This post originally appeared on the Louisiana Technology Park blog.
The marketing tech industry has grown like crazy over the past few years. Marketers now spend an estimated $34 billion a year on marketing tech — everything from simple email marketing and social media tools to powerful marketing-automation platforms.
If you’re running marketing at a small business, what tech investments could make the biggest impact? We asked Justin Talerico, the founder of Beacon9, a consulting firm for tech companies. He’s worked in the marketing space for more than two decades, and he’s learned which marketing technology is worth the investment.
Identify Your Most Important Needs
When you’re looking for ways to grow your marketing powers, shopping for marketing tech can be incredibly overwhelming. There are more than 5,000 marketing-tech vendors out there. But instead of dreaming about the cool tech you could buy and the sophisticated marketing programs you could develop, Talerico suggests starting with the fundamentals.
“It’s easy to get so caught up in what could be that the fundamentals get sacrificed,” he says. Methodically define what you really need instead of chasing shiny tools. “Editing — making sound strategic decisions about which capabilities to invest time, money and momentum in — is the key to success.”