Which Marketing Tech Tools Are Worth Using?

Many marketers have a question in their mind – which marketing tech tools are worth using? Modern technology is truly impressive. With the right set of tools, almost any business can greatly improve its marketing results and eventually beat even its fiercest competitors. The problem is there are so many marketing tools on the market that it’s hard to choose the right components for your tech stack.

How do you choose the right technologies? And how do you make them work for your most important marketing strategies?

Working With a Full-Service Marketing Agency

Working with a full-service marketing agency could be the right approach for your business. A marketing agency functions as a genuine partner in all things related to marketing and advertising. They can help you solidify and properly utilize your brand, choose a collection of tactics best suited for your business, and develop a strategy for how to coordinate those tactics and get the most value out of them.

If you’re using your marketing agency for everything, you may not need to deliberate about marketing tech tools on your own; after all, the agency will be doing nearly all the work on your behalf. You can trust them to have a suite of tools practically valuable for executing your campaign competently. Your only real responsibility is vetting agencies to make sure you find a good fit.

Alternatively, if you’re only using your marketing agency for a handful of responsibilities, you can work with them in a consulting capacity. Your representatives at the marketing agency will likely have recommendations for which marketing technologies you should integrate into your own work.

Two High-Level Approaches

Failing that, there are two high-level approaches that you can choose to take when it comes to marketing tech tools.

The first is an all-in-one approach. The idea here is to choose one comprehensive tool, or a brand with many interrelated tools, to serve as a one-stop shop for all your marketing technology needs. This is advantageous, as it gives you access to all the technologies you need in one location – and you won’t have to worry much about integrations or compatibility issues in the future. However, this is a big decision, and bigger, more comprehensive tools are also more expensive, raising the stakes on your decision.

The second approach is more of an a la carte style selection of various marketing tech tools. In this approach, you’ll choose the tools you need one at a time, typically choosing the best tool in its class for each need within your organization. This is a slow and time-consuming process, but it can save you money and make sure you only pay for the tools you need.

The Promise and Pitfalls of Automation

Marketing automation is one of the most popular ways to use technology in this field, and for good reason. Automation has the power to eliminate manual effort, saving you time and money while also improving consistency. Automating things like drip email campaigns, market research, and alerts to mentions on social media can not only accelerate your efforts but streamline your entire marketing department and eventually help you win better results.

However, it’s important to recognize that automation can’t solve every problem, and excessive automation can lead to a loss of genuine human engagement within your target audience. Use automation with temperance and caution.

Key Factors to Consider in Any Marketing Tech Tool

Regardless of your approach, it’s important to be judicious in the marketing tech tools you select for your business. These are some of the most important factors to consider:

·       Need. It’s tempting to accumulate more and more tools as you learn about them, since each new tool brings unique functionality and personality. However, the endless buffet approach becomes expensive quickly. It’s important to evaluate your own needs before choosing a tech tool to integrate into your stack.

·       Usability. The easier it is to learn and use a tool, the better. This is especially true if you’re trusting your lower-level employees to harness the full power of these applications.

·       Data and reporting. Data is the heart of modern marketing, so without a good system for analytics and reporting, a tool may not be worth using.

·       Versatility/adaptability. The best tech tools are ones that offer multiple related functionalities, with some degree of customization available. In other words, the more versatile and adaptable the tool is, the better.

·       Integrations. Is it easy to integrate this tool into other tools you’re already using? Can it accommodate more integrations in the near future if you need them?

·       Price and ROI. Obviously, you’ll have to consider the price. The best tool in the world may not be worth it if it completely breaks your marketing budget. This is also a great opportunity to look at the estimated return on investment (ROI) of the platform. In other words, what is the real value this technology is going to bring to your organization, and does it make up for the price?

·       Future. Are the developers planning to support this technology and improve it in the coming years? How long will this tool be relevant to your organization?

With a host of better marketing tech tools at your disposal, your marketing campaigns can run faster, smoother, and more effectively. And if you have the help of a full-service marketing agency behind you, your ROI is likely to be even higher.