A marketing tech stack audit is a crucial process for any business aiming to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and maximize ROI. With the rapid evolution of marketing tools and platforms, regularly evaluating your tech stack ensures that you're using the right tools to achieve your business objectives. But where do you start? This blog post highlights the key considerations when auditing your marketing tech stack. We'll also outline three compelling reasons why a tech stack audit is essential for your business.
Why Is a Marketing Tech Stack Audit Important?
1. Optimizing Costs and Eliminating Redundancy
Many businesses accumulate tools over time, which can lead to overlapping functionalities and unnecessary expenses. For instance, you might be using both PandaDoc and another platform that performs similar document creation and e-signature capabilities. Through an audit, you can identify and eliminate redundancies, reallocating resources to more impactful tools.
2. Enhancing Team Efficiency
A well-integrated tech stack allows for seamless workflow and synchronization across platforms. If your tools are not communicating effectively—such as Asana not integrating properly with your project planning in HubSpot—your team may waste time manually transferring data or adjusting workflows. Auditing ensures your tech stack is streamlined, boosting overall efficiency.
3. Supporting Strategic Growth
As your business grows, your tech stack should grow with you. The tools that served you at a certain stage might not be enough to handle your scaling operations. For instance, Stripe may be perfect for payment processing now, but if you're scaling globally, you might need advanced payment features to manage diverse currencies. Regular audits help you evaluate whether your tech stack is equipped to meet current and future demands.
Steps to Evaluating Your Tech Stack
1. Clearly Define Your Business Goals
The first step in any audit is understanding what you're trying to achieve. For example, if your goal is to improve lead generation, you should look critically at your tools that handle forms (like JotForm) and marketing automation (like HubSpot). Evaluate whether these tools are effectively capturing and nurturing leads, or whether a competitor might better serve your needs.
2. Identify Overlapping and Underperforming Tools
Look at your current tools and assess their functionalities. Are there overlaps? For example, both HubSpot and QuickBooks may have invoicing capabilities—do you need both? Similarly, consider performance. If PandaDoc isn't integrating smoothly with other tools or lacks features your team needs, it may be worth exploring alternatives.
3. Check Integration Capabilities
Integration is key for a functional tech stack. For instance, HubSpot and Stripe can work together to track customer payments and tie them directly to marketing campaigns. Ensure your tools are capable of integrating without complications, as lack of integration can create data silos and inefficiencies.
4. Assess User Adoption
There's no sense in keeping a cutting-edge tool that your team isn't using. For example, if employees are struggling to adopt Asana for project management, it may be time for additional training or considering a simpler tool.
5. Measure ROI for Each Platform
Every tool in your tech stack should justify its cost. For instance, if you're investing heavily in a premium plan for JotForm, evaluate whether it's directly contributing to lead generation or whether a basic plan—or even another software—can achieve the same results.
Key Takeaways
Conducting a marketing tech stack audit is not just a "nice-to-have" process but a necessary strategy to optimize your operations, cut costs, and ensure growth readiness. Focus on defining clear business goals, identifying performance gaps, and leveraging integrations to streamline workflows. By compiling a list of all your paid and free subscriptions, and knowing where your data is and what your goals are, your business can remain agile, efficient, and primed for success.
We have a very basic Excel template we would love to share with you to complete your audit.
