A Simple Collection of Marketing Tools Can Quickly Evolve Into a Tangled Web of Software, Services, and Platforms
Your marketing team’s tech stack – the collection of software and other digital tools it uses – changes as your team changes. A marketing team at a startup will have a vastly different tech stack than a marketing department at an enterprise-level company.
Depending on budgetary considerations or how quickly your department grows, your tech stack may have redundancies or just not suit your needs as well as it should. It’s important to re-evaluate your tech stack on a regular basis to make sure it’s as streamlined and efficient as possible.
Keep reading to learn more about why simplifying your marketing tech stack is important and how to do it in nine easy steps.
Why Simplify Your Marketing Tech Stack?
By streamlining your marketing tech stack you can save money, enhance efficiency, increase security, and improve agility. Here’s how.
- Reduce Costs: A complex tech stack often means higher licensing fees, maintenance costs, and integration expenses. By simplifying your stack, you can reduce these costs and use your resources more efficiently. You might be able to consolidate individual licenses into a team license and cut costs significantly that way.
- Improve Efficiency: If your team feels like they spend more time moving data from one software to another or troubleshooting tech stack issues than they do marketing, it’s time to streamline your tools. Managing a complex tech stack requires more time and effort. By simplifying your stack, you can streamline operations and improve overall efficiency.
- Enhance Security: A complex tech stack can be more difficult to secure than a streamlined one. With information going in and out of multiple systems, your company is susceptible to data leaks and other security breaches. By simplifying your stack, you can reduce the number of potential vulnerabilities and improve your overall security.
- Increase Agility: When you have to waste time managing your tech stack, it can be difficult to execute on marketing plans, especially if they change at the last minute. A simpler tech stack is more agile and adaptable to change. By trimming the fat on your stack, you can respond more quickly to new opportunities and challenges.
How to Simplify Your Tech Stack
The first step in simplifying your tech stack is coming to the realization that it’s something you need to do. Once you’ve overcome that hurdle, it’s time to get to work. Follow these nine easy steps to streamline your marketing tech stack and make your systems easier to use:
- Take inventory
- Identify redundancies
- Evaluate usage
- Assess integrations
- Consider cloud solutions
- Standardize platforms
- Automate processes
- Train your team
- Regularly review and update
Below is a closer look at this critical process.
1. Take Inventory
Start by making a list of all the tools, software, and platforms in your marketing department’s tech stack. This could include things like your marketing funnel software, Salesforce analytics solution, email marketing platform, ABM reporting tool, CRM, CMS, and social media scheduling solution. You can create this list in a spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet, record the purpose of each solution and assess its value to your team.
2. Identify Redundancies
Look for redundancies in your tech stack. Are there multiple tools that do the same thing? Perhaps your campaign attribution software has email marketing and social media scheduling tools, making the latter two unnecessary as separate solutions. Consolidate these tools where possible to simplify your systems.
3. Evaluate Usage
Assess how much your team actually uses each component of your tech stack. If there are tools you rarely use or no longer serve a purpose, consider removing them to streamline your stack, cut costs, and improve efficiency.
4. Assess Integrations
When integrations work how they’re supposed to, you can get a lot more out of your tools. But, when integrations don’t work, you may have to waste precious time performing workarounds.
Assess how well the tools in your tech stack integrate with each other. If not well, look for opportunities to improve these integrations or eliminate any software that creates compatibility issues.
5. Consider Cloud Solutions
If your marketing team still uses software that relies on local hosting, it’s time to upgrade to 21st century technology. Moving to cloud-based solutions can help simplify your tech stack by reducing the need for on-premises hardware and software. Cloud solutions also offer scalability and flexibility, making them ideal for growing businesses.
Rather than using campaign attribution software that only lives on one computer, look for multi-touch attribution software that lives on the cloud and that your entire team can access from anywhere.
6. Standardize Platforms
Where possible, standardize on a single platform or technology stack. For example, instead of using Salesforce for your CRM and Google Analytics for reporting, stick to Salesforce for all of your needs and look for a Salesforce analytics solution. Standardizing your platforms can help reduce complexity and make it easier to manage your tech stack.
7. Automate Processes
Look for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks and processes. Automation can help streamline operations and reduce the need for manual intervention.
Rather than manually tracking the results of your marketing campaigns, consider using marketing attribution software that can automatically update customer touchpoints and send you progress reports.
8. Train Your Team
Streamlining your tech stack is pointless if your team is struggling to understand how to use your newly simplified tech stack’s components. Dedicate ample time and resources to teaching your team how to use any new tools and integrations. Don’t forget to also train them on best practices for using existing tools. All of this education can help maximize the value of your tech stack and improve overall efficiency.
9. Regularly Review and Update
Your tech stack is dynamic and will continue to evolve over time. You’ll inevitably add new tools that will make existing ones redundant. Conduct tech stack audits regularly and update your network to ensure that it remains simplified and aligned with your business goals.
The Bottom Line: Streamline Your Marketing Tech Stack for Greater Efficiency
If your marketing team has access to dozens of tools that don’t integrate with each other or that no one knows how to use, your company is wasting time and money. By streamlining your tech stack, you can spend less time managing your tools and more time marketing. Simplify your marketing tech stack with a Salesforce analytics solution that works with your existing CRM.
Learn More About How To Simplify Your Marketing Tech Stack » Stacked for Success: The Modern Marketing Tech Stack Revolution Webinar
