“Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.”
–Clare Muscutt
Marketing technology, or ‘martech’ for short, is incredibly useful for businesses these days. In fact, according to Campaign Live, UK companies are spending, on average, 26% of their overall marketing budget on martech. It’s clear to see why. The use of marketing technology helps you to spread the marketing messages of your business far and wide, with easy-to-use tools. Below are our top 10 martech tips.
What are some examples?
Before we begin, what do we mean when we talk about martech? Marketing technology describes platforms such as Trello, HubSpot, MPZMail and Moz. According to Scott Brinker, there are a whopping 8,000 martech solutions out there… and counting.
The term is used to describe a piece of software that can help with the following areas:
- advertising
- content
- customer experience
- social and relationships
- commerce and sales
- data
- project management
So, no matter what aspect of marketing you need technology for, there is probably something out there to help you. So, how can you make the most out of these amazing platforms?
Our Top 10 Martech Tips
- Make sure you have enough licences for the martech platform you have chosen. You may want more than one member of your team trained up and using the technology so that it doesn’t all fall down onto one individual.
- Get trained on the software and platforms. Make sure your team are comfortable and confident using them. This enables your business to really utilise the tools effectively and get the most out of what you are spending. Most platforms have their own self-guided training tools.
- Keep your martech up to date. As with any software, it is vital you keep your martech subscription up to date in order to see its full efficiency.
- Keep up to date with the martech content. Martech companies are constantly releasing new features and sharing helpful content across their marketing platforms. This could be social media posts, articles on their website and videos. Keep an eye out, as they often release other valuable content that will help you with your own marketing and also help you to really get the most out of the technology you pay for.
- Check in with analytics. Use both the analytics within the martech platform (if this is in place) as well as the analytics across any marketing channels it interacts with to see how useful the martech really is. When paying out for anything, you want to make sure you are seeing results from its use. Track your analytics to see whether it is the right technology for you!
- Create a record. Create a record of all of your martech, so that yourself and your team can reference back to it whenever needed. It also stops you from spending out on another platform that may do a similar job. Try and include subheadings and information such as ‘Department’, ‘Purpose’, ‘Cost per month’, ‘renewal date’ and whether it is currently active.
- Plan your future needs. Based on these records, you can also plan your future needs. When your business grows, will the current martech you have be sufficient? Will you need to swap any to a different offering or will you need to simply upgrade.
- Evaluate your processes. Martech is designed to make your business life easier. Your processes should be simpler and faster, and automation can help with that. A few of the areas to consider are lead management, lead scoring, lead nurturing, data analysis and content management. Take a look at your processes to do a gap analysis. What is missing? Where can you implement martech to make your business life easier?
- Roadmap. Think about your customer journey and the processes you use to support this. Having this high level visibility will enable you to identify where martech can be implemented to streamline activity at different stages of your business. For example, a platform like MPZMail will help you to send out automated email campaigns when a certain amount of time has passed since a trigger.
- Innovation and ethics. When you think about the companies you choose to provide your martech, consider other criteria beyond features. What about the values and ethics of the brand? Often businesses opt to buy from the big well-known companies, but these don’t always turn out to be the best, or the most innovative.
Need help to create a martech stack of your own?
Having the right martech stack can really have a considerable impact on your business efficiency AND effectiveness. It will help you to streamline and automate your processes and customer journeys, allowing your business marketing to be more successful.
If you want to use martech to create more personalised marketing, then head over and check out our previous blog here.
If you’re unsure about which martech solutions would benefit your business, get in touch withOctima today. We LOVE tech, and we are also passionate about helping businesses thrive by working smarter with their marketing.
