How to Audit and Improve Your Marketing Technology Stack

The right technological tools can make all the difference in your marketing department. If you have effective tools and effective ways to use them together, you’ll be in a much better position to get the results you want. Periodically, you’ll want to audit your marketing technology stack to make sure it’s up to snuff.

But how do you do it and how should you approach improving it?

The Importance of Marketing Technology Efficiency

You can’t be effective in your marketing strategy unless you have effective and efficient marketing tools in place. Today’s marketing landscape is dominated by digital marketing, automation, and the efficient integration of AI, allowing brilliant marketing minds to take full advantage of powerful modern technology.

However, not every technological tool is worth using, even the really impressive ones. And depending on your current technology stack, it may not make sense to integrate any new tool. Similarly, your current marketing stack might be failing in more than one way – and you simply haven’t noticed because you haven’t taken a close enough look.

For these reasons and more, it’s important to be critical of your marketing technology stack, so you’re poised to make improvements in the future.

Beginning the Process

It’s typically best to plan marketing technology from the top down. In other words, you should have thoughtful, experienced experts at the top of the pyramid, carefully analyzing your approach and making firm recommendations on how to change. Typically, organizations consult their Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or a similar internal marketing head to make these decisions, but it’s also possible to hire an external third party. For example, you could hire a fractional CMO, serving as an outside advisor and an equally authoritative expert.

Key Questions to Ask

When evaluating each piece of technology in your marketing stack, ask the following questions:

· What purpose does this tech serve? You might be surprised to learn how many marketers ultimately overlook this quintessential question. You might find a new piece of marketing technology that seems impressive and powerful, but what exactly is it trying to achieve? Is it in line with your business goals and objectives, or does it solve some key problem? Or is this just some fancy, newfangled, shiny technology with lots of bells and whistles but little substance?

· How well does it work? Is this piece of technology capable of achieving its objectives, and if so, how does it compare to similar tools on the market? Is it something that returns more value than it costs?

· How easy is it to use? Tech usability is very important if you want to have an efficient marketing department. When tools are easy to use, you can almost completely forego training and educating your employees. Easily usable tools are also less likely to cause time waste, and more likely to achieve their true potential.

· How much value does it provide? What is the impact on your bottom line? How many more customers are you able to reach, or how much time are you able to save? Be as objective as possible, even if you’re forced to estimate.

· How does it fit with our other tech products? How does this new technology fit with the rest of your marketing technology stack? Is it easy to integrate? Is there substantial overlap between this tool and another?

· What is its future like? Are there more updates coming in the future? What have the developers planned? Do you get all the support you need, and can you see this serving your organization well into the future?

· What are we paying for it? Obviously, you’ll also need to think about price. There are some expensive marketing tools on the market, and many of them are well worth the money. However, you should also avoid overpaying for technologies that you don’t truly need.

· What would happen if we cut it? Marketing departments need to be ready to make cuts when necessary. Play with this hypothetical, speculating about what would happen to your marketing department and your core initiatives if you removed this tool from the stack.

· Are there any better options? Take this opportunity to review similar and competitive tools on the market to see if there’s anything slightly better.

Making Optimal Adjustments

After thoroughly evaluating every tech tool in your marketing arsenal, you should have gathered enough information to make some intelligent cuts. What pieces of technology are you willing and able to lose? How can you better allocate what you were spending on those tools? Your marketing technology stack is an ever-evolving beast. The better you understand the true function of your marketing technology, and the more critical you are of new acquisitions and integrations, the closer you’ll get to achieving efficient perfection.