The Perfect Marketing Tech Stack - TalkwalkerThe Perfect Marketing Tech Stack How companies can find the tools they need to succeed

UPDATED FOR 2019

The Perfect Marketing Tech StackHow companies can find the tools they need to succeed

The Perfect Marketing Tech StackHow companies can find the tools they need to succeed

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THE PERFECT MARKETING TECH STACK - HOW COMPANIES CAN FIND THE TOOLS THEY NEED

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It’s 2019. Two years on from our original tech stack report. Back then, there were around 7,000 tools to choose from. Now, phenomenally more - offering more insights, better communication, clearer solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had. Great in theory, a nightmare in practice.

Tools enable practically everything digital marketing teams do today. The modern marketer can’t live without them, and it’s not uncommon for marketing departments to have dozens of solutions forming their tech stack.

At Talkwalker, we’re in two positions at once: as a vendor, we want people to make the right choice for their team when it comes to social listening. But as a high-growth company, we routinely have to select solutions that scale and future-proof our own marketing activities.

In this report, we want to share our insights, with updated advice from our partners and industry leaders on:

• Ways to select tools based on criteria that works for your team

• How to maximize and future-proof your investment

• What our own marketing tech stack looks like

Of course, when it comes to social listening, we’ll always be biased. But we hope you can find some relevant insights in these pages, even if Talkwalker isn’t a core part of your tech stack. Yet ;-)

Foreword More choice than ever before...

Elena Melnikova Talkwalker CMO

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Marketing tech now takes up a larger percentage of marketing budget, than the staff who use it. According to Gartner’s 2018-2019 CMO Spend Survey, martech now accounts for 29% of the total marketing expense budget, compared to 24% on labor costs.

Every dollar counts when it comes to choosing your stack. It’s no surprise CMOs are having trouble ensuring they have the right technology considering the sheer number of solutions available on the market.

The Gartner 2018-2019 CMO Spend Survey breaks down how CMOs are split-ting their substantial martech budgets.

Introduction

https://www.gartner.com/marketing/research/the-2018-2019-cmo-spend-survey-spotlight.html



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Today, there are thousands of solutions competing for the billions in marketing budgets that are earmarked for technology.

“Unfortunately with marketing tech there is no one tool that will do everything for you so you need to build your marketing stack. When adding tools you need to make sure they integrate with each other when required, they complement each other in terms of features and no conflicts occur. Your marketing stack should evolve as your business grows and your requirements change so this is something you need to evaluate on a regular basis”Ian Cleary, Founder of razorsocial.com

The Ecosystem Explosion

What is a marketing tech stack?

The “Martech 5000” infographic by chiefmartec’s Scott Brinkler shows how many vendors are serving digital marketers.

A tech stack (also called a martech stack, for marketing technology) is a set of marketing tools that a company uses to efficiently and effectively run their marketing efforts.

A well-balanced tech stack enables you to have a one-on-one conversation with your customers. It streamlines data sources across the team and ensures smooth workflows.

https://chiefmartec.com/2018/04/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2018/#martech2018data

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It’s not unusual for companies to have 30 to 40 tools in their stack. Boundaries between technology categories today are fluid. Providers are building new functionalities or acquire new tools, which makes it even harder to keep track of what’s happening.

Instead of focusing on which functionalities a tool brings, we like to think how tools can serve us in terms of customer journey and marketing funnel.

The Core Marketing Technologies You Need

Whether your company is in B2B or B2C, on the next pages you will find some core technology categories that will serve as the foundation for

your stack. Image credit: Brown Creative Group

http://go.browncreativegroup.com/blog/bid/217988/Building-an-Inbound-Marketing-Funnel-Part-3-Bottom-of-the-Funnel

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Awareness Stage

Content Management Systems (CMS)

A content management system enables you to create and modify digital content. Web based systems tie in with your website. Bigger organisations are increasingly buying dedicated content management platforms that come with built-in content approval workflows and planning features like editorial calendars.

Social Listening & Analytics

Social media listening is about finding and tracking online conversations around your brand and business, about your industry, and about your competitors.

Social media analytics refers to the practice of using a variety of data and metrics to analyze what’s taking place on social media. In your day-to-day marketing operations, both are essential to keep up with your customers online.

Search Engine Optimization & Web Analytics

SEO and Web Analytics are another foundation stone upon which companies build their stack. Inbound marketers depend on solid SEO strategies that help them attract the right audience via search engines and use web analytics to understand and optimize advertising ROI.

Earth Networks is one of the winners of chiefmartec’s 2018 Stackie Awards. Credit: Earth Networks/Chiefmartec

https://martechtoday.com/2018-stackie-awards-winners-the-most-impactful-martech-stacks-this-year-214477

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Purchase stage

Consideration stage

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM tools are vital in helping a company manage its interactions with current and potential customers. Tools like Salesforce enable you to use data analysis to improve relationships, drive sales growth and customer retention. Marketing and sales departments need to work closely together to make the transition from prospect to customer as frictionless as possible.

Email & Marketing Automation

Email marketing is one of the most important channels for B2B and B2C firms alike. The goal is to automate repetitive tasks in the middle of the funnel to make processes more efficient and grow revenues faster. Many companies use one central tool to convert prospects to customers and customers to brand ambassadors.

Social Media Management

Social Media Management Tools help companies connect with their audience on a one-to-one basis and make it easier to nurture and grow a community on social media.

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The Golden Rule For Selecting A Vendor

It’s as simple as that. There’s no one-size fits all solution out there when it comes to martech, and a missing connection with a key tool you’re using will hurt you further down the line.

The good news: because the lines between martech categories are blurry, marketing technology providers today put a great deal of emphasis on building and developing an ecosystem that works well with their tool.

The idea is that close cooperations between two best-of-breed providers create an added value for clients that a single solution can’t meet. Vendors work together to ensure a frictionless experience when using both solutions.

Refer to our checklist at the end of the next chapter to include the right questions in your selection process.

If your selected tool doesn’t connect, don’t invest.

“At Talkwalker, we’ve built our platform with an open approach from the beginning. For our clients, ease of tool integration is critical for their business, that’s why we’re working with many great partners to make sure they can bend Talkwalker in ways that suits them. Data partners like ReviewTracker or BI tools like Tableau and Domo multiply the value of the platform for our clients from a data perspective.

A solid and flexible partner ecosystem is the hallmark of a good vendor in any category. Take our cooperation with Hootsuite, for example. We recently updated our integration to ensure people can make full use of the latest developments of both platforms. Our own marketing department shows us how this integration can be used day-to-day to combine social listening and social media management effectively.”

Jeremy Bernier Head of Partnerships

Tip: The depth of vendor cooperations varies widely. Make sure you know what’s behind a partner logo on a website. API connections potentially need in-house expertise or add extra costs to set up.

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How to choose the right marketing tools for your tech stack

1. ROI: How do I justify a new investment?

Choosing the right tools isn’t easy - and not just because of the vast number of vendors out there. Martech stacks differ wildly from company to company. Some vast enterprises like Microsoft employ people specifically to deal with the selection of appropriate tools.

We have no trouble believing that this can be a full-time job, but

if you don’t have the luxury of employing one person to deal with your tech stack, we’ve collected some general advice you might find helpful.

Answer the following five questions for yourself before you speak to a vendor.

This is a pretty simple question on the surface, but in truth the answer can be annoyingly complicated. You likely have a budget allocated for marketing technology solutions, but how do you make the right choice on what to spend it on?

Do you need an influencer management tool or a content marketing platform, a social listening tool or a social media management suite? Should you focus on building on your team’s strengths or tackling its weaknesses?

Your first step must be an evaluation of issues:

• Do you have visibility on ROI and the areas in which your team performs?

• Are there performance issues that keep you from reaching your targets?

• Which requirements can’t be satisfied with the current setup and why?

• Which solution is a must-have, which solution is a nice-to-have?

Tip: Build your stack from the ground up. Take care of core technologies you need to succeed first. Make sure you’re set up to measure your performance effectively - if you’re having trouble with that, getting this set up should be a priority.

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2. Size: Which size solution does my team need?

Is it all hands on deck for your company’s social media team? The single most important thing is that you don’t let yourself be swept away by glossy feature descriptions that will take your team months to use. Look for simple tools that lighten the load NOW and don’t need a lot of time to set up. You want to hit the ground running without wasting weeks on setup and implementation.

As a smaller team, we’ve used Buffer in the past to schedule messages on Twitter, and the whole team still sings its praises.

It does exactly what it’s meant to do as a publishing tool, it’s so intuitive that it takes minutes to become a pro, and the “Awesome Plan” will only set you back $10 a month.

Do some research online, you’ll find tons of time and money saving tools like Buffer. Then ask your community on social which tools they recommend, personal experiences will often tell you a lot more than a vendor’s website.

Tip: Don’t let yourself get tangled up in product descriptions of enterprise-size tools if you don’t have the manpower to implement and operate it. Instead look to cheaper or free everyday-hero tools that quickly and quietly let your team get on with it.

Don’t listen to boilerplate advice about “the right stack” - the best tool can be wrong if it’s too complex for your small company to get results efficiently, or too simple for your team to achieve its full potential. At a very basic level, picking the right tool depends on your team’s size:

One-Man Show

Microsoft’s tech stack is both visually appealing and very advanced from a technology standpoint. Credit: Microsoft/chiefmartech

http://chiefmartec.com/2017/05/57-marketing-stacks-21-essays-shared-2017-stackies-hackies/


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©Tip: Look beyond merely comparing features and functionalities and add factors like service quality and future developments to your list.

Once collaboration, ownership and workflows across different time zones become a factor, you need to think bigger, and you need to think ahead. One thing you may recognize is that more people doesn’t automatically mean you can get more done.

Smooth workflows that have never been an issue before can become clunky and difficult when you add more people without adding the right tools. The worst of it: scaling operations takes time and implementing a new tool comes with a learning curve that may annoy your team.

Bigger companies with bigger teams usually turn to the handful of leaders in a given sector. But then what? Chances are that functionalities aren’t a real differentiator for the tools you’re looking at. Sometimes the price tag is a reason to go with one over the other, sometimes you have regulatory or data-privacy reasons for choosing a provider.

More and more, vendors’ differentiators are soft factors like service quality, pace of innovation and company culture. Refer to our checklist at the end of this chapter to make sure you ask all the right questions.

Tip: Adding a new tool to the mix can create frustration within your team, so make sure they understand why it’s time to take this step and how it’ll pay off.

Growing Pains

Enterprise solutions

The Delphic stack shows tools broken down by customer journey stage. Credit: Delphic/chiefmartech



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3. Present & Future: Where are we now, and where are we going?

Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to question your entire existence just because you have some money to spend on marketing tools. But before you look at what vendors can offer you, do an honest check of where your team is.

Evaluating your team’s maturity and plans before you speak to a vendor is crucial. It informs your selection process and forces you to look at your company’s long-term plans - something you should know before entering the vendor evaluation stage.

Has your team done its homework? Marketing teams are more data driven than ever, and there’s plenty of voices out there telling you about the importance to move along the data maturity scale (ahem, guilty as charged ). Look at your long-term plans and which areas of your team you need to develop, then select the vendor that can help you get there. If your team doesn’t have the necessary expertise, you’ll need to adapt your hiring plans.

Don’t oversell yourself.

It’s also worth considering the tool’s AI aspects. Artificial intelligence has come a long way in the last couple of years, and is essential for handling big data, and automating repetitive tasks. It may not be make or break, but it could have a significant impact on your role in the future.

Tip: No matter which marketing area you’re looking at, make sure you understand the full maturity scale and how it aligns with your long-term business goals first. Determine where your team is and your areas of priority for the next 3-5 years, then select vendors accordingly.

https://www.talkwalker.com/white-papers/the-social-data-maturity-scale-how-to-get-maximum-value-from-social-data

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4. People: How weird is my team?

That’s brilliant as far as your team’s creative reputation within the company is concerned, but it can also be a business factor when selecting a vendor for your next marketing tool.

Don’t be fooled, this question is not about finding a fun tool to work with instead of a “boring” one - it’s about your team’s individual approach to solving problems and the needs that come with it. Just because you have 20 people working for your marketing team doesn’t mean your team works exactly the way all other 20-people teams do.

Consider this: the Talkwalker marketing team might look slightly chaotic to an outsider - a “meeting room” largely filled with bright blue and pink bean bags doesn’t help our image, really. But the look from the inside is different.

Ask any team member, they’d tell you we’re razor sharp and results-oriented. We measure and we’re accountable, we get stuff done.

We collaborate daily and intensively, few tasks get done by only one person. Often, multiple teams within our team are working to make a campaign a success, which blurs the lines between jobs and responsibilities. Add a few deadlines per week into the mix - you get the picture.

It’s a structure that works for us, but it also means we have specific requirements when it comes to our marketing technology. Workflow flexibility and reporting capabilities we value highly, whereas we can do without advanced user management options and approvals hierarchies.

Tip: Don’t let vendors tell you what you need. Yes, your team needs a solution to a problem, but don’t try to bend your team around a tool that fundamentally disrupts its dynamic.

It’s marketing, so the answer is probably: very.

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5. Information: Where do I go for more details?

There’s a number of very helpful general sources around that help marketers navigate tool selection.

When it comes to comparing specific tools, many vendors have taken up content marketing (hello!) so they’ll have a selection of useful guides and success stories from others who have bought and implemented their tool. That’s a great starting point, but supplementing vendor fluff with independent research is key.

• Forrester Waves and Gartner Magic Quadrants can help as a first guidance if you’re looking at enterprise scale solutions, and if there’s recent research for your area.

• G2Crowd and other user experience-based services are great for researching common issues that people are experiencing and finding first-hand insights about service, product strengths, and innovation rate.

• Find independent rankings or blogs within the area’s niche.

• Talk to other marketers and ask your community on Twitter for first-hand advice and recommendations.

Tip: Vendors most often have a section for independent research on their website. If you dig through all your top contenders’ lists, you’ll get a good picture.

The Marketing Technology Checklist

22 questions to ask when buying a new tool

□ My budget is... how much are you asking?

□ Which funnel stage are we struggling with?

□ Do I have visibility on ROI and the areas in which my team performs?

□ Are there performance issues that keep us from reaching our targets?

□ Which requirements can’t be satisfied with the current setup and why?

□ Which solution is a must-have, which solution is a nice-to-have?

□ Which KPIs I should be looking at to assess the ROI on this tool?

□ Does this tool connect with other key tools I’m using?

□ Are there APIs I can use to supplement other tools?

□ How long will the setup/implementation/training take?

□ When will I start getting tangible results?

□ Is this tool easy to use/user-friendly?

□ Do I need dedicated support to use this tool efficiently?

□ Do I have necessary skills in my team to take care & get the most of the new tool or will we need to hire someone?

□ Do I have a human point of contact after I buy the solution?

□ How much support will the vendor provide during the implementation phase?

□ Is there ongoing customer support and training opportunities?

□ How often does the product release new features and updates?

□ Will I have to spend more on new features/maintenance/updates?

□ Is the vendor continuously innovating and releasing new features?

□ If my team grows, will I have to spend more money to acquire more licenses?/Will the tool grow with my team?

□ Can you put me in contact with a couple of your current customers so I can hear their opinion/get references?

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The TalkwalkerMarketingTechnology Stack

Over the last four years, our marketing team has quintupled, spread across 5 global offices (with more growth expected in 2019). Managing such a multicultural team, in different time zones has its difficulties, but a number of tools have helped us scale efficiently. As the team grew, tools that became a priority were Hootsuite for cross-country social media management and Slack to collaborate more efficiently.

We also continue to make Google Analytics a priority - the whole team loves turning conversion stats into great UX.

Maintaining good working relationships with essential tool providers was key. We even have the added benefit that some of them work in the same building! Some providers actually became partners of Talkwalker because of this connection and importance these tools hold for our core audience - digital marketers.

Elena Melnikova Talkwalker CMO

We chose to break down our tech stack by customer journey stage. We use many tools for more than one stage, but in the interest of clarity, logos are only shown for the most prominent stage.

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The Social Intelligence Hub: Talkwalker

“We run our command center in the office, which is a magnet for people all over the company. It’s made a huge difference in the way data is shared with different teams. Almost everyone stops by regularly to look at it and take some information to their own teams,” explains Melnikova.

Unsurprisingly, Talkwalker sits at the center of what we do.

The Talkwalker platform is the eyes and ears of our team. Basically, we’re obsessed with it - in a healthy way, of course. It encompasses everything from brand listening to analysis, to reporting of social and online performance. Not just for social listening and analytics - and unable to keep our hands off - the content team uses the platform to hunt down fresh trends and topics.

We’ve also set up free Talkwalker Alerts to keep an eye on keywords that matter to us and to our customers.

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Connecting with Customers: Hootsuite

Email & Marketing Automation: Marketo

Content Ideation: Quick Search

Hootsuite was named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Social Media Management Solutions, Q2 2017, and we believe there are plenty of reasons why. Once you’re set up, managing social channels is breezy.

Through the integration with Talkwalker, we can easily set up streams based on Talkwalker queries, and we can filter all results with advanced options.

Marketo to the rescue! We chose to make the jump from MailChimp to Marketo in 2015. The main purpose of the marketing automation tools is to automate the middle of the funnel. With Marketo, we found a tool that had exactly the right functionalities, and extensive knowledge base and the ability to serve us well for years to come.

We use it to nurture prospects with personalized content based on the stage of their customer journey. It helps us convert prospects to customers and customers to brand ambassadors.

Engagement is one of the biggest marketing buzzwords. We all are greedy for me. That’s why we use our own Quick Search tool, to find what’s trending with our audience, so we can create content that engages with them right away.

From looking at the biggest news stories, to tracking the major hashtags, we no longer rely on marketing hunches. But quick analytics that make an impact, it’s the fastest way to brand and communication insights.

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Web Analytics: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of our marketing team’s most essential tools. “Every single member of the team uses it. Through an integration with Talkwalker, we can easily see web analytics and social analytics side by side.

This enables us to not only see how much engagement or reach a post had, but also how it did in terms of conversions. It’s incredibly helpful to keep track of our off-site guest posts,“ says Melnikova.

Our design hub: Adobe CS

When it comes to design, our in-house designer swears by Adobe CS. The industry-standard software is like a magic treasure chest and lets us easily put together images, videos, print brochures or screencasts.

We’re also proud to report we still use MS Paint. Sometimes, the simplest tools can perform the functions you need, and don’t blow your budget.

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“Ahrefs is not a unique tool for researching Google traffic and backlinks of your competitors, but it surely is one of the leading ones because of the size of the dataset that we operate,” Tim explained.

We supplement Ahrefs with SEMrush to perform technical SEO audits, do keyword research and analyze rankings.

Influencer Management: Influencer One

The team has worked with a vast array of influencers for a long time now. But one of the difficulties we found (in our department and in those of marketers we work with), was managing all those influencers effectively.

So we created a tool to do it for us. It allows us to track all influencer conversations, and ensures our team keeps up to date with the progress of every influencer campaign. Because it’s backed by Talkwalker analytics, we know the data collected from it will be relevant and impactful.

“Ahrefs is an absolutely essential toolkit if you want to grow your traffic from Google. Just by analyzing sites of your competitors you can learn a lot about the keywords they’re targeting and how much search traffic it brings them. Other than that, you’ll be able to see where they get links to the pages of their websites, which helps them rank higher in Google.” Tim Soulo, Head of Marketing at Ahrefs, to give us his take on why companies choose their tool.

SEO: Google, Ahrefs, SEMrush

For SEO, the demand generation team works closely with the content team to align SEO objectives and improve keyword rankings.

Keyword, content and backlink research is done with Ahrefs.

We quite agree.

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Conclusion

Whether you’re looking at the 3rd or 30th tool for your marketing stack, there’s a sheer incomprehensible number of providers out there who will happily take a slice of your budget cake.

Making an investment and committing to a new tool is almost never an easy decision, especially when there’s a lot of implementation and training attached to it. If you get your tech stack right, it’ll make your workday infinitely better.

We hope you’ve found some useful advice in this report. We’d love your feedback on Twitter or LinkedIn, and be sure to check out our blog, where we’ll continue to explore this topic from different angles.

Lastly, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to talk about some of the tools we’re using in our stack, especially Talkwalker! :-)

Impact starts here.Talkwalker Europe+352 20 33 35 3 43

Talkwalker US+1 646 712 9441

Talkwalker APAC+65 3165 0692

[email protected] @talkwalker talkwalker.com

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