Anatomy Of A Marketing Technology Stack

Want to take the pulse of the tech market? Knowing the anatomy of an effective marketing tech stack—and how all parts are connected for optimal performance—is the best place to start.

Want to take the pulse of the tech market? Gauge the temperature of a marketing campaign? Or check the vitals of your marketing initiatives?

Knowing the anatomy of an effective marketing tech stack—and how all parts are connected for optimal performance—is the best place to start.

Here’s your marketing tech stack anatomy 101:

• Call-tracking software (the ears): Ears do more than let us hear; they also help us keep our balance. Likewise, call-tracking software helps keep tabs on customer behavior and allows you to better listen to prospects and customers for a more balanced marketing approach.

•Data cleansing and quality tools (the nose): Data cleansing and quality is the nose of the marketing tech stack. Humans can detect more than 10,000 scents. A great data cleansing tool can sniff out fresh, quality data and detect the scent of bad data.

•Content marketing software (the heart): The heart must keep blood flowing through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Though there aren’t 60,000 marketing channels, content marketing is the core tool that the marketing stack can’t function without. Content is the lifeblood of any program.

• Search marketing software (the lungs): But without oxygen, the blood is useless. Like automatically breathing, your marketing content must work automatically with search marketing. And though you can often “set it and forget it” in the same way lungs just know to breathe, sometimes you have to take a voluntary breath to revisit your search strategy to infuse new life into your parameters.

•Marketing leadership (the spine): While this isn’t software, strong marketing leadership is important as it helps you stand up to marketing pressure, just like the spine. Marketing leadership is the backbone of the tech stack because leaders must be strong enough to stand up to the pressure of selecting the right tools for optimal success, yet flexible enough to adjust to changing marketing needs.

•Digital advertising platforms (the fingers): Fingers are the most sensitive parts of the body. Your marketing tech stack needs that sensitivity when it comes to feeling out prospects via different digital advertising channels. It also helps you get a strong hold on driving lead generation.

•Business intelligence platforms (the skin): Analytics and business intelligence are the skin of the marketing tech stack. Business intelligence and the skin both act as the protective layer that helps to hold everything together by constantly reviewing where things are. It’s this skin that, as the data being analyzed changes, can signal whether your marketing tech stack is more or less effective than it has been.

•Marketing automation systems (the brain): In the tech stack, marketing automation is the brains of the operation. Marketing automation is the hub for all marketing data and the source from where all those “aha” moments are born. It never stops working and doesn’t need to be told what to do.

•Social media monitoring tools (the eyes): Eighty percent of what we learn is through our eyes. Social media monitoring, a tool that allows us to monitor consumer behavior and see emerging trends, largely impacts what we learn in content marketing.

•Email marketing systems (the mouth): Let’s face it, email talks and people listen. In the marketing tech stack, email marketing is your online marketing voice, used to spread positive word of mouth and keep the conversation going about your product, business, or offering.

• Digital asset management tools (the stomach): Digital asset management helps manage large quantities of digital content, not unlike the stomach, which can hold several liters of food at any given time. So if you bite off more than you can digitally chew, this tool provides one home for all of your assets, giving you a better way to store, share, and manage the content that matters most.

•Your marketing team (the blood): It takes less than 60 seconds for a drop of blood to travel from the heart, through your body, and back to the heart again. While it might take your marketing team longer than 60 seconds to generate innovative marketing ideas, without the lifeblood of their creativity constantly feeding the heart of the tech stack, the process can become clogged and cease producing results.

• Event management systems (the legs): Event management is the runner of the marketing tech stack, collecting vital event attendee data for greater insight into targeted ongoing sales and campaigns throughout the year. The right event management tool can help keep your events running.

Meaningful marketing is born of a healthy marketing stack. The marketing tech stack has evolved to become a carefully orchestrated organism. Each part serves a unique purpose, yet they all work together to sustain marketing efforts. It’s up to marketers to dissect their tech stack anatomies and ensure content outputs are as robust and healthy as possible.