It’s easy to go crazy when creating a complex martech stack. With so many tools to choose from, it’s a bit like being a kid in a candy store.
When you try to pick the best tool for each function phone number database and try to make them all work together, it quickly becomes a project from hell. Many of the available tools are very powerful - they are completely loaded with bells and whistles, dials and switches. Learning how it all works can be a challenge. And all this is just in one tool. Now add a few more to the stack, and very soon the complexity increases exponentially.
With the Great Retirement still in full force and no end in sight, you need to consider the implications of designing a stack that requires deep expertise to maintain. Often, when an expensive super tool enters the stack, teams end up organizing their processes and tactics around what the tool can do well, rather than making the tool work according to what they need.
A year from now, when executives start looking at usage metrics and ROI, you may end up wondering what you were thinking when you made your marketing technology purchases.
Clap!
Start (and Grow) with Why
“All organizations start with a WHY, but only the great ones maintain clarity of their WHY year after year.” Simon Sinek
What Simon Sinek recommended for organizations applies to tech stacks as well. When deciding what to include in your marketing stack, start with the question “why.” Why are you building this stack? What is the larger business goal the marketing team is trying to achieve?
Strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. Having a clear vision of your goals is a great starting point. Build from there.
If your organization has a dedicated team, review their existing goals, strategies, and objectives. This will give you a clear picture of what processes and tactics can be automated.
Remember that your “why” will evolve as you grow and face new challenges. You will need to regularly revisit the “why” behind your martech stack architecture to ensure it aligns with your business goals.
Consider your "feature stack"
The technology you choose is an important part of your overall strategy, but it’s only one part. Another, often overlooked part is your organization’s ability to install, maintain, and grow the technology you choose.
If you build a solution so complex that you need specialized (and expensive) resources or external vendors to support it, it could end up making your current problems worse.
With no-code technologies becoming a must-have, the power of marketers is growing exponentially. Teams with the right marketing skills can easily build complex and detailed solutions without having to wait for developers and technical experts to help. Gone are the days when you could afford to have teams that couldn’t keep up with the rapidly changing technology landscape. It’s imperative that you assess your current capabilities and fill the gap to be able to optimally implement and benefit from the martech stack.
Make your stack a couple sizes bigger
The third aspect that is often overlooked is how the stack requests will evolve in the short and medium term.
No one knows your business like you do. You know what you want to achieve in the next 2-4 quarters, and you have a less clear vision for the next couple of years.
No technology provider can claim to know your processes and problems better than you do. Nor can they claim to know what will be happening in their own domain even five years from now.
In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, there is no “forever” tool that you can adopt or build around. Look for tools that will help you easily achieve your current goals and can scale to meet your future requirements. Build your Martech stack to be flexible and agile.
Build this stack to delight your customers
We started this discussion with the “why.” We’ll end with the most important reason why a stack should be effective: delighting your customers. The technology stack, the capability stack, and the culture you create should ultimately serve the goal of improving customer satisfaction—at all touchpoints.
With the technology available today, you can choose tools that are easy to use and powerful enough to keep your teams on top of every customer interaction. When you build a marketing technology stack that enables your teams to delight current and future customers, you grow faster, better, and more profitably.