Three Common Mistakes Businesses Make with Their MarTech Stack

MarTech, or marketing technology, is the catchy term coined in 2011 that refers to the techniques and tech tools that marketers use to design, implement, and evaluate their marketing efforts. As the marketing technology landscape has evolved over the years, nearly all aspects of marketing have been served by these solutions. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that modern marketing as we know it would not exist without MarTech!

From software and applications to platforms and services, these tools make our lives easier by automating and streamlining marketing processes, as well as collecting and analyzing data. The combination of all the MarTech solutions you’re using, also called your “MarTech stack,” can have a tremendous impact on how efficient and effective your marketing efforts are.

Because the MarTech solutions you need depend on your unique business, there’s no one-size-fits-all stack of tools that works for everyone. Instead, the “right” stack should be customized to fit your goals, strategy, budget, and more.

While it sounds simple enough, selecting the right MarTech solutions to add to one’s toolbox can often be hard to figure out, especially with the countless and complex options out there. With years of experience, those of us here at PH3 have become quite the experts in marketing tools, if we do say so ourselves, and we come to you with some insights on some of the frequent mistakes that we’ve found businesses make when it comes to marketing technology.

Missing Out on New and Better Tools

Unless you’ve been engaging in some kind of prehistoric marketing, there’s a good chance that you’ve already got quite a few MarTech tools in your arsenal. Decades-old solutions, such as Salesforce or Constant Contact, have grown to become essential applications for businesses before the term MarTech was even a thing!

But, sometimes, even the biggest or oldest apps can become a mismatch for your company, especially as the landscape changes over time. Did you know that between 2011 and 2020, the number of companies providing MarTech solutions jumped from about 150 to a whopping 8,000+? As the theory goes, technology accelerates exponentially—marketing tools are clearly no exception.

If it’s been a while since you last evaluated your MarTech stack, you could be missing out on all the innovations and developments that newer solutions offer (and that your competitors are taking advantage of). Maybe your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system lacks email capabilities, for instance. Or, such as in the example of Constant Contact, your email marketing software isn’t as flexible with automation as other tools. While it’s easy to stick with what you know, upgrading can make all the difference in improving your marketing efforts.

Don’t waste any time having an employee audit your current MarTech stack and review the other thousands of options available to you by comparing their features, pricing, and more. If all of that seems overwhelming (which - whew - we understand!), no worries. That’s what we’re here for! With our extended knowledge of the landscape of tools out there, PH3 can perform a thorough audit of your MarTech stack and pick out the best of the best for your business.

Not Using the Tools to Their Full Potential

Sometimes the problem isn’t that a business has the wrong stack of tools, but that they aren’t taking full advantage of all the great benefits they can provide.

MarTech solutions are designed to make marketing efforts more efficient and effective, but often businesses only employ the basics of an application or software. While their efforts may meet bare minimum objectives, they end up overlooking the features that can make the greatest difference in streamlining processes and optimizing results.

For example, let’s say you’re using a top-of-the-line email marketing software to send out mass emails. Sure, the emails are being delivered to your customers, but if you neglect to take advantage of the segmentation, automation, and personalization features, then you’ve spent all of that effort on sending out an ineffective campaign. A marketing tragedy if we’ve ever heard one!

Luckily for our friends who may have gone down that path, a happy ending is well within reach. After all, you’ve already taken the first step in the right direction by clicking on this article! Once you’ve recognized that you may not be using your solutions to their full potential, the next step is to get guidance from experts.

Whether you don’t have time to learn the ins & outs of your tool, or simply just don’t know where to begin, having an agency by your side that knows exactly what to look out for will make a huge impact on your results. Let PH3 be your tour guide, your handy-dandy GPS, to get you on track to experiencing the full benefits of your MarTech stack.

Having a Non-Integrated Marketing Technology Stack

At the end of the day, having top-tier marketing applications and taking advantage of all of the relevant features means little if your tools aren’t integrated and working together.

MarTech is supposed to support your overarching marketing efforts. But when data and results from your campaigns are fragmented across different applications, it becomes awfully hard to see the big picture and, at times, can even create extra tasks. Take your business’ website, for instance. If it’s not automatically sending form data to your CRM or if you have to constantly transfer data from one app to another yourself, then that’s a sure sign that your tools need to be better integrated.

Admittedly, it can be particularly difficult to ensure your marketing tools are integrated if you don’t know exactly what can and should be connected. Having an agency (like us - wink wink) audit your MarTech stack, then, is a great way to guarantee that the integration is handled by experts.

All in all, not only can our team at PH3 identify the improvements needed to make your MarTech stack work like a well-oiled machine, but we can help boost your sales and marketing efforts by guiding you through all aspects of your strategy. From the tools you use to how you use them and the details of your campaigns, PH3 can make sure your MarTech is amplifying your success, not limiting it. So what are you waiting for? We’re just a message or call away!