Signs Your MarTech Stack Is Working Against You

Marketing teams have more technology at their disposal than ever. But more tools don't necessarily mean better marketing.

In fact, complexity may be getting in the way. A recent McKinsey study found that 47% of MarTech decision-makers cite “stack complexity” and “system and data integration challenges” as key barriers to getting value from their technology.

The problem isn't simply having too many tools. And the solution isn't necessarily replacing them, consolidating everything into one platform, or automating every task you can.

A good question to ask is: Does your MarTech stack actually help your team answer the right questions, make better decisions and create better customer experiences?

If you can’t answer “yes” with the KPIs to prove it, your technology may be working against you.

Start With the Symptoms

You don't need to map every integration in your technology ecosystem to recognize that something isn't working. The warning signs often show up in your team's everyday work:

• You're moving information manually. Someone exports data from one platform, cleans it up in Excel and imports it somewhere else. Form submissions land in an inbox before being forwarded to the right person. Reports require copying and pasting information from multiple systems.
• You can't completely trust your reporting. Different platforms produce different numbers, attribution is unclear, or your team spends more time debating which data is right than deciding what to do about it.
• Your team can't react quickly. A lead comes in, but getting it to the right person requires several manual steps. A KPI changes, but understanding why requires pulling information from multiple places.
• You struggle to see the customer journey. Marketing, sales, your website and other customer touchpoints each hold a piece of the story, but no one has enough visibility to understand the whole experience.

These may look like separate operational annoyances. Often, they're symptoms of the same underlying problem: your technology wasn't designed around how information needs to move through your business.

That doesn’t necessarily mean anyone designed it poorly. MarTech stacks tend to grow organically. A new platform solves one need, another tool gets added a year later, and then another team introduces something else. Each decision may make sense on its own, but over time, the connections between them can become an afterthought.

More Automation Isn't the Answer

It's tempting to look at manual work and conclude that you simply need more automation.

Sometimes you do. A form submission shouldn't have to bounce through three inboxes before reaching the person who needs it. If that workflow can be intelligently automated, it probably should be.

But automation only improves the process you give it.

If you're collecting the wrong information, connecting the wrong systems or automating a poorly designed workflow, you've simply made a bad process happen faster. The same is true for AI. Giving an AI tool access to more data doesn’t automatically produce better insight, especially when that data comes from disconnected systems. AI can be a powerful part of your MarTech stack when it’s applied to the right data. But it shouldn’t be a bandage for poor data flows or processes.

That's why a strong MarTech stack starts with questions rather than tools:

• What do we need to know about our customers?
• What decisions do we need this data to help us make?
• What should happen when a customer takes a particular action?
• Who needs that information, and how quickly do they need it?
• If a KPI doesn't perform as expected, what will we want to investigate next?

Once those answers are clear, you can determine what data needs to be captured, where it should live, which systems need to communicate with each other, and where automation can actually add value. The goal isn't necessarily fewer tools or more automation. It's making sure the tools you have support the questions, decisions and customer experiences that matter.

The Most Expensive Data May Be the Data You Didn't Capture

One of the biggest costs of a poorly planned MarTech stack isn't a licensing fee or even the hours spent on manual work. It's discovering that you don't have the information you need when it's time to make a decision.

Imagine a campaign underperforms. You know conversions are down, but now you want to understand why. Which traffic sources produced the most qualified visitors? What content did they interact with? Where did they drop off? Did certain audiences behave differently?

If those interactions weren't captured when they happened, you can't retroactively create that history. Said a different way: you can't answer tomorrow's marketing question with data you didn't capture yesterday.

That doesn't mean tracking everything simply because you can. More data isn't automatically better data. The goal is to anticipate the questions your team is likely to ask and build the measurement strategy that will help answer them.

Start with the KPIs that matter. Then go one step further: If this number moves in the wrong direction, what will we want to know next?

Thinking through those questions during planning gives you a much better chance of having useful answers when they actually matter.

A Better Stack Creates a Better View of the Customer

The same thinking applies to customer experience.

Customers don't care which platform owns their data. They don't think in terms of your CRM, CMS, analytics platform or marketing automation software. They (should) experience one cohesive brand.

When those systems operate independently, the seams can start to show. A customer may receive irrelevant communication. A promising lead may wait too long for a response. Marketing may lack visibility into what happens after a conversion. Sales may not know what brought a prospect to them in the first place.

A more connected approach helps information follow the customer instead of getting trapped inside individual platforms.

That doesn't require every organization to use the same technology. Whether your stack includes HubSpot, Salesforce, a CMS, ERP, PIM, DAM, analytics platforms or specialized tools unique to your business, the important question is how those systems work together.

The right integrations, intentional data capture and well-designed workflows can give your team a clearer view of the customer journey and make it easier to respond at the right moment with the right information.

Don't Start by Ripping Everything Out

If your MarTech stack isn't working the way it should, resist the urge to immediately replace it.

Many organizations already have capable technology, but get caught up in layering new software onto their stacks without fully using the functionality they already have. The result can be more complexity without more value. We’ve seen some of our client partners invest heavily in technology only to discover that much of the information their teams need was already present. It just wasn’t moving between systems or reaching the right people in a useful way.

So instead, start with the outcomes you need.

Where are people doing work that your technology should be doing for them? Where does information stop moving? Which questions are difficult or impossible to answer? Where are the gaps in the customer journey? What data will you wish you had six months from now?

From there, you can determine whether the answer is a better workflow, smarter data capture, an integration between existing platforms, a new tool… or, in some cases, fewer tools.

At Hanson, we help organizations take a step back and look at how their marketing technology works together. That means looking beyond individual platforms to understand how data is captured, how it moves between systems, where processes break down and whether the information being collected is actually helping the business make better decisions.

Sometimes the answer is a new integration or a better measurement strategy. Other times, it's improving a workflow or getting more out of the technology you already own. The goal isn't to recommend more technology. It's to identify practical improvements that make your existing investments more valuable.

If your team is spending more time managing its technology than getting value from it, let's talk.