What is MarTech?

In its simplest form, MarTech, also known as Marketing Technology, can be described as the convergence of marketing and technology (hence the combination of the two words). The term MarTech refers to any software or tools that marketers use to plan and execute their marketing activities in both digital marketing and offline space. Collectively, these martech tools that are used by marketers or marketing teams are referred to as their martech stack.

Marketers use MarTech solutions for a range of different marketing activities including but not limited to:

1. social media

2. marketing strategy

3. marketing campaigns

4. marketing automation

5. customer journey development

6. email marketing

7. retargeting

ORIGINS OF MARTECH (MARKETING TECHNOLOGY)

One could say that the MarTech revolution began when Salesforce launched its Software as a Service model (SaaS) and democratized the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. At the time, only large companies could afford to build CRM platforms so, with the launch of this new software, businesses of varying sizes could now access the benefits of marketing technology.

Some would argue that what launched MarTech into the mainstream was the rise of search, mobile, and social media. With the rise of tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook, brands, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists saw the opportunity in the digital communication space as one that also needed digital marketing tools in order to sell in that new space.

Marketers were then faced with an ever-expanding universe of consumer touchpoints, data, and behavior that needed to be streamlined and automated allowing a multitude of MarTech tools to enter the market and offer these solutions.

Marketing technology has come a long way since the birth of digital marketing. Nowadays, there are new MarTech tools being released all the time to help marketers automate their marketing campaigns and processes, but this wasn’t always the case.

Back in 2015, Scott Brinker, otherwise known as the Godfather of MarTech, released this graphic showing the growth of MarTech tools being added to the MarTech landscape overtime. Back in 2011, there were 150  MarTech tools and today, there are over 7000. With all of these new tools being added in the Marketing Technology landscape, it’s clear that martech is becoming indispensable to marketers and luckily for them, there’s clearly no shortage of marketing tools that they can add to their Martech Stack.

Scott Brinker’s MarTech (Marketing Technology) Landscape:

WHY IS MARTECH IMPORTANT?

Modern-day marketing wouldn’t be possible without the plethora of Marketing Technology/MarTech tools on the market today.

Martech is important because it helps businesses work more efficiently by streamlining workflows, processes, and data which allows greater collaboration across teams improves communication with their target demographic and reduces costs by minimizing resources spent pursuing inaccurate or incomplete insights papertyper.net. Marketers benefit greatly from having a well-thought-out MarTech stack by helping them manage a multitude of tools and information easily.

The benefits include but are not limited to:

1. Do More With Less : Processes that would usually take a marketing team an extended period of time can be automated. These include using machine-learning and marketing automation software to complete repetitive tasks such as pulling data, converting file formats, and finding assets.

2. Improve Communication Across Teams: By providing a more streamlined and transparent way to access information about projects, their progress and their results, organizations can improve communication and efficiency across teams allowing them to make better, more informed decisions.

3. Create Data-Driven Content: Connect with your target demographic and current customers by applying the insights and data gained to improve experiences, deliver timely and relevant information and understand what works and what doesn’t.

4. Customer Relationship Management: Make your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them by utilizing past behaviors, conversations, interactions and more.

5. Increase Efficiency: Teams can work faster and smarter as more and more people use the tool and improve its functionality across the organization: Make your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them by utilizing past behaviors, conversations, interactions and more.

CATEGORIES OF MARTECH TOOLS

As you can see from Scott Brinker’s supergraphic of the MarTech landscape above, there are marketing technology tools for a wide range of issues faced by marketers. These tools can be grouped into 6 categories:

1. Advertising & Promotion: Martech tools for advertising and promotion help to bring together the platforms used for paid ads and fall into the demand-side platform (DSP) section. These tools help streamline and optimize efforts like social media advertising, programmatic advertising, native advertising, and search engine optimization. Popular MarTech Tools for Advertising & Promotion: Adtech, Acuity, AdSupply, ExactDrive, LaunchBit

2. Commerce & Sales: This category consists of MarTech tools that assist marketers with managing and automating processes to execute sales and customer management at scale. Marketing technology has helped bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams to help make both of their efforts more efficient and effective. Popular MarTech Tools for Commerce & Sales: SalesForce, Enplug, Brandify, Collabspot

3. Content & Experience: There is a wide array of martech tools that helps marketers with their content marketing tasks ranging from content creation, automation, curation and syndication to content management systems (CMS), search engine optimization (SEO), landing pages, and digital asset management (DAM). Popular MarTech Tools for Content Marketing: Hubspot, WordPress, Crazyegg, ContentSquare, Adgistics.

4. Data: As a brand increases its communication and relationship with its audience and their behavior, so too grows the data and information that they collect. Martech tools help to streamline the gathering of this information and provide easy access to gain insights and visualize the data so teams can make accurate and informed decisions. Tools in this section range from Customer Data Platforms (CDP) and Data management platforms (DMPs) to web analytics software and predictive analytics. Popular MarTech Tools for Data: BlueKai, Lotame, Piwik, Tealium, FunnelWise, CoolaData, ClearStory Data.

5. Management: MarTech tools for management improve collaboration, communication and the projects are done across your organization. Martech solutions for management include project management, time tracking, recruitment, communication, and financial management. Popular MarTech Tools for Management: Asana, DeepTalent,ProductPlan, Simple, Conceptboard

6. Social & Relationships: Marketers looking to grow and connect with potential customers and existing audiences have a number of martech tools at their disposal. This category of marketing technology solutions ranges from social media management, monitoring, email marketing, and influencer marketing tools to community management, live events, chatbots, and call management. Popular MarTech Tools for Social & Relationships: MailChimp, Marketo, Later, SocialCircle, Brandwatch.

WE’RE HERE TO HELP

We hope that this article has provided you with some insight into what MarTech is and a glimpse into the ever-expanding universe of the martech landscape. Whatever stage your business is at, it can likely benefit from some type of MarTech tool and stack, and we’re here to help you learn from the best MarTeachers (Martechers) out there so you can develop, implement and optimize your processes.

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the MarTech Podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Overcast.