The marketing technology (MarTech) landscape is massive and rapidly expanding, spurred by AI and machine learning advancements. Today, there are literally thousands of platforms and software designed to automate and simplify your marketing efforts.
With 2025 mere months away, it’s time to take stock and ensure you’re utilizing the best possible combination of digital tools to run successful marketing campaigns. If you’re wondering how to build the ideal MarTech stack for your business, you’re in the right place. Here’s what you should know about building a collection of systems suited to your current and future needs.
Essential Components of a MarTech Stack
Every day, newer MarTech tools emerge, making the process of building an effective stack more complex. According to a recent global study, the number of marketing technology solutions grew by over 100% from 2019 to 2024. Constructing a robust collection goes beyond having the latest tools. It’s about creating a cohesive system that works seamlessly to achieve your marketing goals.
As the landscape becomes increasingly complex, understanding the essentials is crucial for maximizing efficiency and effectiveness. Generally speaking, MarTech stacks comprise three primary components — foundational, function-specific and advanced.
Foundational
These technologies represent the lowest layer of the marketing technology infrastructure. They’re the systems on which you build your marketing framework and expand through integrations. The most common examples are content management systems (CMS) and Customer relationship management (CRM).
Both offer a suite of useful applications and third-party plugins to enhance their basic functionalities. For example, popular CMS platforms like WordPress and Shopify have marketplaces of integrated apps designed to extend the scope of features to serve specific business needs better.
Function-Specific
These components handle individual marketing tasks — email services, social media, SEO, ad tech and more. Function-specific tools provide more granular information to drive data-backed decisions. For example, web analytics platforms can show you critical insights like traffic sources, engagement rates and website performance.
Compatibility with foundational platforms is the most critical consideration here, as you don’t want to waste time on constantly troubleshooting integration problems. Research shows this issue as the number one barrier to successful MarTech solution implementation.
Advanced
Advanced martech components represent the tools that level up function-specific features in more nuanced and technical ways. For example, customer data platforms are an extension of CRMs, pulling data from multiple sources to create a single centralized database. This allows you to create detailed customer profiles based on various data points.
How to Build a MarTech Stack
A 2022 Gartner survey shows that marketers utilize only about 42% of their MarTech stack capabilities, down 16% from 2020 figures. That means nearly 60% of features are either unused or underutilized, leading to wasted resources and misplaced prioritization. These issues underscore the need to be more diligent and prudent when assembling your digital tools collection. Here’s how to go about it in five steps.
1. Develop a Strategy and Vision
Start by outlining your vision for the MarTech stack and what solutions you expect from each component to support business goals seamlessly. Consider how various systems may have overlapping functions and how they impact workflows across related departments like sales and customer service.
Think about the data sources within your stack and the ease with which you can access them to make quick, informed decisions. Ideally, most of your information should live in one place, providing a single source of truth for launching and managing marketing campaigns.
Your vision board should also include considerations for future needs. You want a set of solutions that can evolve alongside the MarTech landscape, especially in today’s digital era.
2. Review Your Existing Setup
Do a comprehensive audit of your current marketing technology tools, noting their functionality and relevance to your business goals. Industry reports show about 51% of small and medium businesses grapple with redundant MarTech, costing them tens of thousands of dollars annually.
The ideal stack should facilitate enhanced systems utilization to get the most value for your money. Have a clear idea of each tool’s use case and ensure they align with your vision from step one. Be ruthless when cutting out unnecessary software and systems from your stack — if a tool doesn’t serve any specific purpose, take it out.
3. Document Your Marketing Workflow
Map out your end-to-end marketing workflow, from intake to post-fulfillment. You’ll likely find tools or processes that hinder a smooth transition from one segment to the next. For example, you may be experiencing delays in report generation because one or several systems take too long to compile and transmit data.
4. Align Your Stack With Your Workflow
Once you identify areas where technologies impede ideal workflows, you can remedy them by determining which tools you genuinely need and which you don’t.
Categorize each MarTech solution based on its value within each step of the workflow process, noting areas that could benefit from automation. For example, modern AI-powered CRMs automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, follow-ups and scheduling meetings. This feature invariably ramps up the utility of a single tool, allowing you to get more value without considerable human capital investment.
5. Do a Gap Analysis
Your analysis should answer how well your MarTech stack can adapt to future requirements. Evaluate new solutions that could enhance overall workflows and refine your stack accordingly. Take advantage of machine learning tools that integrate easily with existing systems and allow your marketing team to scale their efforts.
A gap analysis also lets you determine what tools you can consolidate to minimize redundancies. Generally, you want to prioritize extending the functionality of foundational components to avoid compatibility issues. For instance, if your CMS can handle a specific task, investing in a third-party solution is unnecessary.
3 Questions to Ask Before Adding a New MarTech Solution to Your Stack
As more innovations and data sources emerge, you’ll likely need to add new tools to your stack. Consider these factors before purchasing a solution to avoid wasting money.
1. Is This a Point Solution?
Does the tool only address a specific issue but lacks compatibility with broader systems? Does it align with your long-term tech strategy or is it something that solves a short-term problem? Weigh the cost and benefit of purchasing this particular solution over similar models.
2. Does My Business Need it?
New advancements and breakthroughs occur daily, and it’s natural to wonder if you could use them in your marketing processes. However, you must also determine if you actually need these solutions or if you simply have shiny object syndrome. This phenomenon can be a massive resource waste, especially if the tools don’t align with your set goals.
3. Does the Tool Require Training to Use?
Having the right people to operate new systems is a crucial consideration. Think about the amount of training required to bring your marketing team up to speed on innovative solutions and weigh the value of such an investment. According to reports, a mere 11% of employees feel confident in data literacy, highlighting the need for ongoing training — but only where the returns are worth the outlay.
Know How to Build the Ideal Martech Stack for Your Business in 2025
In an era dominated by data and smart solutions, the right marketing technologies can make or break your business’s success. Use this guide as a starting point for building your ideal MarTech stack to serve your current and future needs adequately.
About The Author
Eleanor Hecks is the Editor-in-Chief of Designerly Magazine, an online publication dedicated to providing in-depth content from the design and marketing industries. When she's not designing or writing code, you can find her exploring the outdoors with her husband and dog in their RV, burning calories at a local Zumba class, or curled up with a good book with her cats Gem and Cali.
You can find more of Eleanor's work at www.eleanorhecks.com.