What Is Marketing Technology (MarTech) Exactly?

The business world has gradually become more digitized in the past few decades, with events like the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating this push. In response, companies seek to augment their marketing strategies with innovative tools to support more automation and efficiency.

This situation has introduced the concept of marketing technology, or MarTech for short. Learn more about MarTech, its benefits, and different tools you may leverage based on your brand’s unique needs and objectives.

What Is MarTech?

MarTech refers to the tools and resources organizations utilize to help with marketing campaigns. Although MarTech is often used for digital marketing efforts, it can be beneficial for enhancing marketing activities of any kind.

MarTech is sometimes used interchangeably with AdTech, or advertising technology. The difference is that AdTech primarily helps businesses promote products and services to influence buyer behavior. Conversely, MarTech boosts your ability to develop, execute, and manage campaigns to sell products and services. Social ad platforms, such as demand and supply side platforms, are considered AdTech.

Demand-side platforms provide tools for targeting specific audiences, optimizing campaigns, and measuring performance. On the other hand, supply-side platforms are technologies used by publishers, app developers, and content creators to manage and optimize the sale of their digital ad inventory (website banner ads, app ad spaces, video ads, etc.).

Why Marketing Technology Is Important

According to a recent study by Gartner, marketing budgets for the average business went up from 6.4% to 9.5% between 2021 and 2022. Although more marketing teams are transitioning from a digital-first mindset to a multichannel approach, social media, paid search, and other digital capabilities are top priorities for organizations. In many cases, Chief Marketing Officers spend more than Chief Information Officers on MarTech.

It’s the growing role technology plays in marketing success that explains the necessity of MarTech. The MarTech landscape continues evolving, providing teams with more complex tools to guide marketers throughout the customer journey. In other words, MarTech tools empower teams to devise comprehensive strategies that respond to modern marketing demands.

These marketing tools can also strengthen your relationship with all stakeholders, including B2B and B2C relationships. They improve communication and facilitate better collaboration, leading to more employee engagement, partner buy-in, and customer loyalty.

The Benefits of Using Marketing Technology

The sophistication of MarTech allows marketing and brand managers to advance virtually all business functions across multiple marketing channels. Discover the benefits of leveraging marketing technology tools for your efforts:

Marketing Automation

Marketers are always looking for ways to save time, and MarTech delivers by automating campaigns. For example, some tools use algorithms to measure engagement with email marketing, then adjust demographic categories within minutes. By automating this process, marketing departments can look at the bigger picture sooner.

Marketing automation software also offers a centralized location for keeping marketing teams informed of a campaign’s progress and new objectives, making collaboration easier.

Optimization

Efficiency occurs when you know which marketing initiatives work and which don’t. Management platforms and similar MarTech tools look at past performance with campaigns to determine how adjustments can boost lead generation among your target audience and optimize efforts overall.

Customer Relationship Management

MarTech also helps augment the customer experience. For example, a traditional approach to viewing a customer’s or prospect’s history is for each department to share separate records, which may not provide cohesive insights. Management tools enable businesses to compile information about different audiences, helping you stay ahead of the customer journey.

Types of MarTech Tools

Continual development has led to an explosion of MarTech, meaning it’s common for businesses to feel overwhelmed by their options. Researching these tools can help ensure you invest in the best technology for meeting your goals. Tools are available for all aspects of marketing, including:

Content Management

Content marketing is crucial for drawing attention to your website, social media accounts, and other online locations you place messaging. Content management systems make it easier for these assets to reach target audiences and resonate with them through landing pages, blogs, and similar content. Examples of content management tools include search engine optimization (SEO), digital asset management (DAM), and content curation.

Marketing Attribution

Marketing attribution helps teams understand the full impact certain campaigns and activities have had on a particular objective. Outdated marketing attribution methods have made it difficult for companies to be successful with this critical component, but the right software can streamline this task.

Social Media Optimization

Social media marketing provides an effective way to engage organically with customers. MarTech tools also exist to facilitate better social media management, including monitoring each platform, maximizing user-generated content (UGC), and investigating influencers.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

On the customer side, CRM tools help you realize more meaningful interactions with your target audience. For instance, customer data platforms that provide A/B testing reveals which messaging is best, while software tailored to B2B organizations can assist with lead generation and management.

Sales

This management software empowers sales teams with their marketing activities. This technology includes sales automation platforms and customer support tools, as well as some CRMs.

Rich Media

Rich media is an asset that businesses can leverage to make marketing content more engaging. It typically includes advanced elements, such as video and audio, to induce a stronger response from a potential client. Use MarTech tools to enhance video production, explore podcasting, or create interactive content like games.

Analytics and Insight

You likely set aside time to review key performance indicators and assess marketing campaigns, but how successful are your current strategies for analytics and insight? With data management platforms and analytics tools, you maximize the value of the information you collect and give it real meaning.

What Is a MarTech Stack?

A marketing technology stack is simply the selection of tools your business chooses to assist with marketing efforts. MarTech stacks incorporate technologies most likely to help companies meet unique objectives and respond to customer behaviors within their industry. It also includes the combination of tools with the highest possible return on investment.

One of the most important elements of a tech stack is marketing content management. Most companies have the challenge of organizing and distributing their marketing materials which prompts management to seek out a tool that streamlines those processes and cuts cost. That’s why marketing content management platforms are usually on top of the list when it comes to choosing a tech stack.

The best MarTech stacks make it easier to understand customer behavior to capture the attention of your target audience at the right time. To begin building your MarTech stack, follow these tips:

• Establish your desired outcome for the campaign to set goals and use metrics to help measure success
• Consider your organization’s differentiating factors to pinpoint the best MarTech tools for the task
• Reevaluate existing resources and capabilities to see if you can use them differently to achieve your goals before investing in new technology
• Organize your tech stack based on the distinct customer journey for your business

Remember the implementation of marketing tech is an ongoing process. Now that your MarTech stack is built, you must also develop a strategy for continuous management.

Challenges with Implementing MarTech Solutions

As with any new initiative, there can be challenges with integrating new tools into your marketing processes. Consider the following potential hurdles for a smoother experience utilizing MarTech:

Fitting New Technology Into Tight Budgets

Even as MarTech tools optimize workflows, marketing managers may feel pressure to justify the additional expenses required for this technology. Focusing on automation can be advantageous because they reduce labor costs, which impresses executive teams and shareholders. However, in a lot of cases management can easily sell the idea of investing in automation technology when the problem that’s being solved is brand compliance and measuring marketing asset performance.

MarTech Overload

Devising goals around your industry and specific needs matters because bringing on too many new tools can impede implementation. Ensure the technology you choose serves your purposes.

Buy-In from Employees

Low morale obstructs the success of implementation. The marketing team — and any other employee that uses the technology — must be willing to use these software solutions. Training teams on how new tools work can help them understand the benefit of making the switch.

Integration with Current Systems

New software always comes with the challenge of integration into existing systems. Given the growing number of SaaS tools businesses use, the various MarTech you use need to know how to communicate with each other. MarTech allowing for flexible integrations with top platforms can help accelerate these processes.

Improve Your Marketing Strategy with MarcomCentral

With budget restraints prompting marketing teams to shift focus to specific targets and credible results, maintaining customers is becoming a bigger priority. MarTech enables you to keep up with these trends and boost profits. In this way, the continual release of new MarTech products isn’t a cause for getting overwhelmed, but a force for innovation.

When searching for MarTech providers to enhance your marketing efforts, consider Marcom. Our software solution — MarcomCentral — is designed by marketers, for marketers, so you can trust we prioritize the aspects that matter most to you. Our platform offers a range of solutions designed to help you navigate marketing, from brand management to workflow automation.

We’ve delivered results for high-value clients across many industries, and we’d love to be your marketing partner. Contact Marcom today to request a demo and discover if our straightforward MarTech tool is the right solution for you.