What’s your MarTech stack in the “next normal?”

If the world wasn’t complex enough, try finding the perfect MarTech cocktail.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term MarTech, it simply means the blending of marketing and technology. Think of a “stack” as the cobbling together of marketing technologies ranging from social media monitoring to data visualization that help marketing teams optimize campaigns and processes.

Whether you’re a marketing manager, digital coordinator, or communication director, your colleagues look to you for guidance when it comes to choosing the marketing tools that best fit the organization.

I’m willing to bet you’ve had conversations that started with the following comments.

“What about this tool for social monitoring?” “Have you heard of…?” “I attended this conference and you might want to look into…”

Let me clarify these are perfectly valid questions, but it’s truly exhausting. It’s tough enough to keep up with the tools already in your MarTech stack and resist second guessing yourself everytime an ad comes across your newsfeed.

From social engagement to crisis communication monitoring to video production to design to email marketing, the landscape is overwhelming. Marketers are paralyzed by the multitude of options — Some of which are basically the same but with a slight variation, others have the latest best of breed features, and seemingly all promise to integrate with your existing systems.

So, what are you waiting for? Just choose your stack!

Back in 2004, American psychology Barry Schwartz published The Paradox of Choice — Why More Is Less. Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. I applaud the entrepreneurial spirit that yielded this technology landscape that looks more like Pangea than marketing options, but my goodness! Mr. Schwartz come safe us!

In all seriousness, you need a MarTech stack, you need one now, and you need one that continues to evolve with the demands of the consumer.

To select your MarTech stack, follow the advice you provide clients, coworkers, and colleagues. Always start with the goal in mind and lead with strategy.

Think about why you need these marketing tools in the first place.

If it’s because your boss said so or because you attended a webinar and “Never liked your current tools because they weren’t user friendly or you were never trained,” proceed with caution.

You are at high risk for self inflicted whiplash as you, and your boss, will never be satisfied. As you saw from the marketing landscape, trying even a dozen of these tools from each category would take a lifetime and more sprout up at dizzying speeds. You will always be searching for the “perfect” stack and catering to this obsession is a waste of company resources.

As a marketer, your goal should be to find the best tools that allow you to listen to the voice of the customer, understand and engage with their journey, and provide value prior to and after customer acquisition.

Once you have a goal, flesh out parameters. I suggest the following:

1. Budget
2. Number of staff resources
3. Integration requirements, if any
4. Level of buy-in and support for your marketing goals
5. Staff (department) readiness. Inspiring and implementing your MarTech stack is a conversation for a different article, but suffice is to say, if your team doesn’t have the aptitude or attitude, you’ll be “up a creek without a paddle.”

Now that you’ve developed some bumpers, get started with assessment and evaluation.

1. Audit your current tools.
2. Each out to others in your organization who may also be using similar tools or also exploring other solutions.
3. Review your existing version. Are you rocking the free version of the tool or are you on the professional grade? Evaluate where your current tool may offer what you need if you upgraded the version.
4. Reach out to current vendors and be honest. Share what you are hoping to achieve with their tool and ask if this available now or in a future release.
5. Ask your network what they use and whether they’d recommend it. Or, search Google and read reviews.
6. Finally, setup demos based on a shortlist. Then, make a selection.

My advice is to treat the assessment and evaluation of your MarTech stack like a project. Invite participation from a few key team members, set milestones to curate a shortlist, watch the demos, and commit to your tools.

Again, there is important work to be done upstream with team readiness and buy-in, but for now let’s focus on how to de-clutter your brain so you can hopefully arrive at a stack that works for your team and organization.

As with any project or marketing campaign, you should designate time to periodically evaluate effectiveness and optimize accordingly. Maybe it’s quarterly, maybe it’s annually. Pick what works for you and this will ensure you don’t get complacent with your current tools, lose sight of the improvements the tool made during that time, or inadvertently don’t use the tool to its full capacity.

During this periodic evaluation, repeat the steps above. It will also help you avoid the wack-a-mole where people stop you in the hallway, in your cubicle, or even in the bathroom to tell you about a “new” system they heard about that you should look into.

In my department, we aren’t perfect, but we do our best to test, learn, and optimize before layering on another tool in the stack.

Below are some tools we are either currently using or actively researching:

• Sprout
• Quill and wordsmith
• Marketmuse
• Lumen5
• Hotjar
• Kissmetrics or ping
• Slate
• Rasa
• Meltwater
• Mailchimp (recently in the AI game)
• Tableau
• Airtable
• Asana

The goal here is to not have duplication so if we end up with Lumen5 for video, we will likely sunset our Animoto subscription.

Happy stacking!