When almost a third of your budget is spent on your marketing technology stack, you want to be confident that you’re realizing its full value and achieving a strong return on your investment. Unfortunately the majority of marketers have not been able to live up to this ideal, with Gartner reporting that marketing leaders utilize “only 58% of their martech stack’s potential.” What is the right balance of technology for you? The best place to start is with your marketing strategy. By developing your marketing strategy first, you can then choose your technologies based on where you lack the processes you need to execute your strategy successfully.
Table of Contents:
- Benefits of MarTech
- Choose Your MarTech Stack Based on Your Marketing Strategy
- Generate Leads with an Inbound Marketing Strategy
- Nurture Leads with an Account Based Marketing Strategy
- Limit Churn with a Customer Retention Strategy
Benefits of MarTech
Marketing technology can help you more effectively execute your marketing strategy by enabling you to:
- Automate processes
- Analyze campaign and content metrics
- Increase your understanding of your target audience
- Deliver personalized content
- Maintain consistent engagement with leads
- Build loyalty with customers
- Align cross-functional teams (marketing and sales)
Choose Your MarTech Stack Based on Your Marketing Strategy
Keep in mind that your technology is a tool and not a strategy. Before you start building your technology stack, you need to first develop your marketing strategy and determine your plan for its implementation. Only then will you be able to answer the question, “What technology tools are we missing that we need in order to execute our strategy effectively?”
Example 1: Generate Leads with an Inbound Marketing Strategy
In this example, your plan is to fill the top of your marketing funnel with leads using an inbound marketing strategy. An inbound approach is a way for you to get found online by those people already engaged in educating themselves about your industry or category. You need to grab hold of their attention as they search online and then drive them to your website where they can find out more about your offering. Executing a successful inbound marketing strategy involves ensuring that your website and any content you create is optimized, measurable, and engaging. Tactics include:
- SEO
- Content marketing: blogs, videos, eBooks, infographics
- Social media outreach
- Advertising: search and display ads
Based on this strategy and the tactics involved, the technologies that would be valuable to achieve a successful implementation include:
- SEO Tools: These tools help you optimize your web content so that it will rank higher in search engine results by analyzing it for keywords (most common search terms that relate to your website), backlinks (a link to your site from another site), and other SEO specifics. Eg. Google Search Console, SEMrush, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
- Analytics Tools: Providing more than just your basic website analytics, these tools enable you to track and measure detailed results from social media, display ads, and email campaigns. Eg. Google Analytics, HubSpot Analytics and Databox.
- Content Management Systems (CMS): This is a common tool found in a martech stack. A CMS manages the creation and modification of digital content for your website. Eg. HubSpot CMS and WordPress
- Landing Page Builders: Used to create landing pages where prospects and leads can fill out online forms in exchange for valuable information or special offers. Eg. Instapage
- Social Media Management Tools: These tools manage your entire social media presence using one interface. These allow you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and generate analytics across multiple social platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Eg. Hootsuite and Buffer
Example 2: Nurture Leads with an Account Based Marketing Strategy
In this example, your plan is to nurture your newly found leads with an account based marketing strategy (ABM). ABM is a B2B strategy used by sales and marketing teams that allows a business to personalize its marketing efforts and target the largest and most important deals.
Start by building a targeted list of companies that you would love to close deals with – the accounts you focus on should have the highest revenue potential. Find out as much as you can about the companies including who the key decision makers are, challenges they face, and whether your solution is a good fit for them. You can then use the information you uncover to create a customized campaign with a targeted marketing message. Tactics include:
- ABM advertising
- Automated email nurturing (once you have secured their email opt-in)
- Telemarketing appointment setting
- Social media outreach
- Content marketing with personalization: case studies, eBooks, executive door openers (EDOs), etc
In addition to the tools previously mentioned, the technologies you may consider in executing your ABM strategy include:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: These tools gather lead and customer interactions across all channels in one place and allows you to manage and analyze these interactions. Eg. HubSpot CRM and Salesforce
- Collaboration Tools: This technology is used to help teams (marketing and sales) communicate and work together efficiently. Eg. Trello and Slack
- List Building and Sales Intelligence Tools: These help you uncover valuable insights about your leads such as technographic data (technologies that your leads have), allowing you to create more targeted messaging. Eg. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, HG Data, DiscoverOrg
- Email Nurturing/Marketing Automation Tools: Email marketing capabilities are often found in platforms already in your stack and they may also be able to perform your marketing automation. Eg. HubSpot and Marketo
- ABM Advertising Tools: Advertising platforms that allow for the dissemination of ABM targeted content help get your message out and fill the top of your funnel. Eg. LinkedIn Ads, MRP Prelytix, and TechTarget.
Example 3: Limit Churn with a Customer Retention Strategy
In this example, your targeted leads have become customers through all of your hard work, and your plan is to now limit churn with a customer retention strategy. By continuing to engage with customers, you will strengthen loyalty, increase re-purchases, and encourage advocacy of your product/service. Tactics include:
- Automated email newsletters: product updates, announcements
- Social media outreach: share customer testimonials and stories
- Content marketing: training/education webinars, videos, case studies
- Customer feedback opportunities
- Community building forums
- Loyalty marketing: thank you letters and/or offers
Adding to your existing technology stack, the tools that may help you implement a successful customer retention strategy include:
- Webinar Hosting Tools: Web-based video conferencing tools allow you to meet online and deliver product training and discussions. Eg. Zoom
- Customer Feedback Surveys: Surveys can be used to ask customers about the content and marketing resources they find informative and helpful and how they initially heard about your company. Eg. Survey Monkey
- Customer Service Tools: Chatbot software can be programmed to interact with users and answer questions. A chatbot also has the potential to deliver interactive marketing content such as white papers or case studies. Eg. Watson Assistant and LivePerson
- Discussion and Community Building: These tools help you grow customer relationships by providing a trusted destination where your customers can ask questions, solve problems, and share new ideas. Eg. HubSpot Service Hub
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