Success in marketing isn’t about technology, it’s about strategy.
That said, the software you use to plan and execute your traditional and digital marketing campaigns can be the difference between success and failure. And making a decision on which software is right for you can be daunting.
Don’t believe me? Take thirty minutes and research the different email providers out there. You have the classics like MailChimp who have increased their e-commerce and social media publishing capabilities in recent years to compete with SMB marketing automation platforms. If you have the budget and the need, you might look into a robust marketing automation platform like HubSpot or Salesforce Marketing Cloud. And don’t forget new tools like Drip, that are building for the modern landscape from scratch instead of adjusting an existing platform to an evolving audience or business goal.
I have a feeling you’re convinced by now. If not, reach out to me and I’ll walk you through the world of Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) and we’ll see if I can put you to sleep.
So what do you need to look out for when building or evolving your marketing technology stack for your company? I’m glad you asked.
It Accomplishes Business Goals
Marketing software is cool. And it’s only going to get cooler as we continue to experiment and learn how to leverage data better.
But you need to make sure your software is accomplishing an actual business goal and is playing its role in driving business results. If you’re a brand in a niche B2B marketing you probably don’t need a social listening tool, but you probably do need a really great CRM for your sales team, so make sure you're aligning your software choices with business goals and needs.
Results Are Easy to Measure
Data is king, but not all data is created equal. This is very important to understand.
A lot of platforms will provide you surface level data, but when it comes to attribution modeling and discovering what is driving real business results they aren’t going to give you any more valuable than clicks and impressions.
When evaluating marketing software solutions, and it’s relevant for the marketing software, make sure you’re able to see as detailed conversion attribution data as possible. Sometimes this will be dependent on price point, but there are plenty of cost-effective platforms across the MarTech world that provide great data.
It Can Scale with Your Business
When considering a software like a CRM or Marketing Automation Platform, finding the balance between not so robust that you're needlessly spending extra dollars and not so small that you’re going to have to completely switch and retrain on software within the next year can be a challenge.
One of the best ways to navigate this is to partner with software providers that have scalable feature levels. These platforms provide additional, more sophisticated features as you grow so you don’t have to pivot to completely new software, but will have access to the features you need. A few great examples of this are HubSpot for marketing automation and VWO for conversion rate optimization.
If you’re ready to learn more about marketing technology and feel like you need some advice on how to go about planning for your business, drop me a line. Drinks are on me!
It Aligns with Your Existing Marketing Technology Stack
Few things are more frustrating for marketers than trying to report on a marketing campaign by pulling Excel documents from multiple platforms and then combining them to manipulate the data to make sense of what impact they are actually having on their business.
And the surprising thing is that this is incredibly common.
When you’re building your marketing stack make sure tools that need to talk to each other can. Does your email tool talk to your CRM and vice versa? Will all of your tools work with your reporting software? If not, does the platform have a good API that can connect with the help of a good developer? Do you have a good developer?