What Is Martech? A Guide to Marketing Technologies

All digital marketers know that marketing and technology go hand in hand. Successful marketing strategies rely on a variety of tools to evaluate data, connect with audiences, and create engaging content. With thousands of martech tools to choose from, the key is determining the right ones for your team.

What is marketing technology (martech)?

Marketers use it to work more efficiently, communicate more effectively, and measure their efforts. The collection of tools used by a team or department is called a martech stack. These tools are often integrated or used together to enhance and optimize the content and creative workflow.

Once you have the right tools, you still need to assemble an effective martech team to run them. From there, your martech stack and team can evolve together to deliver the full benefits of your technology.

What are the benefits of martech? 

While martech might still be a new term to some, marketing technology is definitely not. Marketing teams around the world have long relied on these tools to consistently deliver relevant content to their audience. And that’s just one of the reasons why marketers love technology. Martech also helps to:

• Do more, faster. Save time and streamline workflows using automated tools to do repetitive and time-consuming tasks like pulling data, converting file formats, and finding assets.
   
• Enhance internal communication. Provide a way to communicate openly about things like project status and team goals to improve tracking and give all team members full visibility to progress.
   
• Create smarter content. Make your audience feel like you really get them by using insights and data to understand performance, optimize experiences, and deliver targeted content.
   
• Build better relationships. Strengthen customer and buyer relationships by always knowing the right thing to say with easy access to past conversations, interactions, subscription information, and more.
   
• Be stronger together. The value of each tool is amplified when they all come together to reduce friction in workflows, allowing you to work faster and smarter.

Building your marketing technology stack

An amazing martech stack doesn’t happen overnight, and it constantly evolves. Both the marketing and tech worlds change rapidly with new tools appearing almost daily. Keeping up is nearly impossible, so it’s important to have a competency framework to guide the development of your stack and your team. It will help you focus on your team’s long-term needs instead of the next hot new tool.

Another key to building a sustainable martech stack is a strong understanding of the current and future technology landscape and where your needs fit into it. To stay ahead of the curve, hire marketing technologists with a passion for what’s next. Their foresight will help you select the right tools for easy adoption and scaling as your business grows. Understanding tech gaps within your organization will also allow you to recognize opportunities for new tools as the need arises.

And remember, you can’t just add new technology and expect the tools to work on their own. You need to develop and stick to a successful change management strategy to build your martech stack.

No two companies are alike, so mapping your martech needs is key in bringing clarity to the process. With six recognized categories in the martech landscape, it’s important to review the tools and companies that make up each one to understand how they could benefit you and your team.

How does your "stack" stack up? 

Hopefully, your martech stack works like a well-oiled machine, but, if there’s friction in your workflow, it might be time to revisit it. Take the time to figure out what’s working, what’s not, and what tools or integrations could help. Martech is supposed to make your life easier, so make sure it’s doing its job.

For example, as you evaluate your existing stack, there are a few to consider incorporating if they’re not already part of your tool kit, such as a customer data platform (CDP). The technology gathers and unifies data across channels and systems to produce insights that teams — revenue operations, marketing, and product to name just a few — throughout an organization can act on.

A digital asset management (DAM) solution is another must-have for any martech stack. The platform allows companies to manage all their content in one place, resulting in less complexity, more agile marketing, and, ideally, an improved customer experience.

Then there’s the staple of any modern business: a content management system (CMS). Be sure that yours operates on a framework — headless, traditional, or hybrid — that meets current needs. Technological advancements have expanded CMS capabilities in recent years, giving organizations more options, so find one that best suits your workflows.

Of course, you can bundle all these in a digital experience platform (DXP) that gets rid of tech silos to offer a coordinated system for creating, managing, delivering, and optimizing rich, cross-channel customer experiences. Learn how a DXP like the one from Acquia can empower organizations in generating productive, quality digital experiences every time.