Unlocking the power of Martech

By Tim Gambrill, Co-founder of Mighty Atoms

In the world of sales and marketing, technology and AI have become the new rock stars. With platforms like ChatGPT reaching 1 million users in just five days, it’s clear that Martech is now at the top of the marketing agenda. Yet, finding solid, practical advice on how to maximise the potential of Martech, alongside tools like AI, remains a challenge.

Using Martech effectively can give you some serious advantages and although the budgets and resources of bigger businesses are significant, it’s worth looking at what they’ve achieved as the fundamentals are similar and can be applied to any size of business.

For SME owners, effective marketing is essential for attracting new clients and retaining existing customers. In a competitive market, leveraging the right marketing technology (Martech) can significantly improve effectiveness. Martech tools can streamline marketing processes, improve customer engagement, and drive business growth.

We asked Mighty Atoms’ customers about their usage and used our own specialists and tech experts to come up with some practical advice based on our experience. We’ve also tried to cover all levels of knowledge with a focus on smaller to medium sized businesses in the following section. We’ve covered off the use of ‘generative AI’ (using AI to generate content) but it’s worth acknowledging that the best Martech platforms have an element of AI built in.

1. What is Martech?
2. How can Martech help my business?
3. Where is Martech most useful and where is it most used?
4. Some great examples of where it has been used effectively and importantly, where it’s not worked so well with the pitfalls you need to avoid.
5. Some of the tools we have used and would recommend and how you could use them.

If like some of our customers you are feeling a little confused about Marketing Technology you are not alone, many businesses aren’t sure where to start, and John Tracy, CEO of Zen Auto, is  one of those!

“Marketing Technology is an area we would love to embrace; the problem is where do we start? What is Martech and how does it relate to AI? How can I make my marketing more accurate, analytical, effective and efficient using Martech? Which area should I prioritise? What can I expect? Do I need to train my team? Which is the best CRM/Email/Content/Chatbot platform? Will it integrate with my website and will it work with my other technology”.

Such questions are asked every day across the country, and so started our mission to help businesses get a clear picture of Martech. So on with the show!

 

What is Martech?

Martech loosely covers the tools, platforms, and applications that businesses use to improve their sales and marketing efforts, which helps them drive sales and engagement. The goal of Martech is to streamline marketing processes and improve flexibility from email platforms to analytics tools, some of the more popular ones being HubSpot, Mailchimp, Hootsuite and Zapier. Used properly it can give businesses a distinct competitive advantage, make you more accurate and efficient and allow you to get back to the areas of your business that can only be done by humans – which you’ll see later on is absolutely essential.

However, fail to use Martech properly and it can hinder your business or damage your reputation

How can Marketing Technology help my business?

1. It can help you make better decisions:

If you don’t have a strategy that’s based on fact you can run into trouble very quickly. Some Martech tools excel at providing great intelligence; Similarweb can give you an accurate picture of how your website and digital marketing compares to your competitors, or tools like Looker combine all your data into one report and create a dashboard to monitor all your KPIs accurately and easily. As with the best Martech platforms, Looker can work with all of your internal and external systems and sources of information and give you all you need to develop your strategy and monitor your sales and marketing performance – furthermore it will give your agencies nowhere to hide.

2. Improve your targeting and personalisation

You can use Martech tools like Mailchimp and HubSpot to clearly segment your audience and deliver personalised content based on their specific needs. This is pretty basic practice, but it can double your engagement (at Mighty Atoms we’ve seen open rates on emails increase from 20% to 40%) and few businesses take full advantage of this or fail to make the most of the automation process and end up stripping the human element from their content.

3. Introduce automation and improve your accuracy and efficiency

Automation tools like Zapier can speed up data processing, create routines and even help personalise your content creation. You can connect various systems and platforms like your Website, TikTok, Email, and trigger actions when specific criteria are met allowing your teams to save time and respond to leads immediately, while ensuring data is accurately updated simultaneously.

4. Improve your customer experience

With the right tools, businesses can create seamless, customer journeys. Contrary to common opinion, accurate communication such as emails are not all considered a nuisance; so long as they are timely and intuitive they are actually seen as good customer service, and connecting platforms make it easier to be consistent in your messaging and personality.

5. Personalisation, Martech and AI

Whilst using AI to generate content can save time and resource when done well, Zapier can also connect to AI engines and allow personalisation at scale. Consider an email campaign that needs to be tailored for each recipient. Zapier can connect a spreadsheet containing contact details, such as names, industries, or specific preferences, and feed this data into a generative AI tool. The AI tool can then create personalised email content based on each contact using the data provided. Once the unique emails are generated, Zapier can automatically send each one to a CRM system like HubSpot to trigger an email sequence, or even directly send the personalised emails to contacts without any manual effort. This automation not only speeds up the content creation process but also allows for highly targeted and personalised communications to be scaled effectively across hundreds of contacts, boosting engagement and enhancing user experience.

Another major benefit of Martech is its scalability allowing you to grow your marketing efforts without the need to dramatically increase your manpower. If it’s set up properly it’s an unbelievable time saver.

Where is Martech most useful and where is it most used?

Martech can help decision making, enable you to be more customer focused, more accurate and efficient and improve your customer’s experience. Its impact is universal, and it will improve your performance regardless of size, but it tends to be more effective in some areas than others.

1. The B2B sector has woken up to the opportunity as Martech plays a key role in lead generation, nurturing, and conversion. Really cost-effective tools like CRM systems and email platforms can dramatically improve efficiency particularly when connected using tools like Zapier, which can identify potential customers, develop different segments, deliver individual messages, capture responses and respond automatically whilst providing visibility of the whole journey.
2. For retail and e-commerce, a platform like Shopify is essential as it offers personalised marketing campaigns, customer journey mapping, email automation, dynamic pricing, and cross selling. It helps retailers analyse shopping patterns, improve customer experiences, and drive sales through targeted ads and promotions.
3. Martech is increasingly being used to transform the recruitment industry by streamlining operations, improving candidate sourcing, and enhancing communication strategies. co.uk, has integrated Martech tools that leverage machine learning and data analytics to enhance their candidate-job matching process. By analysing candidate behaviour, skills, and job preferences, Reed uses Martech to deliver highly targeted job recommendations to candidates. This data-driven approach has improved candidate engagement, reduced application drop-offs, increased placements for employers and reduced cost per acquisition.

Mighty Atoms implemented a similar system for a professional services SME making use of all their existing data. By re-engaging with some of their lapsed customers, and segmenting and personalising the messaging, they secured 2 deals worth £140k each in their first email.

But be careful, it has its limitations

The BBC used AI to create news summaries, which was fast but had problems. The AI often made the summaries too simple or missed important details, especially on sensitive topics. This led to mistakes and criticism about the quality of the content. The lesson is that while AI can help save time, it needs humans to check and guide it, especially for complex or serious issues, to ensure accuracy and proper context.

How do I avoid some of the following pitfalls?

1. Implementing Martech without a well-defined marketing strategy.
2. Automating every marketing process without balancing human touch.
3. Using Martech without ensuring the accuracy and cleanliness of data.
4. Adopting too many tools, leading to a disjointed and overly complex Martech stack.
5. Failing to integrate Martech tools with other systems like CRM, ERP, or analytics platforms.
6. Using Martech tools solely for transactional purposes and neglecting the overall customer experience.
7. Implementing Martech tools without adequately training marketing teams.
8. Underestimating data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) when using Martech.

‘Buy’ Martech like you would buy any service. Ensure it fits around your existing strategy and supports your KPIs so you can monitor its effects. Continuously monitor and optimise the activity campaigns, tools, and strategies to adapt to evolving market conditions and customer preferences. More specifically around Martech:

1. Use automation to streamline processes but maintain human oversight to ensure correct personalisation and maintain authenticity.
2. Regularly audit and clean your data, ensuring it is up-to-date, accurate, and free of duplicates.
3. Focus on a streamlined Martech stack that integrates seamlessly and supports your strategy, avoid adding tools without clear, demonstrable value.
4. Ensure all tools integrate seamlessly and communicate with each other to provide a unified view of your marketing efforts and customer journey.
5. Provide training and ongoing support for to ensure your team knows how to use the technology efficiently and strategically.
6. Ensure that all Martech tools comply with data privacy laws and implement strict data governance policies to protect customer information.

Like with many Marketing tools it may seem the options are endless and confusing. Work out your strategy, identify the areas of opportunity and review the solutions. You can use Mighty Atoms Martech Health check and review the results with one of our tech experts who can advise you on the how to make the most of the available technology.

Some of the tools we have used and would recommend and how you could use them

To be clear, every business has different goals, customers differ dramatically and need to be treated individually, however the following highlights the areas where Martech will have the most impact.

To focus on the facts: We recommend using Looker to combine data from all your sources. From your own sales data to website performance on Google Analytics it can connect to all your other marketing platforms from LinkedIn to TikTok. It’s also free (although you may need a developer) and it will give you a single view of your marketing and sales performance every week, month, quarter or year, which is great to hold all your team to account!

If you’re building a website, our recommendation would be WordPress for most marketing or info sites. Its flexible and scalable, with a wide range of plugins for SEO, e-commerce and more, and most developers can use it which means support is readily available and cheap. Make sure you use a content management system that is easy to adopt like Elementor.

For SMEs in the retail space, our number one recommendation must be Shopify: Popular and user-friendly, great for small businesses but also used by some surprisingly big ones, with built-in marketing tools, payment processing, and inventory management. However, for B2B businesses selling a couple of products or services, WooCommerce could be more suitable.

For Customer Relationship Management (CRM): For tools to help manage customers, track leads, and manage the sales process use HubSpot, it’s free to start and can grow with you as you grow. You can add email tracking, lead generation, and sales automation features. It can connect with most tools and whilst a beast like Salesforce can cause your sales team to grind to a halt, this is easy.

Combine HubSpot with Mailchimp’s email platform. It also has a free plan and robust email marketing features, including automation, segmentation, and its reporting is easy to use and comprehensive.

If social media is a proven channel for you, Hootsuite makes scheduling posts across multiple platforms easy and is great for monitoring performance, however it can be costly.

We’ve mentioned Zapier several times. You can really maximise automation using a tool like Zapier. Zapier can connect various systems and automate them via tasks or zaps. This kind of automation can save time, enhance efficiency and improve response times, all while ensuring data is up to date across multiple systems.

To help you improve your insight, you could use ScoreAPP for in depth audits, it’s customisable and one of the only affordable platforms to email a PDF with their individual results. However it’s more costly and requires a couple of days to set up, whereas Google Forms is a free, simple tool for creating surveys and collecting customer data, ideal for budget-conscious SMEs.

And this is just a summary of all that’s out there. There are some great options for customer service for example, and social and advertising channels like Facebook and Google ads need a blog to themselves.

And finally, AI

The truth is most of the tools above use elements of AI already so by adopting Martech you are likely to adopt an element of AI. ‘Generative AI’ covers areas like using ChatGPT to generate content. You cannot ignore the time saving benefits of using tools like ChatGPT, however use it as a guide to create a framework and make sure your content is filled with your own thoughts, real examples and testimonials and importantly spoken in your own language or you could land yourself in trouble. As AI becomes more prevalent the misuse seems to be on the increase too. Back in 2022 two New York lawyers who included six fictitious case citations generated using ChatGPT were both ordered to pay a $5,000 fine.

In summary, regardless of size or sector, businesses need to embrace marketing and sales technology but treat it with the same caution as every other investment. Work out your strategy, identify the opportunities where automation, efficiency and accuracy could be improved, but seek some advice from a specialist before you press go.

Get Martech fit for 2025

If you’re serious about Martech and really want to make the most of it, take the Martech Health check to identify the areas where you should focus, and if you are interested, Mighty Atoms are offering a free consultation where they’ll explain your results and recommend a plan to get you Martech fit for 2025.

About the author

Tim Gambrill is the co-founder of Mighty Atoms. After 25 years in Marketing for Blue Chip businesses including Pepsi, Starbucks, PizzaExpress and Virgin, Tim saw an opportunity to combine big business learning with pace of delivery and value to SME’s. Tim has significant experience in Marketing and Commercial Strategy, Brand Development, Lead Generation, Digital Marketing and Web Development, he also sees Martech as a vital enabler for better, more efficient marketing and as a result this has been incorporated into most of Mighty Atom’s programmes. Amongst Tim’s achievements are returning PizzaExpress to growth through introduction of seasonal menus, launching Frappuccino in the UK for Starbucks and Westfield’s Stratford City Shopping Centre on the Olympic Park.

Mighty Atoms was launched in 2020 and is owned by Tim and Karen Trickett. The name ‘Mighty Atoms’ represents the belief that small can be powerful, especially when knowledge, expertise, analytics, and technology are combined. All support is provided by CMOs with at least 20 years’ experience acting as interim Directors or delivering specific projects from business and marketing strategy to brand development, lead generation and digital marketing. In four years, Mighty Atoms has worked with over 40 businesses across manufacturing, professional services, technology, and property.