In our fast-paced world, the internet is quickly advancing with new trends to make your day job more productive and efficient. The marketing landscape is no exception and new tools are sweeping the industry, making it easier to achieve your goals. You’ve probably been hearing the buzz lately around the terms “marketing technology” or other references such as “martech” or “martech stack.” More efficient marketing? Sounds great, but what does this tool bank look like and how can your team cash in on these features to scale your business?
Your marketing technology stack plays a crucial role in improving, automating, and simplifying your workflow. Finding the right tools will also depend on your budget and unique needs. So let’s take a closer look at some elements to consider when starting to evaluate and decide what technology can drive the most results.
The Foundation – Marketing Automation
It used to be that you’d send out a promotional email through a standalone email-sending program. Then in another tool, you’d track your website visitors. And in yet another tool, you’d create and program a set of sequential email sends. All of these steps were completed manually.
That’s no longer the case. Now there are countless marketing automation systems that handle email sending, website visitor tracking for known contacts, building nurture campaigns, segmenting your database (both dynamically/ongoing and statically/manually), and more. While there are a lot of martech tools to choose from, some of the more popular ones you’ve likely heard of are Marketo, HubSpot, MailChimp, or even Constant Contact.
If you don’t already have a marketing automation system, this is likely the best place for your organization to start. Building your tool hub is the foundation to supercharging your digital strategy. It can tie one of your most common practices – email marketing – together with the other capabilities mentioned above and serve as the go-to center of your digital marketing efforts.
Center of the Universe for Digital Marketing Technology
What do we mean by “center” of your digital marketing efforts? In addition to the large-scale capabilities we just mentioned, a marketing automation system handles creating landing pages with forms.
Landing pages are destinations your target audience and prospective buyers arrive at after clicking-through on one of your digital ad placements – either a display ad placed on a third party website, on a social media platform, or on a PPC site such as Google Ads—or any ad for that matter. Even print ads!
Tip: For print ads, track engagement by converting the landing page URL from your marketing automation system into a short, user-friendly format and put that short URL in your print ad.
As a result, you can track – through your marketing technology – which ad placements are getting the most form fill-outs, and hence, marketing leads. That’s all powerful information as you consider which ad channels are serving you the best. This also allows you to see the value and impact of your martech stack.
Console of Control with PPC Ads
Aside from marketing automation, you’ll run into your own piece of martech by default if you use PPC ads. For example— the global tech giant that dominates the digital landscape, Google. Google Ads provides its own console for creating and managing your search and display ad campaigns.
It’s also worth noting that the increased prevalence of artificial intelligence – or AI – is impacting major areas of marketing technology. In this vast ecosystem of products, services, and data-driven innovations, Google Ads is no exception. In fact, you must be careful with how Google Ads uses AI and use the console to see and control those measures. In the B2B marketing industry, not all search terms are relevant for your audiences. Many of the marketing technology tools mentioned in this blog have capabilities to track and evaluate the most impactful ROIs.
Tip: To help mitigate the effects of AI technology on your Google search ads, be sure to go into your ad groups section within your search ad campaign and watch for automatically placed “dynamic” ads. Pause those to turn them off if the resulting ads are creating content or landing page destinations that you didn’t approve of or simply won’t work for your audience.
Social media channels, like LinkedIn Ads and Facebook Ads, of course also have their own algorithms and approaches.
A Word About AI
We just mentioned artificial intelligence is playing a great role in today’s marketing technology landscape, especially with martech stack member Google Ads.
Does this mean other AI tools, like ChatGPT, are a must-have? Maybe or maybe not. Depending on how your organization views these options, AI as a whole has some truly astonishing potential. At the same time, there are also very real risks and problems that can arise when using these new technologies to produce content for marketing science-based businesses.
Before you let ChatGPT write your next article, landing page, blog, or white paper, you’ll want to consider these factors we’ve outlined in our prior post about ChatGPT.
Making Your Desired Return on Investment
On top of the information and analytics provided through the martech stack pieces above, consider an overall marketing ROI platform to increase your scalability, retention, and growth.
A marketing ROI platform can provide one parking lot to pull in all of your marketing data in real-time and empower you to make data-driven decisions and visually see the analytical results from your marketing campaigns and how they are contributing to your strategic marketing success.
You can see metrics captured from your marketing automation system – such as email opens and click-through rates, or leads by country or campaign – and can pull in stats from virtually anywhere else (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, paid and organic social media, etc.) in your marketing efforts.
Tip: Not sure which metrics to be tracking? Now is a great chance to meet with and gather input from both sales and marketing team members, as there may be different viewpoints regarding which metrics are important.
Seek the Experts to Stack it Up
We have an arsenal of marketing technology tools at our disposal – but knowing which ones and how to use them is the key to scaling your success. At Brandwidth Solutions, our team of hand-picked experts are ready to walk you through how to maximize the best value for your business. Together, let’s elevate your brand’s impact with our specialized science-focused marketing agency. Our deep industry knowledge combines innovative strategies to accelerate your success in sectors like biopharma, life sciences, and more.
If you are ready to make this strategic marketing tech move for your organization, reach us here.
Brandwidth Solutions serves the healthcare, life sciences, energy, and contract pharma industries. We work with companies that want to make the most of their marketing – who want their marketing empowered to help drive leads – and ultimately sales. If you want to move your product or service forward in a smart way, we want to work with you. Call us at 215.997.8575.