What Is Martech? A Guide to Marketing Technologies

Anyone who has worked in digital marketing knows that marketing and technology go hand in hand. Successful marketing strategies rely on a variety of tools to evaluate data, connect with audiences, and create engaging content. With thousands of martech tools to choose from, the key is determining the right ones for your team.

What is marketing technology (martech)?

Marketers use it to work more efficiently, communicate more effectively, and measure their efforts. The collection of the tools used by a team or department is called a martech stack. These tools are often integrated, or used together, to enhance and optimize the content and creative workflow.

Once you have the right tools, you still need to assemble an effective martech team to run them. From there, your martech stack and team can evolve together to deliver the full benefits of your technology.

What are the benefits of martech? 

While martech might still be a new term to some, marketing technology is definitely not. Marketing teams around the world have long relied on these tools every day to consistently deliver relevant content to their audience. And that’s just one of the reasons why marketers love their technology. Martech also helps to: 

• Do more, faster
  Save time and streamline workflows using automated tools to do repetitive and time-consuming tasks like pulling data, converting file formats, and finding assets.
   
• Enhance internal communication
  Provide a way to communicate openly about things like project status and team goals to improve tracking and give all team members full visibility to progress.
   
• Create smarter content
  Make your audience feel like you really get them by using insights and data to understand performance, optimize experiences, and deliver targeted content.
   
• Build better relationships
  Strengthen customer and buyer relationships by always knowing the right thing to say with easy access to past conversations, interactions, subscription information, and more.
   
• Be stronger together
  The value of each tool is amplified when they all come together to reduce friction in workflows, allowing you to work faster and smarter.

Building your marketing technology stack

An amazing martech stack doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s constantly evolving. Both the marketing and tech worlds are changing rapidly with new tools appearing almost daily. Keeping up is nearly impossible, so it’s important to have a competency framework to guide the development of your stack and your team. This helps you focus on your team’s long-term needs instead of the next hot new tool.

Another key to building a sustainable martech stack is a strong understanding of the current and future technology landscape and where your needs fit into it. To stay ahead of the curve, hire marketing technologists with a passion for what’s next. Their foresight will help you select the right tools that will be easily adopted and scale as your business grows. Understanding tech gaps within your organization will also allow you to recognize opportunities for new tools as the need arises.

And remember, you can’t just add new technology and expect the tools to work on their own. You need to develop and stick to a successful change management strategy to build your martech stack.

No two companies are alike, so mapping your martech needs is key in bringing clarity to the process. With six recognized categories in the martech landscape, it’s important to review the tools and companies that make up each one to understand how they could benefit you and your team.

How does your "stack" stack up? 

Hopefully your martech stack is working like a well-oiled machine. But, if there’s friction in your workflow it might be time to revisit it. Take the time to figure out what’s working, what’s not, and what tools or integrations could help. Martech exists to make your life easier. So make sure it’s doing its job!

One of the most valuable things martech software can do for you is to help you manage the entire content lifecycle. Because of that, digital asset management (DAM) is a pivotal technology in the martech landscape. And for many, DAM is a must-have tool in their martech stack. 

With a DAM solution, you can manage all of your content in one place. That means less complexity in your martech stack, more agility in your marketing process, and ideally … an improved customer experience. If that sounds good, we built Acquia DAM (Widen) for you. It simplifies how your digital assets, product specs, and marketing copy are delivered to market. You can learn more about Acquia DAM here or request a demo today.

Note: This article was originally published on Widen.com.