Let’s start from the very beginning, what’s a marketing stack?
Marketing stack or marketing technology, martech, stack refers to group of applications that help you execute your marketing activities in an automated way. Still not clear? Think of your day to day marketing activities – email marketing, online advertising, content creation, social listening, CRM, analytics – and then name the SaaS applications you use to accomplish these tasks. That’s your marketing stack. We are on the same page now?
How does your marketing stack look like?
A marketing stack is defined by your marketing, business goal. Based on our needs or client’s below is how we tend to structure our stack:
The list is endless. We also like Adroll’s marketing stack (seen below). At the top, is the main objective for each platform, with each section title indicating the specific purpose.
The marketing technology space is growing rapidly – there are now more than 7,000+ SaaS marketing platforms. This is tremendous growth given there were only 150 or so tools in 2011. It’s thus important to stay focused and not get lost trying every new thing that pops up.
Most of these tools are paid, but there are quite a number of free marktech apps that enable you to stay lean and effective. Buffer has compiled a comprehensive list of those free (freemium) marketing tools here. Neil Patel also shares his must-have SaaS apps.
Useful tip: there are quite a number of SaaS reviews sites such as Producthunt that will help you decide your product fit.
So, what’s next?
For the marktech industry, the likely way is aggregation. It’s quite a task to keep up with every new technology, so a platform that aggregates the essential ones and guide marketers will have an edge.
From a content perspective, Uberflip has cracked content aggregation in a way that integrates with your existing tech stack (Google Analytics, Facebook, Optimizely etc). Emarsys on the other hand is able to deliver truly personal customer interactions across email, mobile, social, SMS, and web – at scale. So if your marketing stack is getting overwhelming, tools like Emarsys can be ideal for you.
Outdoor media isn’t left behind; with the recently launched Adspace Africa, you can search, book and monitor outdoor media online. The platform has aggregated sites from various vendors making it much easier for marketers to find ideal locations.
Ready to start, and improve?
Finally, are you looking to define your marketing technology stack or align better to eliminate scattered data and confusion? Reach out to us and we are well equipped to assist.
