Marketing Technology, or MarTech, is technology that’s used specifically to help achieve a company’s marketing objectives. To dive a little deeper, we asked 5th Kind’s product expert and marketing guru to explain what MarTech is, how it can help you, and how CORE by 5th Kind is an incredible MarTech tool.
- What is MarTech?
- Why is technology important in marketing?
- How much technical expertise does MarTech require?
- What are examples of Marketing Technology tools?
- How do I Become a Mar Expert?
- MarTech and Working Remotely
- What MarTech Tools Are Right For My Business?
What is MarTech?
Andy Rosic, 5th Kind’s VP of Product and a marketing guru
Andy: When you think about it, MarTech, which is a shortened way to say marketing technology, is just a natural evolution of traditional marketing. Think back to the old-school Mad Men days of marketing. Decisions were based on hunches or gut instincts as to what might look good or what people might respond to. Effectiveness, if it was even being measured at all, was only able to be looked at long after the fact.
With the advent of the internet and its onslaught of data, marketing has entered a new age, marked by precision monitoring and the measuring of a brand’s ability to connect with its consumers.
Today, you can provide a detailed report to your Chief Marketing Officer showing exactly how the money you’re spending is affecting new sales and revenue coming in. That’s the short answer. There’s a lot more that goes into MarTech.
Why Is Technology Important To Marketing?
Andy: Marketing technology is more important than ever because so much of it has moved from physical media to digital. We’re on our phones and computers all the time. Some of our cars now have this type of connectivity. Then there’s everything from email marketing and online advertisements to in-video game advertising and targeted digital video ads. On the other hand, we spend less time reading the newspaper or watching network television. Long story short, as marketing has gotten more and more digital, so has the technology to optimize that marketing.
To be an effective marketer today, you really have to adapt to take advantage of the different ways to reach your audience and monitor what’s working–and what isn’t.
How technical do you need to be to use MarTech?
Andy: One of the cool things about MarTech is you can really start from anywhere. Like anything else, there is much to learn. If your background is in traditional, less trackable types of marketing, then yeah, you’re going to experience a learning curve. But the good news is most MarTech tools are designed to be user-friendly so they’re generally very accessible to people of all levels of experience. This includes analytic tools, email marketing tools, and the like.
4 Ways You Can Excel in MarTech
1. Leverage tech to do more.
Leverage technology to do more. Deploy tools that help you manage all of your assets from one place.
2. Find tools to distribute across multiple platforms and formats.
Find tools that help you distribute across multiple platforms and formats like Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and even your website, partner websites, and email blasts.
3. Understand SEO more deeply.
Learn to understand the deeper levels of SEO. How is your ad doing? Is it being seen and engaged with? Are you achieving the right goals?
4. Adjust when things aren’t working.
Learn when to make adjustments if things aren’t working. Change your images or videos. Consider responding more quickly on social media.
The more technology-focused you become, the more you can optimize everything and really enhance your skill set. Start with one area to focus on, and add from there.
What are examples of Marketing Technology tools?
Andy: There are a ton of tools that will help with the various aspects of marketing. Everything from Google analytics to social media management sites to optimizing landing pages. Here are two tools, in particular, I’d like to call out.
Ad Monitoring
Really strong ad monitoring is crucial. Today, most people are seeing ads on social media in their feeds and in digital placements. Any tools that help you measure how people are seeing and interacting with your ad is essential to understanding how you should be adapting your marketing plan.
Digital Asset Management
Tools like CORE by 5th Kind are important because so much content is being generated on a daily basis. CORE enables secure file sharing, lets people to easily find photos and videos, and allows people with the right permissions to make changes to files. You don’t want to lose track of an asset and have to go back and re-shoot video or photo content. There’s no time for it. Social media moves really, so a digital asset management tool is life or death in social media marketing.
How Can I Become a MarTech Expert?
Andy: The cool part about becoming an expert is there’s so much to do in the marketing space. It really comes down to figuring out which components you enjoy most. Double down on those.
The central components of marketing are pulling together things that engage your audience and tell the story of your company or product. Whatever you’re marketing, you have to speak to an audience that wants to be spoken to. Find what interests you the most in the field, and learn all you can about those MarTech tools.
Every company needs some kind of marketing expert like analytics or marketing automation or email marketing or social media. You’ll need to know how the numbers and feedback work, how, when, and where ads or emails are posted, how engagement works, or how influencers work. So dig in, figure out how to be the expert on your digital asset management tool, and see how those insights can push your company forward in terms of storytelling and marketing.
MarTech and Working Remotely
Andy: Teams are only getting larger and more globally interconnected. And as we all know, the new normal is working from home. To get the job done, you can’t just pull people in a room and look at a screen together or look at a whiteboard and make decisions. You need tools to help you do that. You need real-time digital tools to get people looking at the same content and getting on the same page. CORE by 5th Kind excels at facilitating exactly this type of digital collaboration.
You can pull together PDFs, images, videos, all sorts of different assets that are crucial to marketing. You can also host fully remote sessions with your whole team walking through those files and ideas. With CORE Sync, users can make edits and comments visible to everyone in the session. As the host, you’re able to share the session and its assets with the right people, so you can send previews with partners or let executives know what’s coming.
Having this kind of tool to support your other remote MarTech workflows is absolutely critical to keeping business moving, and key stakeholders engaged, no matter what device they’re on. Consider a busy executive who wants to view files on their phone. They don’t want to deal with the hassle of special hardware or software or any added complexity. CORE solves that problem. It also works well for your coworkers who like their big screens and complicated setups, and for those who like to take their laptop to the park or coffee shop. No matter your device or your internet speed, it’s really important when everyone’s distributed that your tools work and everybody can connect.
What MarTech Tools Are Right For My Business?
Andy: As we’ve talked about here, MarTech covers such a huge umbrella of digital marketing tools. At first, it can be a little bit daunting, but the key thing is to identify the elements that are going to help your company, your business, or your client grow.
Your MarTech Tools Should Be Able to Answer These Questions:
- Can you easily find all your assets and their different versions?
- Are you able to measure the impact of your marketing?
- Can your team collaborate effectively no matter where they’re located?
- Are you able to work with the marketing formats where your customers live online?
- Can you distribute your outreach quickly and easily and on the right platforms?
