Do you want more results from marketing campaigns but not throw money away?
Businesses invest heavily into marketing technologies and tactics every year. The problem is…
They fail to build an IT infrastructure that allows those tactics to perform.
As a result of poor tech infrastructure, even the best inbound marketing campaigns fall short. Marketing tech tools aren’t integrated. Information gets lost. Leads never make it to sales.
The good news? Aligning your infrastructure doesn’t have to be complicated. When done correctly, customers will notice.
What you’re going to learn:
- Why IT Infrastructure is Important for Inbound Success
- How Misalignment Can Cost You Money
- Steps to Align Your Technology Stack with Marketing Goals
- Important Infrastructure Elements that Lead to Inbound Success
Why Does IT Infrastructure Matter for Inbound Marketing Success?
Remember when marketing and IT lived in separate silos?
Those days are long gone.
As more businesses invest in professional inbound marketing services, they quickly realize strategy isn’t enough. The tech behind the curtain has to match up.
Think about it…
Every lead touching your business will connect with multiple systems along the way. If your IT infrastructure isn’t aligned, you lose valuable visibility. What works? What doesn’t? You can’t tell if your tech is compromised.
Here are some hard numbers…
In a recent survey, marketers are only using 42% of their martech stack capabilities. That means companies are paying for more than half of their tech and not using it.
Why? Infrastructure isn’t ready to support it.
The True Cost of Not Having Aligned Infrastructure
Inconsistent infrastructure causes major issues for businesses, and can drain your budget.
When marketing technology doesn’t line up with goals, here’s what happens:
- Leads fall through the cracks between systems
- Marketing campaigns can’t be tracked properly
- Sales teams are left working with outdated/inaccurate data
- Customer data isn’t accessible to everyone who needs it
- Reporting becomes impossible
Believe it or not, most businesses don’t realize these issues are occurring.
Instead of digging deeper into technology and infrastructure, they blame their marketing strategy. Next thing you know, more money is tossed at new marketing tools that “will solve all of their problems.”
Inbound marketing isn’t magical, but it can create amazing results when your technology is aligned. Content management, email marketing, CRM, analytics platforms… they all need to speak the same language.
How Do You Align Your Marketing Technology Stack with Your Goals?
Aligning your marketing strategy and IT infrastructure truly doesn’t have to be difficult. Follow a few simple steps:
- Clarify your marketing goals.
- Evaluate your current tech stack.
- Make integration a priority.
- Build technology that will scale.
Here’s a deeper dive into each step.
Step 1: Identify Your Marketing Objectives
Before touching a piece of technology, know your marketing objectives. More leads? Improve conversions? Increase customer retention?
Take your objectives and use them to make technology decisions. If your main goal is lead generation, ensure your infrastructure focuses on capturing and nurturing leads. Do you want to increase customer retention? Ensure your customer data can be integrated across platforms.
Step 2: Evaluate Your Current Tech Stack
Gather up a list of every tool your marketing team uses. Then ask yourself these questions:
- Does each tool have a purpose?
- Do they integrate with other tools?
- Is data flowing between systems?
Chances are you’ll find irrelevant tools during your analysis. Tools that nobody uses. Or perhaps you’ll notice your current tech stack is missing key functions.
Step 3: Make Integrations a Priority
When your tools work together, magic happens.
If you’re using an email marketing platform, it should know what your CRM knows about a lead. Your analytics should be able to pull data from every customer interaction. Your automation software should trigger off real-time data events.
Creating this level of integration will take careful planning. However, you’ll notice an increase in campaign performance and better quality leads.
Step 4: Build Infrastructure That Will Scale
Your technology stack should be able to handle your business now and in the future.
Sure, that cheap tool works for your business today. But what happens when you double your traffic? What happens when you hire more team members? Add new marketing channels? Want to sell through ecommerce? Starts to become unclear if your tech stack was built with scalability in mind.
Pick platforms that can scale with your business and invest in infrastructure that won’t need to be replaced in a couple years.
Infrastructure Components You Need to Focus On
While every piece of technology matters, these components should be your top focus:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Your CRM is the foundation of your marketing technology stack. Everything from contact data to interaction history lives here. Without a dependable CRM, other systems tend to fall short.
Marketing Automation
Expect automation to do the heavy lifting for you. Email sequences, lead scoring, automated workflows… these tools help your marketing efforts run smoothly day and night. Just make sure they integrate with your other tech.
Analytics and Reporting
If you can’t measure success, you can’t improve on your campaigns. Your analytics and infrastructure should track prospects from the first click all the way to a closed deal. Use this data to make informed decisions.
Content Management
Websites live in content management systems. Make sure your CMS supports SEO efforts, loads quickly on mobile devices, and integrates with other marketing platforms. Nothing will hurt your marketing strategy more than a slow or outdated CMS.
Data Security
Ah yes, the often forgotten piece of the puzzle. No matter what security measures your business has, you should always build infrastructure with data security in mind. Protect customer data by utilizing proper security frameworks and compliance measures.
Bringing Your Infrastructure Together
So you’ve reached the end. Now what?
Implementing new technology or adjusting your infrastructure can be daunting. However, once you have everything working together, you’ll wonder why you didn’t take care of it sooner.
Companies that take the time to align their IT infrastructure with marketing efforts see huge improvements to campaign performance. Better quality leads are generated and sales teams stop spinning their wheels.
Inbound marketing has been shown to generate 54% more leads than traditional marketing. And while anyone can throw some content on the internet and hope for the best, successful inbound marketers have the infrastructure to make it happen.
Start with your biggest pain point and work from there. Maybe it’s your CRM not playing nice with other software. Or your reporting process is a nightmare. Data not flowing between platforms?
Pick one area of your infrastructure and make it better. Once you’ve conquered that goal, move onto the next.
Final Thoughts
Aligning marketing goals and your IT infrastructure is no longer a nice to have. If your technology isn’t supporting your marketing efforts, campaigns won’t convert.
Here’s your checklist:
- Review your current tech stack and identify gaps/redundant tools.
- Make sure your core platforms can integrate with each other.
- Build infrastructure that will scale with your business.
- Focus on these infrastructure components first: CRM, Marketing Automation, Analytics, Data Security.
- Take care of your biggest technology pain point. Celebrate that victory. Move to the next.
Once your technology starts supporting your inbound efforts, you’ll never turn back. Leads won’t get lost in your funnel. Data will remain accessible and clean. Your teams will work confidently, rather than fighting your tech.