Marketing Strategy
What Is Martech? How Can You Use It to Streamline Marketing?

What Is Martech? How Can You Use It to Streamline Marketing?

December 28, 2020
4 min read

What are we without technology? It’s a fair question considering the digital world we live in and our celebration of technology.

The reality is, we could certainly live without it on a personal level, but as a business, it’s a necessity.

For marketing efforts, technology enables you to automate, track, personalize, and more.

The key is to have the right Martech stack, but what is Martech exactly? And what tools do you need to streamline your marketing?

Quick Takeaways:

  • Martech is a set of technology tools marketers use to assist with marketing efforts.
  • Having the right Martech stack is imperative for the modern marketing organization.
  • You’ll find the major categories of Martech below, what they do, and recommendations.

What Is Martech?

Martech is the combination of marketing and technology. It’s a broad category of tools that leverage technology to help organizations meet their goals and gain efficiencies. These platforms enable better content workflows, simplify campaigns, collect and analyze data, and automate certain tasks.

Check out the video below from CMWorld 2019 for a good overview.

There are numerous Martech tools available. They fit broadly within these categories.

Website Analytics

Every business wants to monitor website analytics. You need to gather these data sets to understand what on your website resonates with users. Much of the time, you can use Google Analytics (GA) for this. There are additional tools that snapshot this information if GA seems a bit confusing. Some alternatives include:

Clicky: Clicky is a simple real-time analytics solution. A free plan is available, but for a small cost, you can access many helpful features.

MonsterInsights: This is a Google Analytics WordPress plugin that provides you with snapshots of website analytics inside your content management system (CMS). Free and premium versions are available.

Image: MonsterInsights

Content Management System

Your CMS is the hub of website content publishing. There are many options available, some more user-friendly than others. WordPress is the most popular and delivers an intuitive interface. If you want to go outside the norm, consider WixWeeblySquarespace, or Joomla.

Customer Relationship Management

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is essential to any business. It’s where customer and prospect data live and where you track their behaviors and interactions with your brand. Again, the choices are plentiful, and what you should use really depends on your specific needs and budget. Enterprises are likely to opt for Salesforce. Other large players in the space include HubSpotZoho, and Oracle.

Smaller businesses may find a simpler, less expensive option to be a better choice. CRM.org recommends CopperInsightlyNimble, and others.

Image: Insightly

Marketing Automation Tools

Marketing automation tools are the mecca for marketers. They are powerful platforms that often combine a variety of tools. They assist with improving personalization, executing email marketing, social media publishing, and more. They automate tasks that don’t need human intervention.

They are quickly gaining in adoption, with 75% of all companies using marketing automation tools, according to a 2019 State of Automation survey.

What can you do with marketing automation platforms? Each platform is different and has various modules. Most allow you to do these things:

  • Email automation: You can set up various campaign workflows for segments of your audience, such as nurture emails, autoresponders, or triggered events. Depending on the recipient’s behavior (downloading an asset, opening an email, clicking on an email), they take different routes.
  • Social media publishing: Manual social media publishing is timely, and you can’t schedule posts within most platforms (Facebook is the exception). That’s not sustainable for busy brands. Thus, many employ these tools to schedule posts in advance and respond to comments, track follower behavior, and manage social media ads.
  • Tracking visitors and scoring: Platforms allow you to leverage cookies to follow a website visitor’s trail. Based on the action by the visitor, you can score them. Once they reach a certain score, you can then trigger actions like an email campaign or a call from sales.
  • Personalization: These features lean on artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver the most relevant experience for visitors. This could mean geo-specific content or recommendations based on previous viewing sessions.

Below is a list of the top marketing automation platforms; they’ll look familiar because most also have a CRM component.

According to G2 Crowd, an independent software review website, these are their picks for 2020:

Image: Klaviyo

Content Marketing Software

The last category is content marketing software. Content marketing is one of the most critical elements of any marketing plan. All the other tools we’ve discussed involve content. But how do you keep content production moving and executable at scale?

You’re not going to make this happen with a spreadsheet. Instead, content marketing software has project management-type functionality, but it’s content-specific. It also includes dynamic content calendars that define every task for each project. It delivers transparency and visibility to all efforts, ensuring your content strategy stays on track.

This area of the MarTech world doesn’t have as many options; at least not many that offer the right features to help you manage content marketing. Standing out in this category is DivvyHQ. CMI’s Content Tech Survey named it the number one content marketing tool for the fourth straight year. Content marketers love it and what it offers. Get a preview in the video below.

Other options include Monday.com and CoSchedule.

The Value of Martech Tools

Martech tools are an investment, but they can deliver so much value to your organization. You can realize a positive return on investment (ROI) with Martech tools. Here’s why:

  • Your staff can focus on high-level work instead of administrative tasks, which could lead to better productivity and results.
  • You’ll understand your customers better and, therefore, will be able to craft more relevant offers.
  • Tools provide transparency and accountability within processes and workflows.
  • Consistency in content production and other areas will improve.
  • You’ll have access to a wealth of data that can inform your strategies.
  • Your team will have clarity around processes, which could help you meet timelines better and reduce the need to edit.

Martech Tools Are Streamliners

If you want to streamline marketing processes, you’ll want the right MarTech stack. Technology isn’t magic, but it does reduce the strain on individual contributors. However, you still may need some help with content creation. We can help!

Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today–and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

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Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

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