What Is Martech? Marketing Technology Definition, Examples, & Benefits

What is martech? 

Martech is software that powers and improves marketing processes. It is also referred to as marekting technology.

While some may call it a buzzword, the growing prevalence of marketing technology, or martech, is making the term an everyday phrase at marketing agencies that specialize in digital marketing.

Keep reading to learn the martech definition and its pivotal role in digital marketing! Here’s quick overview of everything we’ll cover on this page:

• What is martech?
• What is a martech stack?
• What are martech companies and what do they do?
• 5 fundamental martech applications
• 7 reasons martech matters to digital marketing

Our digital marketing campaigns impact the metrics that improve your bottom line.

See More Results

WebFX has driven the following results for clients:

$3 billion

In client revenue

7.8 million

Leads for our clients

5.2 million

Client phone calls

What is martech?

Martech is software that powers and improves marketing tasks. It generally refers to online marketing, as marketing technology can help build, manage, deliver, and optimize internet marketing campaigns.

What is a martech stack?

Companies often have a martech stack, which refers to a series of marketing technologies that manage a single channel or task. A stack can contain up to 10 technologies — also called point solutions.

What are martech companies and what do they do?

An alternative to a martech stack is an all-in-one marketing cloud.

Due to the depth of some martech applications, many businesses partner with a marketing technology company — there are almost 4,000 providers of martech services. A marketing technology company will follow a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model.

Some examples of martech companies include:

• HootSuite
• Salesforce
• Oracle
• Hubspot
• Buffer

As a result, tons of businesses use martech — and may not even realize it!

5 fundamental martech applications

Now that you know the answer to the question, “what is martech,” let’s dive into some essential martech tools.

For a better perspective on martech and its value, let’s look at five core martech applications:

1. Content management system (CMS)
2. Customer relationship management (CRM)
3. Data management platform (DMP)
4. Tag management
5. Account-based marketing (ABM)

1. Content management system (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) is a critical part of every company’s operations, as it hosts website data. One of the most well-known CMS platforms is WordPress, an excellent tool for managing and maintaining a company blog.

2. Customer relationship management (CRM)

A customer relationship management (CRM) is a core part of your day-to-day operations, as it streamlines your client management. Salesforce is a program synonymous with CRM. It lets you organize, automate, and sync your company’s sales, support, and marketing actions.

3. Data management platform (DMP)

Many businesses use a Data Management Platform (DMP), especially if they’re looking to make company data available to an entire team or department. Adobe, for example, provides a DMP through its cloud services.

4. Tag management

A tag management application focuses on streamlining online marketing analytics, which you can use for influencing your remarketing efforts. Most applications rely on a JavaScript code, which you can add to your website. The most popular option is Google Tag Manager.

5. Account-based marketing (ABM)

An Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platform allows users to track engagement rates among quality leads. It also provides valuable analytics, which teams can then use to modify marketing campaign messages. InsideView, as well as Demandbase, are go-to choices for ABM applications.

Measuring the metrics that affect your bottom line.

Are you interested in custom reporting that is specific to your unique business needs? Powered by MarketingCloudFX, WebFX creates custom reports based on the metrics that matter most to your company.

• Leads
• Transactions
• Calls
• Revenue

Learn More

7 reasons martech matters to digital marketing

With brands spending more than 15 percent of their budget on martech, it’s clear that marketing technology does offer value to companies.

In fact, companies expect to boost their martech budget by 10 percent in the coming year (and that’s a digital marketing fact!), emphasizing its long-term role and value.

Here are seven reasons why martech matters to digital marketing:

1. Gain audience insights
2. Automate processes
3. Increase productivity
4. Enhance competitiveness
5. Deliver personalized results
6. Provide actionable data
7. Improve online marketing results

1. Gain audience insights

In business, your audience matters. It’s critical that you understand what motivates their purchase decisions, as well as what they want in a product or service. By understanding their needs and desires, plus pain points, you can position yourself as their ideal provider.

Learning about your audience can take time, however.

If you lead an email marketing campaign, for instance, it will take weeks to gather and analyze the data without the assistance of a martech tool, such as EmailMarketingFX. With EmailMarketingFX, for example, you get streamlined reports that share the following:

• Open rates
• Click rates
• Unsubscribe rates
• Individual subscriber activity

With the appropriate marketing technology, you can assess your audience and their behavior faster. That can lead to result-driving changes in your marketing campaign, such as by modifying the call-to-action (CTA) of your email newsletter.

2. Automate processes

Every industry, from manufacturing to marketing, relies on automation. By streamlining and automating time-intensive processes, you can maximize the time and effort of your team. That can lead to improved productivity, as well as faster responses to time-sensitive tasks.

As an example, you can use marketing technology to expedite the time it takes to review the results from your A/B tests.

Instead of spending hours tallying and organizing the results into actionable data, you can utilize a program to do it for you.

Another way to demonstrate the value of martech comes from CallTrackerFX. This marketing technology provides real-time analytics about phone calls generated from your online marketing campaign. With this tool, you can automate — and improve the accuracy — of a process that would require hours.

3. Increase productivity

Like many technologies in the workplace, martech applications help improve the productivity of team members. By streamlining data and document access, as well as data gathering, your company can focus on reviewing and analyzing that data for action.

If you’re developing a content marketing campaign, for instance, it’s essential that your team can access the documents during normal working hours — and outside of work, if necessary. With a Data Management Platform, you can ensure everyone has immediate file access, eliminating project delays.

4. Enhance competitiveness

It’s essential to remain competitive in your market. By incorporating marketing technology into your business plan, you can maximize your unique selling points (USPs) and ensure you’re keeping up-to-date on market trends. The additional benefits of martech also improve your competitiveness.

By automating your processes — which can improve your productivity, marketing campaigns, and results — you’re becoming a better-known choice for consumers.

If you’re launching a lead generation campaign, for example, and your team doesn’t have an ABM, that prevents you from earning real-time data about engagement rates.

Without that data, you can’t create a smart action plan, but your competitor can if they’re relying on martech.

With MarketingCloudFX, for instance, you have access to a suite of marketing technologies. These martech tools, which range from call tracking to email marketing, inform your current and future marketing efforts by providing insight on your visitors and leads. The best part is that MarketingCloudFX offers an integrated versus siloed solution.

5. Deliver personalized results

Personalization is a core feature of marketing. In fact, when it comes to email marketing, personalization can improve open rates by more than 40 percent — in addition, it can bump up conversions by 10 percent. Without marketing technologies, it’s an immense challenge to offer personalization.

While you can thank clients that call your team, visit your store, or request your assistance, it’s hard to offer that experience to the leads you’re looking to convert.

That’s not the case with marketing technologies. With applications like MarketingCloudFX and EmailMarketingFX, you can personalize your marketing efforts to existing and future clients, which can increase engagement and conversion rates — and that leads to more revenue. In most cases, such as with MarketingCloudFX, you can automatically personalize your content.

6. Provide actionable data

Without marketing technologies, it’s a time-consuming and research-intensive process to develop an actionable, data-driven plan, such as for modifying the language or target audience of a social media marketing campaign. With martech, however, you can automate that process.

The result is the quick delivery of actionable data. The rate at which you receive this data can help you respond fast to changes in the marketplace, such as the discovery of a high-value, low cost-per-click (CPC) keyword for your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.

7. Improve online marketing results

For many businesses, the biggest benefit of martech are the results. By streamlining processes, from data collection to data analysis, you can deliver data-driven plans that drive results for your company and its marketing campaigns.

As a result, you’re earning a return on investment (ROI) from your marketing technologies. That’s essential too, as companies spend as much as six figures on their martech applications, with smaller businesses investing $5,000 to $20,000. Due to the increased popularity, convenience, and results of marketing technologies, however, martech is well worth the investment.

Measuring the metrics that affect your bottom line.

Are you interested in custom reporting that is specific to your unique business needs? Powered by MarketingCloudFX, WebFX creates custom reports based on the metrics that matter most to your company.

• Leads
• Transactions
• Calls
• Revenue

Learn More

Want to learn more about martech?

Now you know the answer to your question, “what is martech.” Ready to learn more about marketing technologies, as well as the companies behind them? Join our email newsletter for updates on the latest trends, plus tips for a performance-driven martech strategy!