According to ChiefMarTec, the marketing technology landscape now includes 7,040 solution providers. With the growth of marketing and technology, marketers need to become more selective and knowledgeable in their choice of software solutions.

In order to utilize the best marketing tools, marketers need to create a marketing technology stack. So, the first question we have to ask is: What is a marketing technology stack? “A marketing technology stack is a grouping of technologies that marketers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities” (Koo, 2016).

A marketing technology stack is a must have tool for marketing. Creating a map of the providers you use, the IT skills that are needed and the data flow of each of the components is vital to your marketing success.

“Martech isn’t about making your strategy fit to the technology you want to use. It’s about building a strategy, and then finding technology that enables it”(Keating, 2018). In marketing, strategy is the path to get to the goal and tactics are the actual actions taken to accomplish the goal or strategy. Check out this article Identifying and nurturing your mobile capabilities (people, processes & technologies) and complete the template to create your strategy.

The second question is: What is the customer journey? A customer journey is the complete work flow of experiences that a customer goes through when interacting with your brand or company. I have used my company, ACQUI, as an example. ACQUI is a business to businesses (B2B), different channels and techniques are used to acquire customers, and we will have varying technology needs versus business to consumers(B2C). Here are the five core steps and their descriptions for our company:

  • Acquire – activities that we perform to attract and awareness customers. Generating leads through rented media such as word of mouth, advertising and SEO. And we continue to provide value through our own media responsive website, email, blog and subscriptions.
  • Customers – activities that we provide for engagement and retention of customers such as chat, social and follow up
  • Quality – activities that include planning and research
  • Unique – activities include creativity and collaboration
  • Inspires – activities include analytics and reporting that lead us to success.

We came up with the phrase of Acquire for our Customers a Quality and Unique experience that Inspires success as part of our customer journey and marketing technology during the creation of the marketing technology stack.

I was inspired by the winners and many great entries of the ChiefMarTech 2019 otherwise known as “The Stackies Awards” so, I decided to create my first marketing technology stack for my own company, ACQUI.

Below is a visual representation of what ACQUI’s marketing technology stack is all about. A marketing stack is an invaluable overview and a visual of your customer’s journey, technology stack and marketing strategy that your company can utilize every day to remind them of the company goals.

References

Koo, J. (2016). Why You Have a Marketing Stack—And How We Arrived at Ours. Adroll. Retrieved from:  https://blog.adroll.com/trends/what-is-a-marketing-stack

Keating, G. (2018). The ultimate marketing technology stack for 2019. Intercom. Retrieved from: https://www.intercom.com/blog/the-ultimate-marketing-technology-stack/