Choosing the Right Marketing Technology Stack for Your Business Goals

A good MarTech stack will not only achieve your revenue and growth goals today but also set you up for continued success in the future. That’s why you have to consider important factors like your customer journey, integration capabilities, and cross-team buy-in.

Since not all MarTech tools are created equally and every business has unique goals, we created this post to help you explore how to make sure your MarTech stack aligns with your business goals—today and in the future.

Understand your business goals and objectives

Before you start evaluating marketing technology, it's essential to understand your company's overall business goals and objectives. Are you aiming to boost sales, drive more conversions on your website, increase brand awareness, or enhance customer engagement?

Essentially, you want to ask yourself: What do you want to accomplish with your marketing efforts?

Additionally, spend time identifying your target audience, studying market segments, and pinpointing your current marketing challenges. This groundwork is the foundation upon which you'll build your tech strategy.

Once you have outlined your goals, you can identify the MarTech tools that are necessary to achieve them.

Evaluate your existing marketing technology stack

Once you have a clear understanding of your business and marketing goals and objectives, the next step is to evaluate your existing marketing technology stack.

• Do the tools you currently use align with your marketing objectives and business goals?
• Are they helping you to deliver on your goals?
• Are there any overlapping functionalities or gaps?
• Is your marketing team making use of the full range of features and functionality?
• Are your current tools working as expected? If not, then you consider alternatives that better align with your goals.

Evaluating your existing stack will help identify areas of focus and the need for new or upgraded tools.

Align your marketing tech with your buyer’s journey

One of the significant factors that will determine your marketing success is how well you align your marketing strategies with your customer journey.

When selecting MarTech tools, you must keep your target audience in mind.

• What do they need?
• What problems do they have that your tools can solve?
• Understanding your customers' pain points and their buying journey can help you select the tools that will best serve their needs and, in turn, help you achieve your business goals.

From awareness to advocacy, select MarTech tools that align specifically with the different stages of the customer journey. This can include tools for customer segmentation, content personalization, email marketing, social media scheduling tools, and CRM systems.

Prioritize integration capabilities

There are thousands of marketing tech tools available, each with its unique value proposition. In fact, MarTech solutions surged from 150 in 2011 to a staggering 9,500 in 2021, marking a phenomenal increase of over 6,000%.

How do you decide which ones are right for you? One way to sort through the noise is to review Integration capabilities.

Believe it or not, integrations become a crucial factor to consider as you grow because they enable a unified view of customers and data, facilitating more effective targeting and execution of marketing strategies.

And we’re not just talking about integrating one marketing tool into another. Think more holistically; integrations just cover your entire tech stack, including marketing, sales, customer success, and more.

Companies that take a data-centered approach to marketing experience a 15-20% higher return on investment. It’s important that your integrations make leveraging this data easy for all teams.

Don't underestimate employee buy-in

The success of your marketing tech stack depends not just on the tools you choose but also on the level of employee buy-in. So when considering tools, team members should be involved in the selection process and their preferences and input kept in mind.

Ask yourself:

• Will the sales team need to access these tools to understand which marketing campaigns are most effective?
• Will the customer success team find valuable information from any of these tools?
• Will you need IT to help implement any of this technology at some point?

Remember, an empowered and engaged team is more likely to use the tools effectively, contributing to overall business success. Don’t be afraid to get buy-in from not just the marketing team but others in the organization as well.

Continuously optimize and measure performance

It's never a good idea to keep using a tool that's holding your team back. Think about all the time wasted trying to get IT involved just because your team can't seem to use the tool efficiently.

You'd be surprised how much these tools are getting in the way of your progress. That’s why aligning your MarTech stack selection with your marketing goals requires ongoing optimization and measurement, in tandem with continuously evolving customer preferences and behavior.

Your business goals and processes change as you grow, which means you might need to introduce new tools that better align with your needs. Outgrowing technology isn’t a bad thing, so don’t be afraid to change up your tech stack when necessary.

Build a marketing tech stack that scales with you

Choosing the right MarTech stack for your business is crucial to achieving your marketing objectives and overall business goals. But we know this is easier said than done—especially with all of the marketing technology available today.

At LeadPulse, we specialize in helping businesses build marketing tech stacks that not only fit your current stage of growth but are guaranteed to scale with you, helping you avoid frustrating situations in the future where your tools are slowing you down.

Looking for help to get started? Contact us to learn more.