It’s no longer enough for marketers to think only in terms of a marketing automation system — marketers should be thinking about an entire marketing technology stack.
In 2011, Mark Andreessen famously said, “software is eating the world”. If this is the case, software has been particularly hungry in the marketing technology world.
There are, in fact, 3,874 logos in the latest version of Scott Brinker’s marketing technology landscape.
The following supergraphic spans multiple categories including: sales automation, enablement & intelligence; social media marketing & monitoring; display & programmatic advertising; marketing automation & campaign/lead management; content marketing.
The Good News: it’s easier than ever to integrate the components of a marketing technology stack using a combination of native integrations and simple third-party integration tools like Zapier.
The Bad News: it’s so easy for marketers to sign up for tools, an organization can easily find itself in stack overload.
With the proliferation of marketing software, are you controlling your marketing technology stack, or is it controlling you?
How Controllable Is the Marketing Technology Stack?
Much of the time, the marketing technology stack is not planned out in advance. It evolves over time. This is partly due to the fact that new technologies continually pop up.
But, is there an opportunity to plan before building or adding to the stack? If it’s still relatively early in the digital marketing game at your organization, it’s a good time to map out what your marketing automation stack might look like and then decide on the right blend of vendors.
Here’s a generic marketing technology stack that was inspired by Stackies winner Datapipe. Instead of including logos, I’ve inserted labels for the various technologies. Click the image below to view the full Google Drawing.
Once a digital marketing strategy has been developed, it will be a lot easier to determine which components of the marketing technology stack make the most sense.
