Let’s get down to business. The volume and variety of marketing technology tools accessible today can be overwhelming to every marketer and business. You’ve certainly seen the iconic Martech 5000 Supergraphic, which depicts the hundreds of marketing technology businesses that each contribute one or more Martech solutions to the landscape.
So, to gain a hold on all of this frequently game-changing technology without becoming overwhelmed, here’s a look at some of the most important marketing technology tools to have in your martech stack.
Website Visitor Analytics
Understanding and enhancing your overall website performance requires knowing who is visiting your site, when they are visiting, where they are visiting from, and whether they bounce off. Google Analytics may also help you measure organic traffic, identify top landing sites, and identify top exit pages. You can also take advantage of several paid alternatives like StatCounter and Simple Analytics if you need more in-depth analytical coverage.
SEO
If you want to make it simple for your customers to locate you, then SEO-related tools must be a part of your MarTech armory. Keywords research, backlink development, competition research, and rank tracking are all part of a typical SEO process. But you don’t want to pay for separate tools to execute each of those tasks.
Ahrefs is a suite of SEO tools that assists websites, blogs, and businesses in conducting in-depth research on their competition, increasing search traffic, and monitoring their niche.
What keywords or subjects should you be aiming for?
How many links do you need to build to rank for the keywords you’ve chosen?
All of this and much more are possible with Ahrefs. Other alternatives include Moz Pro and SemRush.
Customer Relationship Management
Your CRM is where you keep track of and manage your customer interactions. It is essential for lead nurturing as well as customer retention, and it should be able to expand and change as your business grows.
Depending on whatever CRM you choose, it may include or interface with a variety of additional martech necessities, such as email marketing and social media marketing solutions. There are dozens (and dozens) of good customer relationship management platforms available, ranging from small to mid-sized business solutions such as HubSpot and Pipedrive to enterprise-level behemoths such as Salesforce.
Email Marketing
Email marketing, as ‘old school’ as it is in the digital marketing landscape, is still the foundation of how your brand communicates with leads and customers. You might utilize an email marketing platform that also serves as automation software, such as MailChimp or Infusionsoft. Alternatively, something more email-focused and approachable for small businesses, such as Constant Contact or GetResponse, which will still interface with your CRM and automation tools.
Content Management System
If you don’t already have a website or blog and want to start one, you’ll need a scalable CMS system to run it. If you already have a website but the CMS is clunky and difficult to use, you’ll need to look for a solution that makes publishing and updating content easier.
WordPress is a popular CMS tool to have in your MarTech toolbox. In reality, WordPress is the content management system (CMS) that powers more than 43% of all websites on the Internet. Yes, WordPress is likely to power more than one out of every four websites you visit.
WordPress allows users to create everything from blogs to full-fledged websites with hundreds of themes to pick from. Even better, WordPress makes website creation accessible to anyone — even those who aren’t developers. CMS Hub, Joomla, and Drupal are some other options.
Lead Management
Lead conversions are not a clean, tidy, and well-organized road from point A to point B. The conversion process is frequently more akin to a twisting road of crossroads, tangents, and loops, including a slew of marketing touchpoints.
To determine the true ROI of your marketing effort, you must first determine which individual components produced measurable outcomes. Without these, marketers are too likely to invest in underperforming marketing channels that provide insufficient pipelines and revenue.
Tools like BrightFunnel and LeanData allow you to integrate with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to deliver the most accurate, channel-by-channel snapshot of your campaign effectiveness, allowing your team to decide how to spend money most effectively.
Social Media Management
Social media tools are perfect for tracking social media campaigns. Curating material, scheduling posts, staying on top of social interactions, and evaluating social metrics are all part of this process. Social media management tools like Sprout, Buffer, and Hootsuite enable your team to accomplish all of this and more. You may schedule posts up to three years in advance, assess your social media performance, track brand mentions, and participate in the most important conversations with you.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is an integral aspect of any marketing plan. Having automation tools in your ideal MarTech stack will assist you in streamlining your procedures and improving the client experience through personalization.
To manage hyper-personalization and deliver what customers want across the board in a multi-channel marketing world, you’ll need a robust automation platform – and the ability to use it efficiently. 81 percent of consumers want brands to understand people better and when it is OK to approach or leave them alone.
Marketing automation tools like Marketo and Marketing Hub from Hubspot enable users to automate marketing operations by recognizing top prospects, developing targeted campaigns that scale, and locating and interacting with the right customers. Marketo is great for businesses wishing to grow and market to a bigger audience with a high level of segmentation.
Build a Worthy Marketing Technology Tools Today
Creating the ideal marketing technology stack for any firm is no easy task. It can be a massive undertaking. But it all comes down to combining the right technology to work together rather than individually. Not only will you receive a complete picture of your customer journey and marketing activities, but you’ll also learn how to make the most of your hard-earned marketing expenditures.
More importantly, whatever tools you select for your marketing stack, keep in mind that the technology you select must also integrate with your strategy – not the other way around.