How to navigate the martech landscape to boost your marketing efforts

The proliferation of technology in the marketing arena continues to challenge marketers in numerous ways. It’s an ever-evolving maze. This article explains that in 2020 alone, there was a growth of 13, 6 percent, bringing the total number of new martech solutions to a whopping 8,000. 

Understandably, it can often leave digital marketers unsure of which martech solutions to choose. Or a little less confident on whether the strategies they’ve implemented will facilitate growth. 

But overall, it’s not too overwhelming a landscape to navigate. It all comes down to a few factors that are important to your business and its success. The key is to consider these as you choose from the martech pool. And, you’ll likely choose more than one martech solution to integrate into your marketing efforts, creating a martech stack. Of course, if you want your business to succeed, it would be best to consult a digital marketing strategist who has experience with marketing technology. That way, you’re giving your company a fighting chance at success, with a solid digital marketing strategy.  

Before digging into ways to manoeuvre this martech maze, let’s define what it actually means.

What is martech?

Martech refers to conjoined marketing and technology software and tools that help facilitate and execute marketing activities such as creating engaging content to connect with customers, generate traffic and measure the efforts thereof. 

Martech examples include but are not limited to marketing automation platforms, customer relationship management and customer tracking software, chatbots, retargeting software, content management systems, search engine optimisation tools, search engine marketing tools, lead management software and email marketing software, among many others. For the email marketing aspect, we always advise connecting with an email marketing agency that’s capable of developing the best email marketing strategies for your business. Here at Rogerwilco, we’re highly experienced in integrating the best martech stack to meet your business goals.

How does martech benefit your business?

As we all already know, technology saves us a lot of time. Martech takes that to the next level. It streamlines workflows by using automated tools to perform typically time-consuming and repetitive tasks such as data collection. It also creates transparency for teams and amplifies effective communication. For example, teams get access to project statuses to learn about a marketing campaign’s progress, allowing everyone in the team an opportunity to contribute to the campaign. Finally, it helps your teams create better content and build better relationships with customers. Through data and insights, your teams can learn about content performance, optimise accordingly and develop extremely personalised content.

Now that you’re all set with the definition and benefits, let’s peek into the ways to filter through the martech jungle.

Define your ultimate goal

The first place to start is to define your ultimate goal. Are you looking to generate traffic, leads, customer retention, revenue or all of the above? Knowing this will give you insights on which martech stack to choose to achieve this goal. For example, if you’re looking to get your regular customers to refer your business to their friends and followers, you should look into martech tools that drive advocacy.

Collect data and insights

Data and insights help you learn information on performance and the platforms attached to each performance metric. Doing this will help you understand what has worked previously for your business and inspire new ideas on leveraging these platforms. Besides your own data and insights, collect more from businesses similar to yours to learn about what works and doesn’t for them. 

The more digital transformation becomes advanced, the more we encounter a slew of new trends. Top marketing technology companies discuss these often enough for you to pick up on the conversation if you’re paying attention. For example, there’s already an announcement of future digital marketing trends in South Africa for 2021. Tap into this information and use it to build the optimum martech stack for your business. 

Adapt accordingly

We’ve already established that this landscape changes drastically. So, pay attention to the changes and adapt accordingly. It won’t benefit you to continue using a martech stack that isn’t showing you results. Integrating new solutions will require that you measure your return on investments regularly, keeping your main objectives in mind.  

In conclusion

Marketing technologies are fascinatingly beneficial for business if used correctly. Making investments in these solutions is critical in building successful marketing efforts. Choosing martech stacks starts with having clarity on what it is that you wish to achieve. Then, use data and insights to track previous efforts and use them as a practical guide for a new digital marketing strategy to get you where you want to go. Finally, measure and amend the stacks. 

Connecting with a B2B agency like Rogerwilco is your best chance at accomplishing what you wish to accomplish. We’re only a phone call or email away!