In today’s market, savvy marketing professionals are empowered to make their own technology choices and, therefore, have the ability to deliver marketing solutions specifically designed for their business needs.  A solid, well-engineered marketing stack creates a seamless, meaningful and relevant experience for consumers and provides the marketer deep insight into those experiences and interactions, along with the ability to analyze and optimize each at a granular level.

I’ve said before that the strongest marketing stack begins with the right partner, and that criteria for selecting that partner should be based as much on culture as technology. To dive a little bit deeper into that piece of the evaluation process, here are few questions you should be asking as you consider potential partners:

What’s the history of the company you’re considering? What was the original vision for their organization? In marketing and advertising technology, we see a lot of fly-by-nights, and a lot companies that pivot away from their vision to follow consumer demand, rather than being focused on scalable innovation for the future. Because the foundation of your marketing stack is so critical to your future success, make sure the partner you choose is one with both vision and integrity. You’ll want a team and a technology that’s in it for the long haul, just like you.

What’s the company’s vision for the future? Where are they headed? Does this vision match with what you are trying to achieve from a marketing and business perspective? As stated above, you’ll want a partner whose goals are in lockstep with your own. For example, if your ultimate goal is to be the leader in omni-channel, make sure your partner is on the same page – do they offer access to programmatic media across all addressable media, like MediaMath? If not, that could indicate a poor fit and the painful transition to a new partner sooner than you’d like. Be sure to confirm that you and your partner are aligned business-wise.

Along these lines, find out if your prospective partner offers and open or closed platform. If you’re limited to the components your partner offers under their umbrella, you may be sacrificing ease of integration for flexibility and scalability. Determine how important that is to your business. If your selected partner maintains an open platform, you’ll have increased control over the technology in the long-term, and how you choose to customize it.

Evaluation of course continues even after the stack is built, so the next question must be: How well does your partner support their technology? If something doesn’t function or deliver as expected, will your partner be there to deliver guidance or technical support as needed? To find out, check references. Read reviews. Speak to current clients. Your marketing technology partner should be able, willing, and even excited to supply the technology as well asthe people and knowledge that went into building it to ensure client success.

Evaluating your marketing technology stack is no easy feat, and not a task to be taken lightly. Take your time, ask lots of questions, and again — do your due diligence. Keep your technology team in the loop from day one, and if needed, consult (or become) a marketing engineer. You’ll never regret the time you invested once you have the right platform for your digital marketing efforts.

This post is the tenth in a series for marketers with an understanding of programmatic technology who are looking to step it up. Keep up with this series by following the Step It Up Series on the blog.

Do you have what it takes to integrate programmatic technology more deeply into your business strategy? Take our quiz to identify your level of programmatic sophistication and get to the next level.

In today’s data-driven marketing landscape organizations are navigating a crowded, rapidly evolving landscape to build out their marketing technology stack.  While I recently outlined the core capabilities that are fundamental to providing success for marketers, the process of building a marketing technology stack requires a key understanding of your businesses goals and needs, which raises the first question regarding building a technology stack:

How do you know what you need?

You can only discover what you need by referring back to your larger business needs and goals. Therefore, “what you need” will vary from business to business. A big-box retailer’s e-commerce site may need a product recommendation tool to help shoppers find what they need and a monetization tool to drive incremental revenue. A large brand may be more focused on layering in a DMP to better understand its audience, and personalization tools to improve engagement within target segments. More niche retailers may want location tools to drive consumers into stores. Regardless of brand size or marketing goal, marketers using a holistic marketing operating system eliminate the need of using separate providers, as the technology combines data management capabilities with digital media buying in the planning, execution, attribution, and optimization of digital marketing campaigns.

What does the stack connect to?

When it comes to paid media, your technology solution should ultimately connect to all media available via programmatic. Via your tech stack, you should be able to see all addressable inventory, understand how that available media relates to your customer’s journey, and have a clear view of which media performs the best, for whom, and at what point.

The process of buying media, running ads, and analyzing results used to be a very disjointed process. You’d have to call the agency or the ad rep, wait a week for them to return your call, and then fill out an I/O before your ads could run. Audience data had to be manually analyzed, insights manually extrapolated. From there, performance analytics solutions could be cobbled together between disparate players with paper clips and glue. Reports were cut and pasted into PowerPoint to create a “dashboard” so you could see the full lifecycle of your campaign.

With a platform such as TerminalOne Marketing Operating System™ everything can be handled from your desktop – from the selection of media, targeting, and a full suite of analytics catered to your business goals.

How do you integrate solutions into your stack?

The partner you select for the foundational layer of your marketing stack will be a tremendous help as you continue building your marketing stack. Choosing partners that will add value to your marketing practice and integrating them into your stack involves testing and vetting various solutions. MediaMath’s OPEN Partner Marketplace strives to connect marketers with data and media partners to make it easier and faster to work with your chosen partners. MediaMath clients are able to incorporate partners’ best-of-breed solutions into their marketing with out having to manage multiple vendor relationships on their own.

For all the reasons outlined above, we advise marketers to select a technology solution like TerminalOne Marketing Operating System™ that drives efficiency for marketers by combining essential marketing capabilities into one solution.

This post is the ninth in a series for marketers with an understanding of programmatic technology who are looking to step it up. Keep up with this series by following the Step It Up Series on the blog.

Do you have what it takes to integrate programmatic technology more deeply into your business strategy? Take our quiz to identify your level of programmatic sophistication and get to the next level.

Earlier this year, Matthew Mobley wrote an article in Ad Age titled “There Is No Universal Digital Marketing Technology Stack.” Mobley notes that “even the most advanced marketers are desperate to understand and procure the capabilities they need in order to accomplish their customer-centric business objectives, and what it means within their own unique organizations to integrate those capabilities for seamless execution.”

Before marketers make moves to integrate disparate point solutions they should consider what exactly they need their technology to achieve. While there may be no universal stack, what the stack must accomplish is clear. A tech stack must:

●    Collect data
●    Aggregate it into meaningful segments
●    Activate those segments via channels and media

Understanding the significance of each of these tasks with regard to your organization will help determine which components are most important, and where your investments should ultimately be made. That said, there are many, many companies and technologies that could potentially fit into your marketing tech stack. The obvious questions from there is, how do you figure out exactly what you need? Here are few steps that may help guide your path:

1.    Choose the right business partner. This decision should be based as much on culture as it is on technology; the people driving the technology vision are as important as the technology solution itself. As you consider each potential partner, look for a technology that offers a broad set of functionalities and has an open approach to point solutions. A marketing operating system may be good place to start as they have a broad set of addressable media-buying capabilities that connect and activate first-party and third-party data. MediaMath supports a system of integrating partners in an open and flexible way through its OPEN Partner Marketplace. Once you’ve selected the technology, get to know the people beyond the sales team. Acquaint yourself with the account representatives, as well as the head of product. You’ll know if they have a vision of where they are taking their technology, and how it will support your business now and into the future. Switching costs can be significant, so it’s important to be sure this is a partner who can grow with you long term.

2.    Don’t be lured in by bright, shiny objects. The proliferation of new technology providers means marketers have countless solutions to choose from. However some of these companies are too nascent to have proven their value. For that reason, it’s usually best to hold off until there is market traction. When something seems too good (or too cool) to be true, it probably is. Really, the best question to ask yourself is this: Is that new technology going to directly impact your key business KPIs this year? If the answer is no, then move on. You have more important investments to consider right now.

3.    Educate yourself and tie everything back to business priorities and solving organizational problems. The marketing technology landscape is vast and confusing — and changing every day. While it’s not necessary (or even possible) to learn every player or even every bucket, there are areas that are going to be very important to your business. Take the time to focus and learn about these existing and emerging technologies and how they can impact your business and improve experiences for your customers. Listen to pitches. Network and share experiences with others in your vertical or other verticals. Read the trades. Ask lots of questions. The more you learn, the more effective you’ll be when it comes time to make choices for your stack.

In the end, your technology stack will be unique to your business, as Mobley says. By combining the best of your existing technology with the best available technology and partners you can find — always keeping your business goals at the forefront — the best tech stack is within reach.

This post is the eight in a series for marketers with an understanding of programmatic technology who are looking to step it up. Keep up with this series by following the Step It Up Series on the blog.

Do you have what it takes to integrate programmatic technology more deeply into your business strategy? Take our quiz to identify your level of programmatic sophistication and get to the next level.