6 Steps To Design The Ideal Martech Stack
6 Steps To Design The Ideal Martech Stack
6 Steps To Design The Ideal Martech Stack
GUIDE
Introduction
Over the course of one day, a single marketer may use
email, chat, spreadsheets, phone calls, their team’s project
management software, their client’s project management tool,
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a file storage program, and a reporting app to get their work
done. And that’s a good day. On other days they will have to
use additional tools to manage resources, create and review
content, or perform any number of other tasks.
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Here are 6 simple steps to building
the ideal martech stack.
Building the ideal martech stack will require marketing ops to consider marketing workflows
and data flow for the company as a whole.
Every enterprise is different. In some cases the functions managed by marketing ops (e.g.
web, SDR, analytics, technology) are spread across many departments. Consider how
software and systems of record are set up in departments like sales, customer support,
legal/regulatory, business intelligence, and elsewhere before beginning to design your
martech stack.
A N S W E R TH E S E Q U E S TI O N S:
Your martech stack may need to either expand, mature, or both. Set your sights on
where you want your marketing team to be—not on where they are. One example of
a martech stack is: Adobe + Marketo + Salesforce + Workfront + Tableau + Google.
(See Figure 1 on the next page.) In addition, consider which solution can be the single
source of truth to integrate and connect the enterprise, helping you to manage the
entire lifecycle of work, from end to end. An operational system of record can give
you the visibility you need to make smarter decisions and refine focus.
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THE SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH
Figure 1.
The best tech stack strategies include an enterprise application platform at the
foundation, with the ability to create seamless integrations between core solutions
and workflows. Technologies to consider in this lineup are your financial, marketing
automation, customer relationship, data, and operational systems of record.
Marketing ops is responsible for tracking marketing success but must also
demonstrate their own value to the business. Your team needs the ability to justify
resources and budgets, as well as any plans to grow.
Take your answers to these questions and use them to make your vision a reality. A key
aspect of building the ideal martech stack is the ability to simplify, centralizing as much
marketing data as possible. Therefore, most of your tools and information should live in one
place, as your single source of truth.
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Step 2. Audit your existing tools.
You need to see exactly which tools each marketing team is using—and not using—before
you can begin to consolidate and centralize. Create a list or chart that identifies the name
of each solution, which teams use it, what it’s used for, the total number of users, and cost
per user.
• Calculate how many pieces of technology all marketing teams are using across
your department.
• Determine why your teams use each piece of technology. What problems does it solve?
What functionality do they expect it to provide? Do they use it as intended? Does it align
with the vision you’ve crafted in step 1? Is it providing value/ROI?
• Evaluate the adoption for each solution. What do team members like and dislike
about each?
• Examine where functionality overlaps. Are team members choosing tools based on
personal preference rather than purpose, thereby creating duplication and redundancy?
At the end of this step, you should have a clear idea of the use cases for each tool and
where there is opportunity for improvement.
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Step 3. Document your ideal marketing workflow.
Decide what you want the end-to-end flow of work to look like in your marketing department.
It will usually be a variation of this basic marketing workflow:
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Your vision of the ideal workflow will most likely look different
from the way work currently happens in your marketing
department. If your current workflow isn’t ideal, you’re not
alone. Only 36 percent of B2B marketers consider their
workflow to be “excellent” or “very good.”⁵ Another 34 percent 36%
of marketers say one of their top frustrations is that the
workflows across teams are disconnected or not defined.⁶
The process of documenting your ideal marketing workflow is Only 36% of B2B
marketers say their
the first step in helping you see where your tools hinder work. workflow is “excellent”
It’s also a chance to kick off the development of your ideal or “very good.”⁷
martech stack. Once you can see technology’s role in where
work goes wrong, you can begin to remedy it.
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Step 4. Map your existing tools to your workflow.
Now that you’ve decided on the ideal marketing workflow, visualize where your existing
tools fit. Create a diagram to help you see which technologies you have and if and where
they belong in your new workflow. See figure 2 for an example of how best in class,
enterprise marketing solutions map to the marketing workflow.
New requests
Plan
Fulfill
Project plan
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Final assets
Review
Figure 2.
• Flag the holes in your marketing stack, noting • Find out whether different teams are using
areas that could be automated with new different tools to do the same thing and
technology or integrations. determine whether you can standardize solutions
across teams.
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Step 5. Conduct a gap analysis.
By visualizing which solutions your teams use at each phase of work, you’ll be able to easily
identify gaps and redundancies in your current martech stack.
CO M PA R E E VA LUATE REFINE
• Document
opportunities
for integrations.
2/3
Less than 2/3 of marketing ops leaders feel
confident that their teams can successfully
implement new technology.”⁸
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Step 6. Prioritize next steps.
Address critical platforms first, including:
Marketing platforms are constantly evolving and it can be difficult to keep up. Many
platforms have similar features and functionalities. Determining which is superior or more
suitable for your organization can be time-consuming and overwhelming. That’s why it
can be tempting to focus on solutions that are the newest, flashiest, or that save the most
money. However, it’s important to concentrate on the solutions that will be at the foundation
of your martech stack, basing your judgments on their capabilities, ease of use, and ability
to integrate with other solutions.
Modern work management solutions like Workfront allow you to centralize all your
marketing planning and execution as well as automate workflows. By adding an enterprise
application platform like Workfront Fusion, you can connect all your business-critical
applications. This platform allows you to bridge the gaps between different technologies
with tailored integrations—creating a single, connected solution across systems.
And instead of employing a full-time staff of developers or a third-party firm, to build,
manage, and maintain your integrations, Workfront Fusion can codelessly connect all your
applications, centralize all your data, and automate workflows across solutions, teams,
and departments.
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Once you’ve laid the groundwork for your stack, continue with these steps:
5. See how your technology stack compares to award-winning martech stacks decided
by MarTech Today (“Stackie Awards”)
As you can see, it can be rewarding to thoughtfully evaluate and strategically structure the
technology that powers your marketing team.
Figure 3.
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F R O M WO R K F R O NT
C U S TO M E R S
Foote,
Cone & Belding
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Connect and empower marketing
teams with Workfront.
Implementing Workfront, as well as Workfront Fusion and Workfront Library, will
help you create a unified and intuitive martech stack that allows you to:
• Connect teams
• Improve marketing speed and efficiency
• Access data and reporting in real time
• Prove the value of marketing and marketing ops
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WO R K S C ITE D
1. The Digital Work Crisis Survey 2019. Workfront 6. The Digital Work Crisis Survey 2019. Workfront
and MarTech Today. and MarTech Today.
2. The Digital Work Crisis Survey 2019. Workfront 7. “B2B Content Marketing 2018: Benchmarks,
and MarTech Today. Budgets, and Trends—North America.” Content
Marketing Institute and Brightcove.
3. The Digital Work Crisis Survey 2019. Workfront
and MarTech Today. 8. The Digital Work Crisis Survey 2019. Workfront
and MarTech Today.
4. Brinker, Scott. “The 4 Forces of Marketing
Operations & Technology.” Chief Marketing 9. Kurzer, Robin. “Want to understand your
Technology Blog. August 28, 2018. https:// marketing stack better? Enter the 2019
chiefmartec.com/2018/08/4-forces-marketing- Stackie Awards.” December 14, 2018. https://
operations-technology/. martechtoday.com/want-to-understand-your-
marketing-stack-better-enter-the-2019-stackie-
5. “B2B Content Marketing 2018: Benchmarks, awards-228660.
Budgets, and Trends—North America.” Content
Marketing Institute and Brightcove. 10. FCB Case Study. Workfront. https://www.
workfront.com/resources/fcb-case-study.
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