Defining Your Digital Marketing Stack

The type of business you have will also impact which technologies you might find important, and how they should be organized.

A key difference is whether your business sells its products or services to consumers (B2C) or to businesses (B2B). B2C and B2B marketers will use different channels and techniques to acquire customers, and will have varying technology needs as a result.

When assembling a marketing technology stack, it’s important to know which technologies are foundational, and should be put in place first.

Below are some essential technologies to consider using:

1) Content Management System (CMS)

Technology that powers a website, blog, or other relevant web properties where marketers want to engage their customers.

2) Advertising Technology

This space is vast, but advertising is a key customer acquisition technique for marketers.

Most use a combination of SEM (search engine marketing), display ads, retargeting, and ad tracking or attribution software.

3) Email

A key customer communications channel that all marketers need in their toolkit. Sometimes, email is a capability that comes built into a marketing automation or inbound marketing platform.

4) Insights and Analysis

At a broad level, marketers need to be able to access their data to measure digital marketing activity. Most marketers will have website analytics and their own business analytics tracked in either homegrown or third-party tools.

In more advanced cases, a data warehouse can pull together data from a wide array of systems to make insights and reporting more accessible.

5) Experience Optimization

This includes an A/B testing and personalization software, or programs that allow marketers to take action on their analytics to make their marketing campaigns more efficient.

There are many other channels that might require different levels of investment, depending on whether your marketing strategy is more aligned with B2C or B2B, and your business strategy:

1) Social Media 

Technology to monitor social activity and make social engagement easier can help maximize the impact of this marketing channel.

Social networks are also a key part of the ads landscape, and many have paid advertising options available.

2) Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Typically an area of focus for B2B marketers, a CRM framework can track marketing attribution when supporting a direct salesforce.

The CRM will track all customer relationships and can provide insights on how marketing campaigns influence sales pipeline and customer growth.

3) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a key strategy for driving organic (unpaid) visitor traffic to your website domain, and often goes well with a content marketing strategy.

There are many tools available to help with keyword research and other SEO-related initiatives.