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We’re a few months into 2020, and it’s around the right time to lock in our marketing strategies for the rest of the year. For marketing tech agencies, this can be easier said than done. With an abundance of innovative tech making its way into the industry scene, creating the right marketing technology stack can be a bit complex. Here are a few suggestions on what your marketing technology stack should look like in 2020.
First, understand that not every marketing technology innovation is right for you
New marketing technology is as exciting as it is tempting. You may feel inclined to adopt every new tech that finds its way into your industry. However, you should understand that a marketing technology stack consists of many unique marketing technology tools to help you reach customers anywhere in their lifecycle—and some marketing technology tools simply don’t work very well together! If a new piece of technology is going to disrupt your current marketing strategy or negatively impact other tech tools in your company, it may not be worth the trouble of adopting it.
Above all, your marketing strategy should come before the actual technology itself. Marketing technology tools are incredibly useful, but without a solid strategy behind them, these tools can’t work well on their own. Determine your target audience and how you will communicate to them, before adopting new marketing technology tools for the sake of innovation.
APIs are the talk of the marketing technology industry
According to a recent Intercom article, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provide a solution to a major challenge in the industry today—connecting disparate tools. In other words, marketing tech tools must be API-first to allow companies to easily add or replace their marketing solutions. Additionally, these interfaces help keep data organized and connected across multiple channels. With greater data-exchanging capabilities, APIs are a must for marketing technology leaders in 2020!
With any marketing tech tools you use, measuring analytics is always a must!
If you’re not measuring your marketing company’s success and shortcomings, you won’t be able to develop a strategy for improvement. For example, let’s say your marketing technology company has been heavily invested in building a social media strategy—regularly sharing posts each week, engaging in discussions with followers, and maintaining an active presence in marketing groups. These are all great practices for a social media marketing strategy, but how can you be sure they are working effectively?
Whether you’re putting together monthly metrics reports or keeping a log of any major events occurring in your social media channels, you need to keep up with your company’s analytics across all marketing technology tools. Here are a few analytics examples that your marketing technology company should be measuring:
- Social Media Marketing
- Interactions such as likes and comments
- Followers
- Shares
- How many posts are you sharing each week?
- Email Marketing
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Email bounce rate (soft or hard bounces)
- Website Analytics
- Form submissions and new leads generated
- Bounce rate
- Pageviews
- Average time spent on a webpage
Does your company have a plan for its marketing technology stack in 2020? If you’re looking for more technology insights, you can find them at thinkdm2’s blog. Thinkdm2 is a New Jersey digital marketing and branding agency with experience in professional services for technology companies.