and it does not burn pockets.
Marketers (especially, small-scale ones) can use its amazing features like analytics, form integrations, and tracking of customer touch-points for up to 7 days. It can help them gain insights into their leads.
The platform by HubSpot proves that marketers do not need to spend fortunes to get their hands on the best B2B software. Amazing. Isn’t it?
5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a reliable partner in your marketing technology stack. So reliable that recent estimates suggest around 30 to 50 million companies using Google Analytics.
To be honest, Google Analytics does not have the prettiest UI. Also, you may get caught up among the different menus, filters, and other features. But you cannot deny the utility of this smart marketing tool.
It has become a universal truth that Google Analytics is brilliant. Why?
Here are the top 4 reasons:
- Google Analytics lets you know where your website visitors are coming from
- It also shows how they found you
- The duration they stayed on different pages of your website and
- What content they viewed
Isn’t that amazing?
All of this information allows you to get an insight into your audience, buyer personas. Also, the other countless data can be utilized to take your marketing effectiveness a level higher.
The Bottom-line
It may seem overwhelming to plan and optimize the use of marketing technology. But remember that these marketing tools are here to make your life easier and more insightful.
All you need to do is choose the tools that are right for your business. So, instead of getting perplexed, start getting excited!
Clearly draw out your marketing technology stack and think of what you’re doing well and what needs further improvement. Pinpoint the weak areas and press forward in search of a specific platform that will help you address your needs.
As you keep making these functional improvements continually, in no time, you’ll be able to improvise your entire marketing technology stack.
So, why wait?! Go ahead and start planning today!