Meeting Business Objectives with Your Marketing Technology Stack
Modern marketing technology, from Google Analytics and Salesforce to HubSpot and beyond, promises impressive ROI. But - how do you get your tech stack to support your organization's business objectives?
Achieving your specific goals as a marketing leader isn't a matter of what systems your team is using in the marketing tech stack, but how they're being used. So, next question: How do you get started?
What systems make up the marketing technology stack?
Any discussion of your martech stack should start with defining the systems you have in place now. Scott Brinker's annual Martech Landscape supergraphic divides the marketing technology landscape into six functional groups, and you can think about your own systems along these same lines.
Advertising and promotion tools: Even the most robust organic content marketing strategy will still require traditional advertising. These are marketing tools that deal with paid ads appearing on PCs, mobile devices or print.
Content and experience platforms: From original content publishing to email marketing and SEO, these are the systems that make inbound marketing strategies function. These are the marketing tech tools that allow your team to publish content and make it available to your audience.
Social media and relationship solutions: These are the digital marketing technologies that track how people engage with your brand and support your team in real-time, contextualized communication. Social media automation tools and customer relationship management (CRM) databases both fall under this category.
Commerce and sales platforms: eCommerce and other retail tools are cornerstones of your martech stack. They enable you to sell goods or exchange information securely. These marketing tech tools also allow you to communicate with channel partners in the digital and brick-and-mortar space.
Data storage and analysis tools: Business intelligence, big data, visualizations, dashboards and web analytics technology all fit this category. These systems enable your marketing team to transform an endless flood of customer data into useful fuel for data-based decision making.
Management software: These collaboration, budgeting and project workflow tools allow teams to work together easily and efficiently. Most often these solutions are used throughout the whole company — not just within the marketing department.
How do you align the martech stack with business objectives?
You've taken an inventory of the solutions in your martech stack. Now it's time to ensure the way your team is using its tools is in line with big-picture business objectives.
Since day-to-day use of the marketing technology stack is often guided by the marketing department's own goals — rather than general company objectives — aligning those two sets of priorities is at the heart of this project.
Quick definitions:
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Marketing goals: The goalposts for each marketing campaign.
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Overall company objectives: The big-picture targets for the quarter or year.
(Marketing goals should be aligned with these.)
Digital marketing efforts echoing the business's objectives could mean:
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Business objective: Increase audience engagement and boost long-term loyalty.
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Marketing's response: Improve data collection to get a more accurate idea of what customers want to know.
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Business objective: Deepen the business's appeal to a new demographic.
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Marketing's response: Change the channel mix — social media, paid ads, content, etc. — to reach those customers where they are.
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Business objective: Expand the company's reach.
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Marketing's response: Perform audience and competitor research to reshape messaging and match conditions in new regions/markets.
How do you maximize modern martech stack ROI?
Using the martech stack in service of a well-aligned strategy (as covered in the section above) is a direct path to ROI. But often, departments encounter silos between the marketing tech systems that make up the marketing stack. To best leverage your strategy and achieve your target ROI, do this: Bust up silos and align your people.
Integrate the people and the martech stack will follow. People working together on shared digital marketing goals that are furthering (or nestled within) clearly communicated company objectives will find collaboration easy.
You can build clarity around those well-aligned goals and objectives by:
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Making a plan for what the marketing department should accomplish over a set period of time.
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Plugging in martech to specifically address the “how” of those goals.
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Measuring the performance of each campaign, quantifying its effect on big-picture business objectives, and optimizing accordingly.
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Repeating the process in the next month, quarter or year, in line with the company's latest objectives, creating a cycle of continuous improvement and ROI.
Your marketing team doesn't need to buy a shiny new marketing technology tool to break down silos and start collaborating effectively. Positive results will spring from clarified goals and objectives, followed by the clear alignment of your martech stack.
Reach out to GeekHive today to delve into your current marketing tech stack effectiveness. We’re here to help you figure out how to make what you already have do more for you, your teams, and your organization.