What is MarTech? Marketing Technology Stack Explained

MarTech, or Marketing Technology, refers to all the technological solutions that can be used for marketing purposes. These purposes may range from digital asset management to marketing platform automation and chatbots as well as monitoring tools for social media platforms.

With that being established, MarTech solutions can be broadly categorized in such a way to reflect the different marketing subsectors:

• Advertising & Promotion to support advertising and PR activities.
• Content & Experience to support content marketing and management activities
• Social & Relationships to manage and nurture customer relationships in the digital space.
• Commerce & Sales to impact selling
• Data Management focuses on retrieving, managing, and visualizing data sets from marketing activities.
• Management: This MarTech category does not necessarily cater to a specific aspect of marketing per se, it is instead more focused on helping marketing teams to work and collaborate more efficiently.

Why is MarTech becoming a necessity for businesses?

MarTech should go hand-in-hand with modern business, as it’s the way to gain a competitive edge over the competition. Oftentimes, a company’s success over other similar ones lies in the tools used in its operations.

Businesses are seeing the value of MarTech and the reason for its wide adoption across a growing number of businesses essentially boils down to competition pressure. While many organizations see these new technologies’ potential, many others fear being left behind. As a result, they see investment as a potential opportunity.

This phenomenon is leading to the wide adoption of third-party platforms, more specifically, solutions that offer automation for their campaigns and data analysis, among other benefits. With the fear of fierce competition, many businesses see the implementation of the solutions mentioned above as a way to reduce the misalignment of their marketing teams that oftentimes miss out on opportunities and information that can be exploited in their campaigns.

A sea of lost opportunities

We live in a time where data reigns supreme and it can be the driving force to make a business successful or be its downfall. Data rules everything; its presence in all phases of business evolution carries new challenges and opportunities. This particularly relates to MarTech.

Not being able to safely store, track, and analyze a business’s data can be the reason for a lack of conversion, limited profits, and leaks in the company’s investments. The other side of the spectrum is the promise that with MarTech, the organization will reach better results in customer-facing departments by aggregating, analyzing, and then putting into use the vast quantities of disposable data.

In addition, MarTech solutions often offer compatibility with systems in other departments, helping marketers improve productivity by unifying information accesses.

MarTech growth in 2022

2022 has been the year of digital innovation when it comes to this sub-sector of the RetailTech industry. This year, especially, saw multiple new MarTech solutions being released in the market. Each service solved a different problem in unique and creative ways. The number of MarTech solutions grew from 9,000 in 2021, to 10,000 in 2022. One subsector specifically showed the biggest growth; the automation sector. This sector is expected to reach €25 billion by 2023.

As the challenges remain being up-to-date and anticipating the competition, 83% of marketers say they have upgraded their tech stack in 2022. This l information shows that modern businesses are understanding the importance of MarTech and consequently are allocating their marketing budgets to solutions that work toward meeting customer expectations and leveraging data through analytics platforms.

What is the MarTech Stack?

Marketing stacks are a set of marketing technologies that professionals use to manage, execute, measure, and improve their marketing efforts.

An  up-to-date MarTech stack should always include the following technologies:

• Content Marketing System

Generally used to manage websites. CMSs are designed to facilitate the management of the sites as they do not require knowledge of HTML. Investing in CMS will be beneficial for a business as it saves budget and makes the operational procedure smoother.

• Email Marketing Platform

Emails, despite the rising popularity of other digital marketing areas, still remain a focal point for marketing strategies and stacks. With more and more tools for data analysis and email gathering, the combination of great content and highly-targeted campaigns is still a killer combo.

• AdTech

AdTech is generally referred to as the technologies used to create and manage digital marketing campaigns. By tracking engagement and clicks of the campaigns in place, marketers can use that information to direct the development of the campaigns in both the short- and long-term future.

• Social Media Management

Social media still dominates the MarTech landscape when it comes to generating engagement within a company. Being on top of new trends, and social media strategies, and continuously engaging with the audience on social media is the gateway that gives a brand a considerable competitive edge.

• SEO Tools

As customers are growing increasingly reliant on search engine searches to choose the preferred shopping platform, being at the top of the search results becomes essential for businesses. SEO tools do just that, they let companies compete in search rankings to remain ahead of their competition.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRMs are most commonly used by B2B businesses in aligning their marketing and sales department efforts in customer management. A CRM allows marketers and sales reps to have access to all the customer data they need to manage relationships and help prospects down the business’s funnel.

Conclusion

Being able to keep up with all the new marketing technologies present on the market has become critical. In order to stay on top of the competition and provide the most value, the most up-to-date tools are an absolute must for RetailTech companies especially.

Because marketing technologies are changing so fast, and the general essence of the marketing industry is characterized by being in a perpetual beta-phase, it is always important to understand what the next evolutions are.

We Are Storm5

As the MarTech industry continues to grow, so does the need for talent to facilitate this. At Storm5 we have specialized in connecting RetailTech talent with disruptive RetailTech players. We can assist in any stage of your growth by connecting you with the right people. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we would be thrilled to see how we can help and support you in your journey and with your recruitment needs.