“Give me six hours to chop a tree and I will spend the first five sharpening the axe” – Abraham Lincoln
Marketers are living in extremely interesting times. Marketing technology has seen an explosion of sorts, with thousands of tools, both free and paid available at the click of a few buttons. Marketers have access to unprecedented amount of data, and there is an app for anything they want to do. But when the budget, time and resources are limited, especially in case of Startups and Small Businesses, this problem of plenty can cause analysis paralysis, causing the marketer anxiety and frustration. The marketing stack for most organizations should typically have the following components:
- A content management tool
- A Data Analytics solution
- A CRM system
- A Lead Nurturing tool
Because of how vast the marketing technology universe is, it can get really tricky to select the right tool for each of these components. There are several factors which need to be considered – whether the tool is paid or free, will it integrate with the existing tools, is it easy to use, does it have all the required features, etc. It is always advisable to select tools which have free trial model or freemium model available. This make it easier for one to evaluate the tool based on the requirements, before signing up for the paid model.
It doesn’t end with selecting the right tool for your marketing activity. One needs to create a stack of tools which function together for a seamless and an end-to-end integrated marketing automation. This is imperative for process efficiency as it needs minimum or no manual intervention. In case of Startups and Small Businesses it is important to establish processes with minimum manual intervention because they have limited resources.
The IT Exchange whitepaper How Startups and Small Businesses can Build a Digital Marketing Stack on a Budget is designed to spell out what should go into digital marketing toolkit for a Startups and a Small Business marketer. It lists the best marketing tools out there – both free and paid and it shows how to combine and chain link multiple tools to get the data and insights that will help marketers achieve their business objectives.
