Measure Twice, Cut Once
Navigating the martech landscape can be filled with exhilarating possibilities. Yet, it can be fraught with costly pitfalls. Martech budgets aren’t always flush with margin for big-ticket items, so spending money wisely is critical, especially because more CMOs and their teams find themselves tasked with doing more with fewer resources.
When your organization needs to upgrade its martech stack, don’t underestimate the importance of a thorough assessment of what’s currently in place. It’s critical to go through a disciplined process to weigh the merits and limitations of the martech tools you already have in light of those you want to add or replace. When you weigh the merits against the gaps and redundancies as they relate to your strategic goals, you can maximize your tech stack’s effectiveness.
Assess Your Current Martech Stack
Depending on the martech tools you currently use, there are a variety of factors that are relevant to selecting new or replacement tools. Identify the services and capabilities you need most from your tech stack and its individual components to generate the results your organization must have.
What is the status of the current state of your martech stack in these areas:
Email marketing
Sending messages to target audiences, increasing circulation, and tracking open rates or conversions
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Tracking leads, customer interactions, conversions and related data
Social media
Account management, diversifying channel content, follower engagement and developing reach
E-commerce
Managing easy-to-use retail websites that facilitate a smooth purchasing experience for customers
Content creation and graphic design
Tools that allow creative teams to generate branded, strategic collateral for marketing campaigns
Content management
Automating content to gather data that reflects customer experience
Marketing automation
Managing campaigns with persona-based data
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Functions that improve your website ranking in search results by search engines
Events
Enhanced planning and execution for events, webinars and online sessions for customers or target audiences
Marketing research
Finely-tune surveys and customer feedback to plan future campaigns and actions
Persona-based marketing
Zero in on optimal performance with A/B testing for web pages, email campaigns or content
AdTech
Serve targeted ads to the most preferable audiences, measure success by tracking engagement and clicks, and use results to customize future campaigns
Conduct an Inventory Audit
Next, think through the deliverables you need from your martech tools and your existing pain points. Outlining the specifics will solidify your objectives and ensure the products you’re considering will be the right ones for you and meet all your requirements – from functionality to security to ROI – and support your business strategy.
- What tools are in your existing martech stack?
- Do they function well in relation to your technology requirements?
- How well do they (or don’t they) integrate with other tools?
- Does your current stack function well?
- What gaps in capabilities are there?
- Is your current stack redundant?
- Should similar tools be consolidated or replaced?
- Do the tools you have and/or want to purchase comply with current data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA)?
- How does your current stack protect customer privacy and secure data? Are there any vulnerabilities?
Schedule End User Interviews
Once you’ve assessed your current stack, consult your team. They are the stakeholders who use your martech stack for everyday tasks. They can tell you up front if a tool is easy to use, clunky or limited by functionality roadblocks. All the brand names in the world with their bells and whistles won’t matter if they don’t deliver solid solutions that give your end users and customers what they need.
Agile user stories define specific use cases and scenarios in which the new tool will be applied to evaluate whether or not the tool meets your immediate and prescient needs.
Ask your end users to complete this sentence:
As a [role], I need to [action] so that I can [goal].
Once you’ve gathered the feedback from your users, score the existing tools you are using currently as well as those under consideration to see how they measure up in the categories of functionality, implementation, collaboration, projected ROI, security and compliance.
