Technical Marketing: Your Essential Guide to Mastering the Craft
What is A Technical Marketer
A Technical Marketer blends tech expertise with marketing skills to optimise user journeys using a martech stack. While they may specialise in certain areas, they are versatile enough to tackle various types of projects.
Not developers themselves, they nonetheless possess a deep understanding of technology and collaborate effectively with developers to craft code-based marketing solutions.
Table Of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Foundations: Essential knowledge and skills all marketers must intuitively grasp and develop in 2024.
Marketing Technology
Introduction To Marketing Channels
Marketing Metrics That Matter
Human Behaviour & Marketing
Chapter 2 - Applications: These are Experience Focus skills you need to have a deep understanding of ,as well as, some practical hands-on experience (Ability to Execute XYZ)
Branding - (Coming Soon)
User Acquisition Models - (Coming Soon)
Retention/Loyalty - (Coming Soon)
Web Analytics & Insights - (Coming Soon)
Chapter 3 - Leadership: Results Focus Skills (Ability to connect the dots)
Business & Marketing Integration (Biz Intelligence & Marketing Ops) - (Coming Soon)
CX - (Coming Soon)
Tech & Data (Apis) - (Coming Soon)
People & Organization (Marketing Team Structure) - (Coming Soon)
Let’s get started
Chapter 1 - What is Marketing Technology or Martech?
Over the past 22 years, advancements in technology and the internet have significantly heightened business competitiveness. Global exports have surged by 4000% YoY in the last decade, shrinking market shares for businesses that don’t regularly acquire new customers or retain a substantial portion of their existing ones. Leveraging technology is crucial in addressing these challenges.
Our Definition of Marketing Technology
Marketing technology combines technology and marketing strategies to enhance customer journeys and profitability. Essentially, it involves investing in tech to address various challenges, such as conversion rate optimisation, user acquisition, retention, and product churn reduction.
Martech involves a blend of marketing and technology solutions designed to harmonise their relationship and address common scalability issues. It encompasses tech and strategies that integrate these fields effectively.
MarTech, short for Marketing Technology, represents the integration of technology to address marketing and growth challenges.
Evolution of Marketing:
Tech advancements have dramatically enhanced the efficiency and outcomes of marketing. & media tasks that were once manual. Today, technology previously exclusive to large corporations is widely utilised across various industries and business types.
Martech Landscape (2011-2019)
Over the past 20 years, the use of technology in marketing has grown substantially. Today, most companies employ a “marketing technology stack”—a collection of marketing technologies tailored to their needs.
We will cover Martech stacks later in this chapter
Benefits of Using Marketing Technology
Enhancing Customer Engagement
Employing a mix of MarTech solutions enables you to strengthen relationships with your audience by facilitating interaction, communication, and value delivery throughout their buying journey.
User Journey & Content Mapping
Effortlessly satisfy your customers’ expectations and needs by distributing unique and intelligent content through digital channels.
Productivity Boost
Tech improve productivity by streamlining workflows and saving time with automations that handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks.
Accelerate Media Efficiency
Integrating robust tech stack ensures that the value of each marketing tool is enhanced, which not only accelerates campaign execution but also optimises budget allocation and improves overall campaign effectiveness.
Martech Stack
A digital marketing technology stack includes tools that help marketers enhance and optimize tactics throughout the customer lifecycle. These tools are vital for analyzing campaign performance, improving internal collaboration, and enabling personalized communication with prospects.
Importance of the Digital Marketing Stack:
The digital marketing stack is essential because it allows marketers to efficiently reach and engage potential customers, adapt to changing behaviors and channels, and strengthen customer relationships across multiple platforms.
How to evaluate Digital Marketing stack
1. Visualise and Categorise Tech: Use stack-oriented charts to map out your digital marketing tools. This helps predict how each tool contributes to meeting customer value and expectations.
2. Assess Effectiveness: Focus on evaluating the performance of each marketing tool using data to ensure they’re achieving desired outcomes.
3. Optimise Your Stack: Regularly review and decide which tools to keep, replace, or remove based on their performance and alignment with your goals.
Design your martech stack based on your business goals
Chapter 2 - Introduction to Marketing Channels
To generate growth, most companies prioritise 1 to 3 marketing acquisition channels until they identify sustainable growth opportunities. This stage, known as traction, provides quantitative evidence of customer demand.
For example, traction can be demonstrated by increased website traffic from SEO efforts that sustainbly generate qualified traffic without heavy maintenance on content marketing, or by product purchases from email subscribers through personalised automated email marketing campaigns.
Defining the POEM Framework
Getting customers to pay attention to your business and the products or services you sell can be completed using traditional advertising, which may include using PPC advertising, TV commercials or sponsored tweets.
You can also use your assets, such as a blog or email list. A third way your business might gain attention is by receiving free publicity.
These three methods can be broken down into these categories, which make up the POEM framework:
Paid Media: Paying to reach an audience through another party’s platform, tracked with metrics like views or conversions. Effective paid media tactics don’t last long because you must keep paying to maintain them, and since it’s easy for others to use these tactics too, being innovative is crucial.
Owned Media: Using your own digital assets, like blog content, email lists, or websites. Requires investment and can be harder to measure if multiple channels are involved.
Earned Media: Free publicity from the press or public, like social media mentions or customer reviews. It’s content created about your brand by others at “no cost”.
How Acquisition Channels Work
Acquisition channels are media platforms used to attract new customers. They work by reaching potential customers where they spend time, using targeted strategies to capture their interest and convert them into leads or buyers.
Integrating new acquisition channels into a business’s overall marketing strategy not only opens up new opportunities to attract customers but can also provide significant competitive advantages in crowded markets.
- Banner Ads
- PPC
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social
- Mobile
https://www.kevin-indig.com/the-4-only-scalable-customer-acquisition-channels/
Understanding the Dynamics of Acquisition Channels in a Marketplacee
Initially, the “first movers” in new acquisition channels are often newcompanies aiming to go quickly gain attention. these early entrants usually lack a sustainable product offering.
“First followers,” who enter the channel soon after, have a better chance of sustainability if they offer a strong product or service. For example, Zynga successfully entered the social distribution channel with popular games, securing a lasting presence.
Entering a new acquistion channel is typically less expensive than competing in an established one, making it easier for new companies to become leaders.
Once a company secures this position, it becomes more difficult for established companies to replicate their success without significant adjustments.
Prioritising Your Marketing Efforts by Using the Bullseye Framework
With many acquistion channels available and new ones emerging, it’s essential to identify the most effective one for your marketing efforts.
The Bullseye Framework helps you do this through four steps:
1. Brainstorm: List all potential channels. Ask questions like, “What’s the expected cost to acquire a customer through this channel?” and “How long will it take to see results?”
2. Rank: Organise your ideas into a bullseye diagram with three concentric circles:
• Center: Most promising channels. Middle Circle: Channels that might work. Outer Ring: Longshot channels.
3. Prioritise: Focus on the channels in the center of your bullseye. These have the highest potential.
4. Test: Experiment with the channels in the center. If one shows strong results, concentrate your efforts there to maximise traction.
Technical vs. Non-technical Marketers
Technical marketers have specific technical skills that aid their marketing efforts. For example, an SEO specialist optimises content by using relevant keywords to improve search rankings and visibility.
Non-technical marketers primarily focus on traditional media and marketing channels, such as TV, radio, print, and direct mail. These marketers leverage their strengths in creativity, storytelling, and communication to craft compelling messages that resonate with a broad audience.
Marketing is often seen as a blend of both cultural understanding and organizational study. It involves understanding people, customer decision-making, and human behavior. Despite the technical aspects, these human-focused skills remain vital.
Whether you are a technical or non-technical marketer, the key is to continually adapt and refine your strategies.
Evaluate your assumptions, adjust your approach, and repeat the process until you achieve success in your marketing efforts.
Why Should All Marketers be Technical?
A technical understanding of your MarTech stack and customer journey is crucial for developing sustainable growth strategies.
However, many businesses underestimate the importance of technical skills and their role in achieving business goals.
This is often due to rigid organisational structures that fail to recognise the strategic value of a well-crafted technical marketing strategy.
Digital Experience and Content as a product
“Digital Experience & Content As A Product” is a framework that treats digital experiences and content development like product development. It involves designing, testing, and improving content and web experiences continuously, just like managing multiple products.
Content and the whole digital experience are continuous processes that evolve ans their integration with channel (like email or social media) is treated as a separate product, with its own unique goals and testing.
Paid Media: To get the best results from paid media, focus on keeping customers engaged (activeted) and retained, not just acquiring them. Otherwise, the cost to acquire new customers will keep increasing.
SEO: Strong SEO is crucial because many potential customers find products through online searches. Neglecting SEO means missing out on these prospects during their research.
Web & Product Analytics: Regularly analysing how users interact with your website and products helps you understand their behaviour, improve engagement, and enhance the customer experience. Using these insights keeps your content and products relevant and effective in a changing market.
What Non-Technical Marketers Must Know About MarTech
Having a basic understanding of how the internet and technology work is valuable for all marketers. As software becomes essential across all industries, knowing the basics helps improve marketing, revenue generation, and customer acqusition. It also allows marketers to better understand how their tools fit into the larger digital environment.
Chapter 3 - Marketing Metrics That Matter
The Digital Shift in Media & Marketing
The world has gone digital, and studies show that email, social media, and websites are the most effective ways to engage with customers. Regardless of whether customers use mobile or desktop, they rely on these platforms to compare brands and prices, making it crucial to engage them both before and after a sale.
Successful businesses provide a seamless brand experience across all touchpoints, creating a positive experience for customers.
However, as marketers, we must determine if these efforts actually benefit the business. Were they worth the time, energy, and ad spend? Did they generate enough ROI?
These questions can only be answered through a robust understanding of your prospects and business metrics. With so many metrics to track, it can be challenging for new marketers and business owners to prioritise which ones will truly impact their short-term and long-term goals.
Should you focus on impressions, engagement, and page views to gauge marketing effectiveness, or should you concentrate on hard metrics like revenue and ad spend?
The answer is both.
Let’s dig into the metrics.
Front-End, and Back-End Metrics 101
Soft and hard metrics are key to calculating a campaign’s ROI. Think of them in three categories: Front-end, Middle, and Back-end.
• Front-end Metrics: Track engagement and click-through rates to see if your message captures your audience’s interest.
• Middle Metrics: Measure behaviour with metrics like bounce rates and conversion rates to understand how many leads you’re losing and gaining.
• Back-end Metrics: Focus on spend and revenue to see how your marketing efforts impact profits.
The Peanut Butter & Jelly of Digital Marketing Metrics
Front-end and Back-end metrics may seem like opposites, but they work best together. A common mistake is to focus on one at the expense of the other or to assume one is more valuable. They’re like peanut butter and jelly—you can have them separately, but they make a complete meal when combined.
• Front-end Metrics: These are like a searchlight, guiding you by revealing insights and opportunities to refine your marketing strategy. They help you see the direction you should be going, based on data like engagement and click-through rates.
• Back-end Metrics: These show if you reached your goals. They measure the effectiveness of your strategy, focusing on outcomes like revenue and profit. This is crucial for planning future campaigns, as it helps you avoid past mistakes and improve your results.
Ultimately, the most important metric isn’t just your click-through rate or cost per click—it’s how much of a product or service you sold. This is what keeps your business running.
The Master List of Metrics
Today’s digital age offers a wide range of tools to track marketing metrics, giving marketers robust options to measure nearly anything. However, this abundance also means it’s easier than ever to waste time tracking metrics that don’t impact your business positively.
To be effective, focus on metrics that provide actionable insights and drive meaningful change for your business. That’s why we created the Master List of Metrics.
The Master List includes five categories of metrics to help you identify which are most valuable for your business goals:
1. Traffic (Organic/Paid)
2. Customer Email
3. Customer Conversion
4. Customer Activity
5. Your Bottom Line
We’ll explore each category to guide you toward the metrics that matter most.
Traffic Metrics
Acquisitions: Focus on identifying which channels bring the most traffic and invest your resources in those that yield the best results.
Average Time on Site: Measures how long visitors stay on your website during each session.
Bounce Rate & Page Views: A bounce occurs when a visitor views only one page and leaves. The bounce rate is the percentage of such visitors.
Returning Visitors: Tracks the percentage of visitors who have visited your site before, indicating a higher likelihood of engagement or purchase.
Customer Email Metrics
• Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your email.
• Click-through Rate: The percentage of recipients who click on links within your email.
• Unsubscribe Rate: The number of people who opt out of your email list.
• Delivery Rate: The percentage of emails that successfully reach your customers’ inboxes, not ending up in spam or other irrelevant folders.
Customer Conversion Metrics
• New vs. Return Visitor Conversion: Measure the conversion rates of new versus returning visitors. Returning visitors often convert more, and knowing this ratio helps with split testing your website.
• Acquisition: Track which sources lead to the most conversions, and importantly, calculate the cost of these conversions.
• Cost Per Conversion: Determine how much you spend to acquire each conversion. This is essential for staying within your campaign budget.
• Conversion Value: Assess the financial impact each conversion has on your bottom line.
Customer Activity Metrics
• Social Media Engagement: Track customer interactions with your brand on social media. Monitor brand mentions, relevant hashtags, and the effectiveness of your social strategy.
• Email Engagement: For customers, track their behavior on a separate email list, focusing on open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates.
• Onsite Activity: Measure how customers engage with your website post-purchase, such as reading blog posts. This helps determine the likelihood of repeat purchases.
Your Bottom Line Metrics
• Revenue: Track the total income generated by your business and specifically from marketing efforts.
• Costs: Calculate all expenses related to marketing, such as website maintenance and ad spend.
• Profit: Subtract costs from revenue to determine your profit. This shows the overall success of your marketing efforts.
Chapter 4 - Human Behaviour & Marketing
No matter how logical your sales approach, the relationship you build with prospects initially, and clients eventually, is at the core of every interaction. To truly connect with your audience, it’s crucial to understand human behavior and the instincts that drive their buying decisions.
People are more likely to respond to messages that resonate with their natural behaviors rather than strategies focused only on data and numbers.
While each buyer is unique, understanding the key principles of human behavior can provide valuable insights into their decision-making processes.
Let’s dive into this further.
How Buyers Make Decisions
People often believe they make logical decisions, but most choices are influenced by emotions, not logic. I
f your business focuses solely on logical arguments to persuade customers, it might not be as effective.
Emotions Drive Decisions
For buyers to make decisions, they need to feel emotions. Instead of relying only on logical arguments, try to understand and appeal to how buyers feel about their choices. Connecting emotionally can be more persuasive.
Confidence Leads to Purchases
Buyers are more likely to decide when they feel confident. Help build their confidence by providing reassurance, like showing them how others have benefited from your product or giving them positive feedback.
Match Your Approach to the Type of Choice
There are two main types of decisions: goal-based and habit-based. For goal-based choices (like buying a car), provide detailed information to help with the decision. For habit-based choices (like buying the same brand of detergent), keep it simple.
Too much information can make habit-based buyers switch to goal-based thinking, which may delay their decision.
Limit Choices to Encourage Decisions
Offering too many options can overwhelm potential buyers and prevent them from making a decision. While people like having choices, they are more satisfied and more likely to decide when they have fewer options to consider.
The main goal of Human Behavior & Marketing is to reach buyers at the key moments that influence their decisions. Traditionally, marketing used the funnel metaphor to represent this process: buyers start with several brands in mind, and as they move through the funnel, exposure to marketing narrows their choices until they select one brand.
However, the funnel doesn’t fully capture the complexity of today’s digital world and well-informed buyers. This has led to the concept of the consumer decision journey, which views the buying process as a circular journey with four stages:
1. Initial Consideration: The buyer starts with a few brands in mind based on brand awareness and exposure.
2. Active Evaluation: Buyers add or remove brands as they gather information and decide what they want.
3. Moment of Purchase: The buyer finally chooses a brand and makes a purchase.
4. Post-Purchase Experience: After buying, the buyer’s experience with the product shapes their expectations and influences future decisions.
By understanding and targeting these stages, marketers can better influence buyers’ decisions and improve their chances of success.
Principles of Persuasion
Six Principles that Guide Human Behavior
When making decisions, consumers consider various factors. Here are six key principles that influence their behavior:
1. Scarcity: People want what they can have less of. Highlight what makes your product unique and what consumers will miss out on if they don’t act.
2. Reciprocity: People feel the need to return favors. Give something valuable first, like a free gift or service, to encourage your audience to reciprocate.
3. Authority: People follow credible experts. Establish your credibility before trying to influence your audience, possibly through endorsements from trusted figures.
4. Consistency: People prefer to act consistently with their past actions or commitments. Encourage small, early commitments from your audience that align with your goals.
5. Liking: People are more likely to say yes to those they like. Build rapport by finding common ground, offering sincere compliments, and working towards shared goals.
6. Consensus: In uncertainty, people look to others’ actions. Show how others, especially those similar to your audience, are engaging with your product or service to guide their decisions.
Permission Marketing for Entry-Level Marketers
Permission marketing is about delivering personal and relevant information to people who actually want it. Customers who want to hear from you will sign up, subscribe, or opt-in through channels like SMS, email newsletters, or by following your company’s website and social media pages.
This approach is commonly used in online and direct mail campaigns. It focuses on interacting with the audience based on how much information they want to receive. While it may not lead to immediate sales, it captures the audience’s interest and builds a lasting relationship.
In permission marketing, you promise value in exchange for the customer’s attention—and then you must deliver on that promise.
Jobs to be Done
Understanding the Job to Be Done Theory
The Job to Be Done theory explains how and why buyers adapt to new innovations. It suggests that markets evolve and grow when buyers have a specific need or “job” to accomplish, and they purchase a product to fulfill that need. Essentially, buyers want to change their current situation into a preferred one but face limitations that prevent them from doing so.
How Products and Services Help Get the Job Done
People have limitations and can’t always create the changes they want on their own. Innovations—whether from you or others—are needed to make those changes happen. A job to be done means that when people encounter new products that offer them a way to improve their lives, they use those products to become better versions of themselves.
For your next marketing campaign, focus on understanding human behavior and the jobs your customers need to get done. This perspective will help you develop more effective and innovative ideas.
Resources
https://www.process.st/full-stack-marketer/
https://www.mycustomer.com/hr-glossary/technical-marketing
https://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/technical-marketing.html
https://medium.com/@omerilyasli/what-is-full-stack-marketing-fce60b00cfad#:~:text=Full%2Dstack%20marketer%20is%20the,a%20weak%20spot%20as%20well.
https://www.simoahava.com/digital-marketing/the-myth-of-the-non-technical-marketer/
https://hackernoon.com/technical-vs-non-technical-marketers-lets-end-the-snobbery-w7v37k1
https://becomeatechnicalmarketer.teachable.com/
https://moz.com/blog/every-marketer-should-be-technical
http://justinmares.com/what-the-non-technical-need-to-know-about-tech/
https://amzlib.com/justin-mares-become-a-technical-marketer
https://www.gartner.com/en/industries/high-tech/tech-marketers
https://chiefmartec.com/2017/05/proposed-model-organizing-chaos-marketing-technology/
https://www.martechalliance.com/what-why-how-martech-marketing-technology
https://generalassemb.ly/marketing-standards-board
https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro
https://www.sailthru.com/marketing-blog/api-digital-marketers-guide/
https://moz.com/blog/every-marketer-should-be-technical
https://theindex.generalassemb.ly/building-marketing-leaders-of-the-future-9d4796d2da51
http://b.growthtribe.io/t-shaped-marketer-2020/
https://rosssimmonds.com/t-shaped-marketer-evolution/
Intro
Foundations - These are skills all marketers in 2024 must develop an intuitive understanding of (Marketing Technology, Channels, Metrics & Human Behaviour) - Knowledge focus (Knowing about XYZ)
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/marketing-analytics
https://www.coursera.org/learn/applying-data-analytics-business-in-marketing
https://www.coursera.org/learn/digital-analytics
Applications - The next level are skills you need a deep understanding of as well as some practical hands-on experience (Branding, Acquisition, Retention/Loyalty, Analytics & Insights) - Experience Focus (Ability to Execute XYZ)
Leadership - Business, CX, Tech & Data, People & Organization (Biz Intelligence, APIs, Marketing Ops) - Results Focus (Ability to connect the dots)