The marketing technology landscape has continued to grow year after year with new tools and solutions getting released. According to ChiefMarTec, in 2011, there were about 150 marketing solutions, and in 2020 there were over 8,000 on the market.
There are plenty of tools available at your fingertips to help automate tasks and deliver powerful analytics to help make your life as a marketer easier. When you choose the right tools to include in your marketing tech stack, you can build a marketing strategy that creates optimized collateral and generates qualified leads for your sales team. But how do you know what solutions are worth investing in to include in your marketing technology stack?
To figure out what tools are needed for your marketing strategy, it’s important to think about your goals, your budget, and to look at multiple options. We know that can be a daunting task, so we’ve created a list to help you get started.
1. Social Media
Social media is a valuable part of any marketing strategy. With most of your target audience on many platforms (such as LinkedIn or Facebook), it’s a great way to keep your company fresh in their minds and increase exposure. You can automate mundane social media tasks like scheduling and publishing content by utilizing these tools.
MarTech Stack Tools: HubSpot
With an easy-to-use interface, HubSpot allows you to schedule posts in advance to create a content calendar. You don’t have to worry about missing the prime posting time because it’s already been scheduled and published. You’ll also receive analytics for each campaign so you can track results and make adjustments to your content strategy.
Alternatives: HootSuite, Planoly, Buffer, MeetEdgar, CoSchedule
2. Sales Enablement Platform
You’ve created a slew of incredible content, but how do you make sure that it gets into the hands of your sales reps so it can be utilized? A sales enablement platform helps deliver content to your reps while giving you powerful insights into how it’s being used.
MarTech Stack Tool: verbTEAMS
We may be biased, but verbTEAMS is our favorite tool in our marketing technology stack. When we create marketing collateral, we upload it into verbTEAMS and distribute it to our sales reps. As they present and share content, we can track the engagement and see how it’s performing. Not to mention, the administrative platform is user-friendly and looks just as good as the sales app. With verbTEAMS, we seamlessly manage our marketing content and our sales reps. It’s also a great way to train and onboard employees!
3. SEO
You have this awesome product and sleek-looking website, but it doesn't show up in a customer’s search. Sound familiar? This is where SEO comes into play. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, and you need to keep up. Luckily, there are some pretty insightful SEO tools to help make sure that your customers (and search engines) can find you!
MarTech Stack Tool: SEMrush
SEMrush is loaded with marketing tools to help measure and improve online visibility. Its SEO dashboard serves as a good starting point to see what problems you need to tackle first, and it continues tracking your progress as changes are made. Its features include reports and tools around keywords, backlinks, competitors, content research, and more. It's a powerful marketing tool for the price you pay.
Google Search Console deserves a quick mention too. It won’t give you as much data as SEMrush or other SEO tools, but when connected to your Google Analytics it can be very helpful to see what Google searches your site appears on.
Alternatives: Moz, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs
4. Collaboration
Collaboration software allows team members to communicate with each other successfully and improve overall team productivity. Members can message each other, coordinate tasks, and delegate responsibilities. As more and more people are working remotely, efficient collaboration between team members is more important than ever.
MarTech Stack Tool: Slack
Slack is a popular collaboration software that helps team members work together and save time. Using it as the single place for messaging, calling, and sharing files allows your conversations to stay organized without you having to worry about threads and email chains.
Alternatives: Trello, Evernote Business, Asana, Monday
5. Webinars
Over the last couple of years, webinars have become a popular, fun way to capture and engage with prospects. Webinars help you establish a real-time connection, gain more credibility, and offer value to those participating.
MarTech Stack Tool: Zoom
Before 2020, nobody would have blamed you if you had never heard of Zoom, but today it’s one of the most popular tech tools in almost every industry. Conference calls and meetings stand in the spotlight for Zoom, but one feature that seems to be in the background that people tend to forget about is the ability to host webinars. You can have up to 100 interactive video participants and a large panel of speakers, with the option to broadcast your webinar to Facebook Live and YouTube. Zoom is the video conferencing platform and webinar tool all in one!
Alternatives: GoToMeeting, Livestorm, EverWebinar, Google Meets
6. Email Marketing
Email marketing is an easy and effective way to keep your customers connected to what your company is doing in a personalized way. You can send out helpful information, coupons, updates, really whatever you want! There are several tools you can use depending on how specific you want your email messages to be.
MarTech Stack Tool: MailChimp
MailChimp might be one of the most well-known email marketing tools out there, and there’s a reason for it. They offer features and plans for marketers of all sizes whether you are a team of one or a company with a distinct marketing department. With an easy drag-and-drop email builder, landing page creator, and plenty of integrations, it’s a great all-in-one marketing suite with an affordable price tag.
You Also Need: verbMAIL
verbMAIL is designed to inspire action while the receiver's interest is at its highest. Customizable interactive buttons allow recipients to schedule a demo, view a product listing, open a PDF, link to social accounts, and more, all from within the video itself. And did we mention you can do it all directly from your Outlook account?
Alternatives: Constant Contact, Drip, SendGrid
7. Web Analytics
Your website is an analytics goldmine that you should use to your advantage. Analytics are probably the most powerful insights about your business and sometimes they don’t cost you anything! It’s up to you to take that data and turn it into a valuable part of your marketing strategy.
MarTech Stack Tool: Google Analytics
There are a lot of different web analytics tools and software out there, but sometimes sticking to the tried-and-true way can be the most beneficial, and in this case, it is. Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you valuable insights into your pages, your audience demographics, their behavior, and more! Plus, the platform provides tutorials if you aren’t sure what all the data means or what to do with it.
Alternatives: Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, Amplitude
8. Live Chat & Customer Support
By the time a customer reaches out to you with questions, you only have a couple of minutes to make an impact. Live chat allows you to respond quickly and have a real-time conversation. Not to mention that it helps your team give impressive customer support.
MarTech Stack Tool: Crisp
Crisp Chat is an all-in-one solution for interacting with your customers with a simple pricing plan! Some features it offers are live chat, messaging campaigns, a knowledge base, and an integration with Slack. Another cool feature is called MagicMap, showing you where all your visitors are from in real-time. And as a bonus, Crisp has a developer-friendly API, so you can make sure it works with all your other tools.
Alternatives: Podium, Intercom, Freshdesk
9. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation can be a game-changer as you create workflows and processes to handle tasks that are part of your day-to-day job. Depending on the customer's response, you can take them through a guided automation sequence, so the only thing left for you to do is interpret the web analytics as they come in and make changes as needed. With some of your workflows automated, you can focus your attention on other marketing efforts.
MarTech Stack Tool: ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one email marketing tool with many features and integrations, automation being one of the most powerful features offered. It allows for autoresponders, automation of your contacts, and serves as a small business CRM too. ActiveCampaign does have a bit of a learning curve, but as you learn the system, you will see how powerful of a tool it is.
Alternatives: HubSpot, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot
Marketing Technology Stack
It’s not too late to start incorporating some of these tools into your marketing technology stack. While this list doesn’t cover every solution out there, hopefully, you found a couple to add to your tech stack that will benefit you and your sales team.
Good luck with building your marketing tech stack! Interested in adding VerbTEAMS to yours? Request a demo today!