A tech stack is a group of technologies which work together to perform a set goal for a business. Your HR department will have their own tech stack, going from the recruitment tools they use to their employee management software. Designers, developers, and just about any other professional team can utilise a tech stack to smooth out and improve their operations. At this point, though, you may be wondering how this applies to marketing automation.

A basic marketing tech stack has four levels; content, promotion, lead generation and capture, and lead management. Each of these levels works together to siphon potential customers through your business, enabling you to talk to those who are the most likely to buy something from you. Building a marketing tech stack can be tricky, but this post is here to help you out, and will be exploring the tools which can be used for each level.

Content

Digital marketing is all about content. You need images for social media, text for your blog, and you may even want to dabble with podcasts and videos. Managing this can be a challenge, especially if you have more than one person working to produce content for your business. There are a number of tools which can be used for this job, and it’s common to find companies using more than one in conjunction with one another.

A content management system (CMS) like WordPress will give you a place to host much of your content in the form of a website. This can be used for your blogs and general site content, along with hosting feeds from your various social media accounts. Alongside this, it will also make sense to have a solid digital asset management tool to help you to keep your images, documents, and other content stored securely in one place. This will enable all of your team members to access and add to your digital asset collection.

Promotion

The promotion level is the element of your stack which involves the most actual marketing work. Social media, online adverts, and even things like SEO can fall into this category, and this often makes the tech stack swell at this point. Social media can be controlled by a variety of tools, with options like Hootsuite and Later being good choices for those who would like to automate this part of their marketing. You may also want to have extra tools to help with your PPC adverts and SEO, though the tools provided by Google are often ample for the task.

Content will be fed down the tech stack into the promotion level, with your digital asset management company passing the files to your social media and advert management tools. The type of software you use for this will depend on the needs of your business and marketing methods you choose. For example, those that take a more direct approach to marketing may want to use an option like Salesforce.

Lead generation and capture

Lead generation gives you the opportunity to create high quality profiles for potential customers, while also ensuring that they are in the know about your business. There are a number of ways to handle lead generation, with web forms and landing pages being two of the most popular in the modern age. Tools like Lander can help you to produce excellent landing pages which will show up in search results and adverts, while encouraging users to use the forms which are presented to them. This sort of approach has proven to be incredibly successful, especially within the service industry.

People will find your lead generation tools as the result of your promotion. Your landing pages can be assigned to adverts, ensuring that as many people as possible are being pushed to use the forms on your website. There will be a lot of data to move around when you’re going through this process, and this makes systems integrations tools like IFTTT a good choice for those who want to automate it all and save some time.

Lead management

Finally, as the last part of this tech stack, it’s time to think about lead management. Properly handling your leads will be essential if you want to make regular sales, and a lot of companies slip up at this stage. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are the best choice for this, with options like Hubspot and Zendesk offering a range of different tools. Most CRM software will enable you to keep track of communication between you and your customers, send out bulk emails, and give you a clearer idea of the chances of making a sale with each customer.

Your leads will be passed to this level of the tech stack by your lead generation tools. This part of the process can be completely automated, leaving you to simply call or email the customers which come through. Some companies like to take their own approach with this, limiting the amount of calls they make to only the most qualified of customers. Of course, though, as a big part of this, you need to make sure that you’re contacting enough to make a good return.

This sort of tech stack can automate several aspects of your marketing. You will still have to create content and prepare things like social media posts, but you won’t have to do anything else until it comes to contacting your customers. This takes a lot of the stress and strain out of marketing, giving you the chance to throw yourself into other aspects of your business. This can be essential as a company grows, and it’s always worth thinking about the tech stacks you use to handle your work.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling well prepared to start the process of building your own tech stack from start to finish. This process might not be easy, and you will need to do plenty of research along the way, but the results will speak for themselves. Even the smallest of companies can benefit to a structured approach to their marketing.

HR Future Staff Writer in the UK.