For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.
"Every company is a technology company". That's what Accenture's CET and CEO, Paul Daugherty said back in 2020. It's never been more apparent that technology is changing the way businesses work, with the rise of AI tools pushing us to ask bigger questions of our marketing.
Digital marketing, as the name might suggest, is born of technology. We're right in the centre. And as a tech agency, if we're not up to date with the latest, we're as good as done.
So, I've reached out to our marketing team at Fifty Five and Five to understand the 9 digital marketing technologies that we use to measure your success (and, yes mine) in reaching your audience, and how they help you to raise your game. Here are some marketing technology examples:
- AI marketing tools
- Social media
- Paid media
- SEO tools
- Email marketing platforms
- Analytics and reporting software
- Training software
- Outreach tools
- AdTech software
But first things first...
What is marketing technology?
Marketing technology, or MarTech, is the blanket term used for all digital platforms and tools that help marketers to streamline, automate and analyse their marketing efforts. If Batman has his utility belt, then marketers have MarTech.
Marketing has become an art that's primarily digital - with 72% of marketing budgets spent on digital alone. And no matter what you're selling, and to whom, online marketing technology can improve the quality of your marketing output and, ultimately, helps generate more leads.
Marketing technologies allow you to:
- Measure the results and impact of your campaigns
- Monitor engagement and interactions across social, websites and paid media
- Pinpoint campaign strengths and weaknesses and make meaningful changes
- Attain actionable insights to optimise for greater ROI
- Reduce the time taken in gathering analytics and generating campaigns
I've seen the benefits each day that our arsenal of tools brings to the marketing team. They help us channel our creativity, easily manage our workloads, and to monitor, measure and present incredible results to our clients.
Let's take a closer look, shall we?
1. AI marketing tools
If there’s been one huge change over the past few years, it’s been the integration of AI into marketing workflows. Unlike some who have been hesitant to get onboard with the latest of digital marketing technologies, we embraced it straight away.
In our marketing and content teams, various AI tools are being used to streamline, speed up and transform our processes; both for internal and external projects. Think of everything that marketing teams do. All those long data analysis and admin tasks that be performed far faster. We trust AI so much that there are some tasks we just leave it alone to do its work (e.g. social media posts).
These are the AI marketing tools that we’re using:
Compass
Not only did we embrace AI, but we developed our own tool too! Compass is used across our teams to generate social content, build strategies, create ideas, analyse data and more. Not only does it generate content but it also uses technology similar to AI agents so you can get specialised assistance and responses to different marketing areas. Think content, strategy and account management. All those tasks done and dusted (or very well assisted) so.
Even better, Compass is:
- Trained on everything about our clients (yes, you too), including our own work, to create tailored campaigns faster.
- Constantly improving, delivering better results for our team and clients.
- Just getting started—expect even more features when this blog is updated.
ChatGPT
Yes, we had to bring in ChatGPT. It’s where the AI era for us started, and it’s still playing its part despite all the leaps forward made by other AI competitors (and OpenAI too). While Compass sits in the centre of our AI outlook and toolbox right now, we still use OpenAI’s most popular creation to generate content and play around with the latest models to see how they can benefit our campaigns and deliver for you.
Recent updates like GPT-4o have made ChatGPT even more powerful:
- Faster and more cost-effective, allowing for larger-scale content creation and personalisation with greater efficiency.
- Maintains high quality without sacrificing speed.
- Introduced "Custom GPTs" for tailored AI solutions to specific marketing tasks.
- Allows us to build custom tools, adjusting tone, style, and output based on the task at hand, giving us more flexibility for varied campaign needs.
Perplexity
Research can be a dull task for any marketer (and for anyone in general, really). It’s not just digging through sources that can be the tough part; it’s also finding the right place to start. And when to comes to AI, I think we all know how unreliable ChatGPT can be when it comes to providing sources for research too.
Perplexity gives our marketers a solid foundation for comprehensive research:
- It’s not a silver bullet, but it helps get our marketing team past the starting line.
- Allows marketers to build on initial findings and develop research that meets every requirement.
- Delivers transparent links for all its stats, ensuring that marketers can trust the information they’re working with.
2. Social Media
Building a unique brand identity, engaging with existing customers, finding new audiences, insightful thought leadership - that's what social media is for.
TCS social media campaign for marathon events
Some marketing teams invest hours in social media management, but don't have the ROI to show for it. Social is all about having the right online marketing technology to enable greater visibility over social channels, deliver detailed performative insights and optimise social media management.
Here are some of our favourites:
Hootsuite
We love Hootsuite! It's one of the most popular tools for enhancing social media output; supporting over 250 integrations and allowing users to update multiple networks in one step. It's also capable of analysing over 300 metrics, so we can create a dashboard that perfectly tracks your business's goals. Hootsuite is the perfect tool for social media management. It's, quite simply, a hoot (sorry).
Some of its recent updates, like its AI caption writer, automated hashtag generator and optimised publishing tools, have come in handy. For marketers, these updates mean:
- More efficient content creation
- Improved targeting
- Streamlined workflow
By embracing AI, Hootsuite empowers marketers to focus more on strategy and less on repetitive tasks, enhancing productivity that maximises the impact of social media campaigns.
Sprout Social
If you hate sprouts as much as I do, then the name probably didn't grab you. But don't panic. It doesn't ruin Sunday roasts. Sprout Social does help us build stronger relationships with your customers. The social media scheduling, monitoring and reporting platform offers a customer relationship manager (CRM) feature. This enables our team to create individual profiles of your customers and, yes, develop better connections that deliver results.
Similarly, new AI-powered features add greater efficiency – especially when it comes to content enhancement. New features include Analyze by AI Assist and Summarize by AI Assist; they help uncover conversation trends and summarise inbox conversations. For marketers, they provide:
- Greater efficiency by reducing manual data analysis.
- More time for marketers to focus on creative and strategic tasks.
- Faster, data-driven decision-making, helping marketers cater to evolving audience needs.
Sprout Social's investments in AI mark a step forward in facilitating faster, data-driven decisions that cater to evolving audience needs and preferences.
Sprinklr
We used Sprinklr to help one of our clients schedule posts, create reports, pool in data and more. Beyond that, we have found Sprinklr to be a useful tool for researching and understanding campaign audiences, and for social listening. So, it's a worthy addition to our social media toolkit.
Sprinklr offers a unified customer experience management platform, which includes:
- Managing customer interactions across multiple digital channels.
- Breaking down silos between customer-facing teams for cohesive marketing strategies.
- Managing social media, content, and customer care through one platform.
Sprinklr has also incorporated advanced AI across its platform, including Sprinklr Intuition for data analysis and Product Insights for categorising customer feedback.
We brought the TCS 'Building on Belief' brand message to life with this social marketing strategy.
3. Paid media
Out of all the digital marketing technologies, paid media can be the most difficult to get right (trust me, I've written a few paid campaigns in my time). It takes a lot of research and precise positioning to get things moving.
By using the correct tools, we target the right demographic, track paid campaigns and develop a competitive long-term strategy that works for our clients. We understand how to use a third-party platform to extend visibility of your advert placements and find a larger audience. Plus, we help you to target your audience more effectively and reduce your overall spend.
These tools allow us to deliver exceptional returns:
SpyFu
SpyFu enables us to carry out PPC research on your competitors. Whether it's your competitor's estimated monthly spend, the keywords that they are targeting or how well their ads are ranking, SpyFu provides us with the insights we need to put together a highly competitive campaign strategy that meets your requirements.
Recently, SpyFu has improved bugs, expanded data coverage and, most importantly, launched a content optimisation tool called RivalFlow AI in its offering. These advancements mean that marketers can now access more accurate, actionable data; plus, support marketers in creating more effective, finely tuned PPC campaigns that not only meet but exceed expectations. By capitalising on these enriched insights, companies can strategically outperform competitors, gaining a significant advantage in the digital advertising arena.
SEMrush
SEMrush offers an extensive keyword database that's difficult to match and makes building ads simple - using information about the ads posted by your competitors to ensure that you can outmanoeuvre them when you need to. This powerful audience targeting means your PPC campaigns have a greater chance of succeeding.
And while we only use it for certain tasks, the platform has pushed the envelope further by introducing major updates that cater to the evolving needs of the digital marketing landscape, and AI in general. The release of their AI Writing Assistant and other developments shows that SEMrush is a digital marketing tool that is indispensable. With AI-driven tools simplifying content creation and strategy adjustments, marketers can focus more on creativity and less on menial tasks.
Leadpages
Leadpages provides a platform for creating professional landing pages designed to enhance conversions. It offers a drag-and-drop builder, extensive templates, and integrations with various marketing and analytics tools; allowing marketers to quickly design pages that align with their brand and campaign goals. We find that Leadpages is a tool that's suited for smaller businesses that are looking to engage with their core audience on social media channels. It acts as a funnel, sending your target audience to a specific landing page designed for them.
Leadpages continues to evolve its platform with features such as:
- AI-powered design recommendations for creating optimised landing pages.
- Improved SEO capabilities to help drive traffic and improve visibility.
- Advanced personalisation options for targeted lead generation.
- Enhanced analytics for better performance tracking and conversion optimisation.
By incorporating these advancements into your marketing efforts, you can use Leadpages’ robust capabilities to not only attract and capture leads but also convert them more efficiently.
Here are 4 tips from our paid media experts to guarantee international PPC success.
4. SEO tools
Now it's time for the big beast of marketing technologies: search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO is all about staying visible on search engine results pages...and watching out for the ever-changing algorithms.
SEO is tricky, and almost impossible to manage without the right tools. Without some kind of SERP analysis tool, or keyword research, you're basically trying to fight a bear blindfolded.
We keep on top of the changes and technical stuff, with the help of some powerful keyword research and SERP analysis tools.
Here are the SEO tools that can help you climb those results pages:
Ahrefs
Switching from Moz to Ahrefs has been a decision that we haven't looked back on. The comprehensive platform covers so much - from page rankings, Domian Authority (DA) scores, backlinking and more. And while the dashboard is extensive (and super comprehensive), we use Ahrefs mostly for keyword research via its Keyword Explorer. Using data from a wide source of search engines, we get an expansive overview of search volumes, matching keywords, competitor research and more to find keywords that work.
Plus, Ahrefs has recently integrated AI into keyword suggestions, search intent, technical SEO and more. Not only has this been an eye opener – it shows the power of AI-driven SEO strategies and the future of this marketing discipline. With these recent advancements, Ahrefs has solidified its position as a leading SEO tool. For marketers, this means:
- Accessing more precise data
- Implementing more effective keyword strategies
- Understanding search intent better
These contribute to more successful SEO campaigns.
AnswerThePublic
Known for its spiraled results pages, AnswerThePublic is a valuable tool for selecting long-tail keywords suitable for campaigns and other content. The free platform a comprehensive view of user queries and includes keywords not available on Ahrefs. While less data-heavy than Ahrefs, it instead focuses on search intent and semantics, making it an essential addition to building a more rounded SEO strategy. By emphasising these aspects, AnswerThePublic complements data-focused tools by providing insights that align content strategies more closely with user needs.
Although there’s no clear indication of AI integration yet, it’s being promoted as a tool for creating better AI prompts. The phrases and keywords it provides can help generate more tailored AI responses by better understanding your audience and their funnel position.
Screaming Frog
No frogs were killed during the development of this platform (at least, I don't think so). Screaming Frog has become another trusty SEO tool. The indexing and crawling platform enables us to see all URLs, redirect chains, broken links and more on a client's website so we can take decisive action. In short, the platform facilitates the identification of areas for improvement and swift optimisation. Plus, unlike Ahrefs, the URLs in the dashboard are cleaner, tidier and easier to explore – making our job simpler.
And to round it off, Screaming Frog’s integration with OpenAI has provided awesome benefits like automating dull tasks as well making site optimisation quicker, accurate, and less resource intensive. It remains an indispensable tool, especially with this integration. The combination empowers teams to streamline SEO operations, enhancing both accuracy and efficiency. This ensures clients websites are always in peak condition so they can deliver optimal user experiences and improved search engine visibility.
Google Search Console
We have found many aspects of this platform to be essential for troubleshooting, reporting and performance-related SEO tasks. From keyword performance to page experience, top performing pages, CTR performance and A/B testing, Google Search Console has helped us get to the nitty-gritty of delivering SEO insights that matter. In fact, the platform’s data-driven approach aligns perfectly with our goal of deploying effective, evidence-based marketing strategies.
Google’s recently introduced Recommendations feature also has its perks, providing personalised suggestions for improving your website's performance and visibility in search results. Acting as an ongoing consultant, it alerts marketers to potential issues and improvements before they affect performance. With the platform's comprehensive data and recent innovations, marketers are better equipped to optimise websites that align with both user expectations and Google’s search algorithms.
Ready to take your website to the next level and generate leads with our SEO services?
5. Email marketing platforms
How full is your inbox right now? If it's anything like mine, then I'm sure it's awash with many emails trying to compete for your attention.
Email marketing is all about nurturing leads into prospects, and prospects into customers, creating a dialogue with your audience, and sending them targeted (and personalised) updates to pique their interest.
But with so much competition, we know that creating a successful campaign requires more than open rates; you need click-throughs, conversions and email content that offers actual value for the reader.
Here's the key online marketing technology we use:
Mailchimp
No surprises here. Mailchimp is our no.1 choice for email marketing. It allows us to automate our email marketing with simple A/B testing, ready-to-use campaign templates and a simple email designer. The 'Mailchimp reports' also make it easy to track how successful our emails are at engaging with our audience, using advanced segmentation for precise targeting, distribution by time zone and comparative data reporting.
Also, we’re interested in the AI features that it’s both launched and developing, including the Email Content Generator and AI Growth Assistant.
- Email Content Generator: Quickly creates compelling email content based on successful patterns and user engagement data. Suggests content that aligns with goals and audience preferences.
- AI Growth Assistant: Analyses audience behaviour to identify growth opportunities, such as list segmentation, content improvements, and send-time optimisation.
6. Analytics and reporting software
In among the creative campaigns, PR stunts and outlandish collabs, marketing is very much a numbers game at heart. Reporting is about justifying future investment in marketing efforts. If it ain't making you money, it ain't working.
We do it all the time with monthly reports to clients: showing progress, highlighting peaks and pinpointing gaps that campaigns can occupy and how to improve in future.
Here's what we use to gather our results:
Looker Studio
Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) collects real-time data from YouTube, Google Ads and Google Analytics to help create dynamic, interactive dashboards. It's also compatible with multiple third-party data sources like Twitter, Mailchimp and Salesforce, which highly versatile for our marketers. Plus, Looker Studio puts together reports that are fully customisable and easy to filter and share.
The platform facilitates seamless integration of data from various Google services and third-party platforms, providing a holistic view of marketing efforts so you can make informed, data-driven decisions. One of the most significant recent updates is its integration with Gemini for Pro users, which enhances data processing and predictive analytics, offering deeper insights for forward-thinking strategies.
Google Analytics 4
We believe Google Analytics 4 (GA4) stands head and shoulders above the rest as a tool for measuring the bigger picture. In particular, it monitors traffic arriving on your website and how site users are behaving. Google's machine learning capabilities mean that GA4 can generate insights you just can't get anywhere else. And we love showcasing this to you! In fact, we love GA4 so much, we even wrote a blog about it.
GA4 is enhanced by newly integrated AI features like predictive metrics and audiences, shaping the way marketers strategise in the AI-driven marketing landscape. These metrics use AI to forecast future trends related to user behaviour and potential conversion opportunities. They also help marketers anticipate customer actions and adjust strategies proactively, enhancing engagement and conversion rates. For marketers, this translates to a more data-driven approach that deeply understand customers.
Adobe Analytics
Similar to GA4, Adobe Analytics shows a range of performance-related stats. The platform enables savvy marketers to explore the depths of customer behaviours and campaign effectiveness, thanks to its sophisticated tools and AI integration. Adobe Analytics features customisable dashboards that enable teams to tailor their data views and focus on specific KPIs to deliver their objectives. We have adopted the tool for a specific client, and while we are still in our infancy of using the tool, we’re very much looking forward to seeing it become a part of our toolkit to generate effective results.
Adobe Analytics is powered by Adobe Sensei, which offers:
- Automated data analysis: Simplifies complex processes and uncovers hidden patterns.
- Predictive insights: Provides deeper understanding of audience behaviour and campaign performance.
- AI-driven recommendations: Suggests actions to improve precision and impact in marketing strategies.
Therefore, teams can access predictive insights and AI-driven recommendations that enhance the precision and impact of their marketing strategies.
TapClicks
Another client favourite, TapClicks isn't the dancing platform it sounds like, but it sure has some moves. We use it as a dashboard tool to visually showcase campaign data to our clients. We customise dashboards to suit their needs so they (and we) can extract real-time and historical data when needed. Serving as a central hub, TapClicks aggregates data from various campaigns and platforms, offering a seamless, holistic view of marketing performance.
TapClicks is also pushing innovation with AI-driven features. Their new AI-driven benchmark widgets promises to deliver standardised metrics for performance comparison. These widgets allow users to benchmark their results against industry standards or competitors, providing valuable insights into where they stand in the market. Meanwhile, enhanced reporting and analytics will further elevate TapClicks’ capabilities, providing smarter, more efficient ways to view, interpret, and act on data.
7. Training software
"For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head." Benjamin Franklin wasn't wrong here. Training is one of the often-overlooked uses of technologies in marketing. But it's one of the most vital for remaining ahead of the curve.
Change is a part of the everyday, especially in marketing and technology. We like to think of training in marketing as a way of investing in the success of our future efforts.
That's why we use the following to train our team:
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning covers a wide range of professional courses and tutorial videos which have been a huge benefit to the marketing team. Their ever-growing abilities comes from their dedication to improve so they can constantly deliver the best. There are courses for every level from beginner to expert - with over 16,000 entirely free courses. These include technical aspects of PPC to the writing skills needed for engaging content, and more.
Acting as a catalyst for professional development, LinkedIn Learning offers:
- AI-powered coaching: Adapts to how users engage with content, offering relevant suggestions and resources.
- Robust course offerings: Provides continuous learning across various skill levels.
- Empowerment through mastery: Equips teams with the skills to navigate the dynamic marketing landscape.
These features foster a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring marketing teams are always growing and adapting to industry demands.
Google Digital Garage
Whether it's the 'fundamentals of digital marketing' course that's extensive enough for any beginner, or any of the other courses, we've found the Digital Garage to be the ideal spot for a marketing spray job. Not a complete makeover, but a chance to upgrade our skills. The platform supports continuous learning across a variety of topics, with courses designed to bolster knowledge in areas such as digital marketing, data analysis, and social media strategy. With a range of courses coming in at over 40 hours, it's worth checking out.
Google Digital Garage is a comprehensive resource for both individual learning and team development, encouraging a culture of continuous improvement and adaptation to the latest digital marketing trends. This flexibility supports thorough comprehension and retention of material, making it an ideal choice for professionals seeking to balance learning with their existing commitments.
8. Outreach tools
Leads and prospects are the hidden goal of every campaign. But storing and accessing prospective leads is a mission. You need fast access, and an Excel doc is simply not the answer.
These are the tools we use to counter the problem.
Hunter
We use Hunter to help find the email addresses held within any domain. Our team does a lot of outreach every day, and sometimes it's important for a message to reach a particular person within a business. Enter: Hunter. Simply type a domain into the search box, and Hunter conveniently displays all the email addresses it can find associated with that domain. Very handy for outreach and connecting with leads.
Hunter’s AI Assistant comes in handy too. It can:
- Locate companies based on simple sentence descriptions, identifying potential clients or partners that meet specific industry criteria.
- Optimise workflows by reducing time spent on manual data gathering and entry.
- Enhance prospecting by enriching the process and allowing teams to focus on personalised outreach strategies.
These AI features streamline prospecting, focus more on developing personalised outreach strategies and fostering meaningful business relationships.
Seamless
Seamless is another useful tool which helps us find contacts and manage prospect information. Beyond just discovering contacts, Seamless offers robust tools to manage prospect information efficiently. It aids in organising and categorising potential leads, ensuring that every prospect is accounted for and easily accessible when needed. While it's similar to Hunter, it also features a handy browser extension which integrates with services like LinkedIn, helping us find the right contact information without disrupting our workflow. Pretty neat.
Like Hunter, it uses AI and predictive analytics to find contact information based on a person's digital footprint. This innovative approach ensures that outreach strategies are informed by comprehensive, real-world data. The platform uses predictive analytics to anticipate and recommend potential leads, suggesting contacts that might be most relevant to business objectives. This feature helps prioritise outreach efforts and improve conversion rates.
9. AdTech software
Yes, it’s a very loaded and broad term. “Haven’t we already covered this?”, you might be thinking. Well, not quite. Digital advertising technology (AdTech) can be defined as the process of delivering data-driven, personalised ads to target audiences.
AdTech is crucial because it enables businesses to efficiently plan, execute, and analyse their advertising campaigns across digital channels. As the digital landscape has evolved, AdTech has become indispensable for optimising ad spend, improving targeting, and delivering personalised experiences to consumers. All of this, when used correctly leads to improved ROI, greater cost efficiency, better personalisation as well as more transparency and agility.
At the heart of AdTech are terms and technologies that you may be familiar with:
- Programmatic advertising: Refers to the automated process of buying and selling digital ad inventory using algorithms and real-time bidding. Uses data to target specific audiences and optimise ad placements across various channels and devices.
- Omnichannel marketing: A strategy that provides a seamless and integrated customer experience across multiple channels, including online, in-store, mobile, social media, and more. It ensures interactions are consistent and interconnected across all devices.
- Demand-side platform (DSP): A software platform that allows advertisers, agencies, or marketers to buy digital advertising inventory in an automated, efficient way. It is a key component of programmatic advertising and enables the purchase of ads across a variety of platforms and publishers in real-time through a single interface.
- Supply-side platform (SSP): A software platform used by publishers to manage, sell, and optimise their advertising inventory in an automated way. It is the counterpart to a DSP. It helps publishers maximise revenue from their ad inventory by connecting them to multiple ad exchanges, networks, and DSP.
- Agency Trading Desk (ATD): A specialised service within advertising agencies that centralises the buying and optimisation of digital media on behalf of clients. ATDs typically focus on programmatic advertising, using DSPs and other technologies to purchase digital ad inventory in real time across multiple channels.
- Ad Server: A technology platform that is responsible for delivering, managing, and tracking digital ads on websites, mobile apps, or other digital environments. It acts as the central hub for displaying ads and managing ad campaigns, ensuring that the right ad is shown to the right user at the right time.
Our marketing team uses AdTech on client campaigns. However, we usually stick to the following programmatic advertising examples below:
Google Ads
Also known as the go-to platform for search and display advertising, Google Ads is central to us. Our marketing team uses Google Ads’ advanced targeting and reporting tools to optimise performance and improve return on ad spend. By targeting specific keywords and using precise bidding strategies, we ensure that our clients' offerings appear in front of high-intent users. Needless to say, Google’s Display Network helps us increase brand visibility and drive remarketing campaigns.
Meta Ads
Even B2B still needs Facebook and Instagram. And Meta Ads enable us to engage with our audience across two of the most popular social platforms. We capitalise on Meta Ads’ sophisticated audience segmentation tools, allowing us to create highly personalised campaigns tailored to user behaviour, demographics, and interests. These platforms are ideal for running visually engaging campaigns that drive brand awareness, lead generation, and more. From dynamic ad formats to creative retargeting, Meta Ads play a pivotal role in our omnichannel marketing approach.
LinkedIn Ads
Who doesn’t want to influence 1 billion professionals globally with targeted ads? Our marketing team are firm believers in the power of LinkedIn Ads to bolster their paid campaigns. It enables us to help our clients reach decision-makers and professionals in specific industries. We take advantage of LinkedIn’s precision targeting features to create campaigns that resonate with key stakeholders. Simply put, LinkedIn Ads is instrumental in allowing us to drive engagement with high-quality prospects while promoting thought leadership content like whitepapers and webinars for our clients.
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