In an environment defined by change, marketers have accepted that monitoring and strategic pivots in line with data-driven insights are critical to staying ahead of the
curve.
Understanding these requirements and utilizing marketing technology correctly, to keep on top of continuous demand across industries, can prove
extremely challenging for many marketers.
Conceptualizing The Modern Marketing Stack
Marketers
often describe the marketing stack, or martech stack, as a collection of software that marketing teams use to support their trade. Yet each stack’s nuances are critical, and their potential reaches
far beyond the borders of marketing.
Thinking about stack architecture first and foremost is about asking the right questions. It is equally crucial to apply
the right lens to answer those questions.
Marketing stacks don’t just support marketing teams and their efforts — they support the full spectrum of client
experience strategy.
SEO is also both a horizontal and vertical function, providing foundational business intelligence and behavioral insights (what the
customer wants to know and when) in real-time. With informational needs spanning across most departments and technologies, applying an SEO lens across the organization is an effect development (or
re-development) approach.
Many marketers often struggle with documenting and understanding the marketing stack’s architecture. Too often, point solutions
have been added to meet specific needs and patched in, cobbled together, or worked around.
Organizations are now evolving and organizing their marketing
stacks with insights and performance measurement becoming central to success.
Positioning customer experience at the center, the central stack informs the
customer journey’s outer circles (represented here as I’m aware, I shop & I buy, I install & I use, and I renew). Complementary tools can be changed over time through this type of view while
maintaining a consistent foundation of data-driven insights.
Aligning Your Marketing Stack To The Customer’s Journey
Mapping the customer journey and the digital touchpoints throughout each stage provides insights on the channels that can provide rich customer data — and where
strategists best leverage that data.
The thought process here is critical. Placing the customer at the center of our view enables us to map technologies
aligned to channels, touchpoints, and core business objectives, supporting CMOs in articulating how their work and how the data and insights facilitated by their marketing stacks contribute to meeting
these goals.
To push the potential of data-driven insights beyond the boardroom (or home office), visualize your marketing stack with content and SEO at the
core. This approach helps to communicate more clearly to the C-suite the value SEO insights offer as your closest approximation to the customer’s real-time voice.
Deepening your organization’s understanding of consumer search behavior supports organic search and everything
from content marketing and paid-media management to product development and customer support.
Every piece of content, every function designed to help the user experience, everything
placed on a company’s website – or operating in the background to make it function – should be evaluated through an SEO lens, to ensure that decisions made around coding, design, and
content support the customer’s journey and the company’s success.
Change Is Constant
Marketing stack
assessment should be built into annual plans, with review of data and insights. The integration between technologies in the stack is also critical.
A
well-designed marketing stack ensures integration and activation of data across platforms, teams, projects, and departments. Without this holistic approach, your marketing stack can become an
assortment of disconnected tools, leading to a potentially disappointing client experience. The ideal platforms support multiple functions and integrations – providing a base upon where other
supporting technologies can be added.
Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a foundation of your stack. SEO insights represent the best real-time
representation of your customer’s voice, and will help stakeholders in an organization activate their data while automating some of the most time-consuming and repetitive SEO tasks.
CMOs who communicate the benefits and value of their marketing stacks and SEO insights will be well-positioned not only to survive the current challenges, but to thrive and
to help lead the industry.
