Customers today expect a highly personalized experience with each brand interaction. As their demand for personalization grows, their touchpoints become increasingly varied. Customers now interact with brands over social media, SMS, email, website, in-person or in-store, and more.
This presents businesses with a challenge.
How can businesses collect customer data, develop marketing strategies, and track the performance data of these marketing efforts, all while maintaining a consistent brand and experience across every touchpoint in a customer journey?
Answer: marketing technology.
Marketing technology (or MarTech) allows businesses to maximize their marketing efforts for more efficiency and stronger performance. MarTech helps marketers develop, automate, and improve efforts for better ROI.
Businesses must support stronger marketing across an increasing number of disparate channels. Companies are achieving this by investing heavily in tech-driven automation and optimization. In fact, experts anticipate a 13.3% annual growth rate on global spending towards marketing technology , representing more than $215 billion by 2027.
Let’s review the growing boom of marketing technology: the MarTech meaning, what it does, and how businesses can leverage digital tools for increased performance.
What is marketing technology or MarTech?
MarTech definition:
Marketing technology (or MarTech) is the software, technology, or platforms businesses use to optimize their marketing strategies.
Marketing technology helps businesses use tools like automation, customer data, and performance analysis to maximize the efficacy and impact of their marketing efforts. Through MarTech, brands can develop, implement, and analyze marketing efforts at scale. MarTech also allows businesses to develop omnichannel marketing campaigns and more personalized customer experiences – two critical components of success.
MarTech shows how much marketing has evolved, combining with digital platforms to make a smooth, automated, and data-focused way to connect with customers. This change is shown by moving from general, wide-reaching ads to specific, personalized marketing that matches what individual customers like and how they behave.
Moreover, MarTech is very important because it helps understand complicated customer data. This lets marketers create messages that are not only noticed but also fitting and timely. So, knowing about MarTech is more than just how it works; it’s about how it can give a business an advantage in today’s quick-moving market.
What is a marketing tech stack (or MarTech stack)?
A marketing technology stack, or MarTech stack, is a set of tools a business uses to achieve its marketing goals. Marketers typically develop their marketing tech stack using a combination of external platforms and internally developed software. This customization creates more targeted technology for enhanced ROI.
Marketing tech vs. marketing tech stack: what’s the difference?
While “marketing technology” covers all kinds of MarTech out there, the “marketing technology stack” means the specific set of MarTech tools that a brand uses.
For example, two companies might use similar MarTech tools, but each one will add its own custom platforms or automated systems to make their MarTech stacks unique.
Why is MarTech important?
While today’s customers expect a highly personalized brand experience, the customer journey continues to splinter across multiple channels and touchpoints. Businesses that wish to remain competitive need to collect and analyze massive amounts of customer data across disparate channels. They also need to cultivate long-term customer relationships and segment their customers to create personalized experiences across the buyer journey.
Marketing technology provides the tools necessary to support such a massive undertaking.
Automation allows businesses to streamline efforts while also creating personalization through responsive campaigns. Data collection tools provide valuable customer insights for targeted strategies and higher ROI. A more cohesive, agile brand can save money while increasing efficiency across its organization.
6 examples of MarTech (and what they do)
Examples of popular marketing technology tools are below. These represent the core, most commonly used tools today in a field that continues to expand with new tech.
Content management system (CMS)
A content management system (CMS) is software that allows businesses to manage their websites. It doesn’t require users to have knowledge of HTML or coding, putting website updates directly in the hands of marketers. This helps marketing teams develop and update product pages, blog posts, and other parts of the website more quickly – streamlining the process and reducing costs.
Delving deeper into Content Management Systems (CMS), these platforms are more than just tools for website management. They are key to a good content strategy, helping marketers create content that meets their audience’s needs and interests. A strong CMS helps with SEO, making sure the content gets to the right people and keeps them interested. By making content management easier, a CMS helps businesses stay active online, which is very important for being seen and connecting with people today.
Customer data platform (CDP)
Customer data platforms (CDP) are one of the most powerful MarTech tools available today. A CDP collects real-time customer data across all touchpoints (online and offline) and provides a snapshot of the entire customer journey. It then generates unified customer profiles and provides opportunities for segmentation, analytics, and integrations with other tools in a business’s marketing tech stack. In short, a CDP takes the chaos of customer data from disparate channels, organizes it, and disseminates it throughout an organization for targeted, data-driven marketing solutions.
Exploring Customer Data Platforms (CDP) further, their role transcends mere data collection. CDPs are the central nervous system of customer data, integrating information from diverse sources to create a cohesive, 360-degree view of the customer. This holistic perspective enables marketers to deliver highly personalized marketing campaigns that speak directly to the customer’s preferences and behaviors. In an age where personalization is not just preferred but expected, CDPs provide the insight necessary to tailor experiences at an individual level, fostering deeper connections between brands and their customers.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Where a customer data platform (CDP) tracks customer behavior throughout the entire customer lifecycle, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform tracks customer data related to sales and interactions. CRM software is designed to monitor and optimize a business’s sales process and customer service. It tracks or manages the sales pipeline, contact management of existing or potential customers, email marketing, and more. The ultimate goal of a CRM application is to move a customer down the sales funnel.
Advertising technology (AdTech)
As the name implies, advertising technology is a subset of marketing technology. Advertising technology (or AdTech) is a type of MarTech that allows marketers to develop and track digital advertising campaigns. Through AdTech, marketers can create more targeted ads. Advertising technology also allows them to track metrics like engagement and clicks to understand performance and optimize it moving forward.
Email marketing platforms
By utilizing email marketing platforms, businesses can automate their efforts, use predictive modeling, and create more targeted campaigns through email segmentation. Email marketing platforms allow companies to optimize email marketing performance through personalized messaging and data-driven strategies.
Social media management platforms
MarTech for social media helps a company better understand which content – and which social media channels – performs best with its target audience. Through social media management platforms, a brand can develop targeted content, track engagement and post-performance, and schedule content for optimal results.
These are only a handful of MarTech tools available on the market today. MarTech continues to grow as new platforms enter the market and existing tools develop more capabilities. A business’s unique marketing tech stack will vary further as the business customizes its MarTech stack with internally developed applications.
Using marketing technology to accelerate performance and market to scale
Businesses of all sizes and industries can use MarTech to enhance performance and reach their marketing goals. Businesses with their own marketing technology stacks enjoy a competitive advantage – but this advantage won’t last forever. As demand for MarTech grows, powering marketing strategies with technology will become the norm. Businesses that don’t employ marketing technology will be at a significant disadvantage.
As we look towards leveraging MarTech for scaling marketing performance, it’s essential to recognize the strategic advantage it offers. MarTech not only streamlines operations but also provides insightful analytics that guide decision-making. By analyzing customer interactions and campaign performance, businesses can refine their marketing strategies in real-time, optimizing for efficiency and impact.
Furthermore, MarTech facilitates a level of scalability previously unattainable, allowing businesses to expand their reach without compromising on the quality of customer engagement. In this context, MarTech is not just a toolset but a strategic asset that, when effectively deployed, can transform a business’s market presence and profitability.
It’s important that businesses prioritize MarTech tools soon – or risk losing a competitive edge.
