MarTech 101: What is it and why do you need it
Apr 21, 2022
MarTech (or Marketing Technology) is a term used to describe a category of tools used by companies (and their marketing specialists) to achieve marketing objectives.
In smaller companies, marketers choose MarTech stacks. In bigger ones, there are specialists called Marketing technologists – a hybrid between IT and marketing departments.
In 2020, there were 8000 solutions on the market. Now, there should be well over 10.000 tools.
With so many tools and terms nowadays, it’s hard to navigate and grasp the full picture. Many companies fall into a trap of using too many tools instead of building a custom one, while some companies collect more data than their current toolset can’t process effectively.
This article will help you understand what MarTech is, how it helps your organization and where the future lies for your marketing in our privacy-first world.
MarTech covers an entire customer journey
A customer journey is a whole experience of your customer from the first point of contact with your brand to purchase – and advocacy later on. Before the internet, covering that journey from an unaware prospect to an advocate was “easy”.
Today, with so many channels online, you have to educate, persuade, nurture, personalize, manage… There are so many data points – it’s almost impossible for ordinary people to handle all of them effectively.
That’s where MarTech steps in. It handles data inputs and helps you make sense of it.
Of course, having over 9000 tech choices on the market can be daunting even to experienced marketers, but luckily, they fall into six categories:
Source: chiefmartec.com
Before you set up an internal meeting to discuss implementing MarTech, be aware of the fact that you’re already using many MarTech tools.
Even the platform you’re reading this on is a MarTech tool because it was made in a CMS (content management system) – and we use content as a marketing tool.
What is a MarTech stack
A MarTech stack is a set of tools you use to operate your marketing activities. It’s like defining a set of programming languages your department works with.
It’s not even an option anymore not to use marketing technology. The key question is whether you’re using the right stack.
At some point, as your company grows, you’ll have to add more tools to the existing stack – or replace the old ones with those that solve your current challenges more effectively.
We know this might seem like Mission impossible when you look at the landscape above. To successfully navigate through it and before you decide on a new tool, we suggest you map your needs and resources:
- Do we need technology to handle this task?
- Would this piece of software bring any ROI (time or money or both)?
- How much of our budget can we allocate to train people to use this?
- Would it make more sense to try and adapt our current solutions to new needs?
Answers to these questions should be your Northstar.
An example of a marketing technology stack
Most of the SMEs start with tracking software (Google Analytics), Customer Relationship Management software (Hubspot), and Content Management Systems (WordPress).
And then there’s email marketing software for newsletters (Mailchimp). Chatbots (Intercom).
While some companies use 25 tools, some of them use well over 250.
Yes, you need marketing technologists
When the time comes to use marketing technology and handle data, marketing technologists should be first on your hiring list.
- They can analyze your needs and consult you on picking the right tools
- They communicate with your IT department (or your external IT partner)
- They analyze the data and provide insights to your creative teams
- They are well aware of privacy policies and can help you meet the regulations in collaboration with your legal department
You might consider machine learning companies that build MarTech solutions
First of all, because ML helps you make use of all of that data you collect.
For example, your software might get 150 customer messages per day – and over 3000 per month. Your customer support team uses templates, knowledge base articles, and pre-recorded tutorials to handle them.
Machine learning algorithms could analyze the sentiment and content of those messages and divide them into categories.
Zero, first, second, third-party data in a nutshell
Zero party data is the data that customers give you voluntarily. First party data is the data you collect about your customers’ behaviors, habits, and experience through your own software. Second party data is purchased from a partner, and third-party data is publicly available.
Challenges for MarTech in a cookieless world and how to solve them
Server-side tracking instead of client-side tracking
With server-side tracking, instead of going directly to the advertising platform’s server, data gets sent to your server first.
Hyper-personalization based on zero and first-party data
By following your users’ behavior in real-time, you could build recommender systems and serve relevant content from zero and first-party data.
Content type identification and context analysis solutions
Machine learning algorithms can identify content types and contexts to optimize your ad spend budget.
MarTech isn’t going anywhere. Our mindset is shifting
We should start thinking about technology as a tool, not as an end-goal. In our vast industry experience, companies tend to integrate technology, and then base their strategies around them, when it should be vice-versa – create a strategy and then pick tools that help you achieve your business objectives.