The explosive growth in marketing technology is hard to ignore, with the market growing from roughly 1,000+ to over 7,000 solutions in the last five years (source). This introduction of new solutions makes it incredibly difficult for even the most experienced marketing technologists to navigate. Where technology was once a productivity aid to marketing, it’s now essential. As a marketing leader, it’s critical to ensure you’re enabling your team with the smartest stack of solutions to achieve your business objectives, deliver a premier customer experience, and remain competitive.
“There are several challenges for marketers where the marketing tech stack is concerned,” said Jerry Rackley, chief analyst at Demand Metric. “There’s certainly the challenge of having the right solutions in the stack, but it goes much further than this. Gaining maturity in the adoption and use of all the technology in the stack is a big issue for marketers, who may implement the right technologies, but then never fully implement or integrate them. The goal is to have a comprehensive, fully integrated technology stack that helps drive marketing efforts toward achieving the goals of the organization. The reality for most organizations is that they have holes in their stack, some parts they aren’t using at all or are using incorrectly, and a few that are really delivering value. This is why it’s so important for marketing leaders to periodically audit their tech stack and make adjustments to optimize how technology works for them.”
With 2020 right around the corner, it’s a great time to take a look at your current tech stack. At the very least, the exercise will help to reveal gaps in your marketing technology stack and provide a roadmap pointing to the solutions you will want to consider investing in next.
There are several reasons to make a marketing tech stack review a priority:
Conducting an effective marketing tech stack review involves four broad steps:
A tertiary benefit to this part of the exercise is that your team feels like their day-to-day experiences are important and that their leaders are invested in enabling them to achieve success in their roles.