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Back in the old days of mass media, when the options for an average consumer could be counted on a single hand, it was viable for companies to spend their marketing focus on a few mediums, or even just one such as television, radio, or newspapers, knowing that a very large proportion of viewers (if not the majority) were almost certainly watching.

But today, with our attention split among a cornucopia of different devices, and a bewildering array of content delivery platforms, marketing campaigns in the 21st century will have to juggle putting out content across an array of different media. From social media posts to videos, from banner advertisements to live-streamed events, advertisers need to juggle the requirements of different forms of communication if they want to spread their message as far and wide as possible.

It's not easy. Not only is each medium of communication different enough to require hiring specialists for each form (you wouldn't hire a social media marketer to shoot your promotional videos, after all), many of them are built upon different technological foundations. That means your employees need at least some technical know-how to take full advantage of each medium. In addition, you need to output enough content for it to reach an audience of respectable size, as well a means to regularly review feedback, so that you can respond quickly to a lagging campaign or even a sudden controversy before permanent damage can be done.

Luckily, there are a range of technologies specifically designed to streamline this process, such that even the non-tech-savvy can manage digital marketing campaigns with ease. Collectively, these technologies are called Marketing Technology (MarTech for short). Examples of these include:

• Content Management Systems (CMS), which allows you to easily create, edit, and update the content of websites and blogs without requiring any technical knowledge.
• Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM), which allows advertisers to find and quickly reference information about both existing and potential customers, thus allowing them to monitor their customer relationships and tailor content for maximum appeal.
• Social Media Management Tools. Social Media is an extremely popular tool of social interaction online, and thus a prime vector for interacting with your consumer base. However, having to manually monitor and manage the flood of social media posts each day is akin to swimming up a waterfall. Thus, management tools exist that can automate the posting of new content and help monitor the response to posted social media content.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools, which are meant to improve the visibility of a company's web presence in user's web searches, thus enhancing the discoverability of their brand.

and many more.

There are, however, a few caveats. For one thing, unless your company is a massive conglomerate with plenty of capital to spare, you cannot just blindly acquire all the Marketing Technology under the sun and expect to profit. It would be far too expensive and troublesome in terms of logistics and manpower.

Instead of advertising like a monster truck, going with the biggest and meanest marketing machine able to crush any obstacle, it would be much better to ride a marketing motorcycle instead: Lean, nimble, and much less expensive compared to a brute force approach. Doing so can take you straight to your marketing destination with as little fuss and fuel expense as possible, so long as you identify the ideal routes to take. Here are several ways of optimizing your MarTech stack:

Evaluate Current Abilities Before Investing in New Ones

With scores of new software tools being developed and released every year, it can be easy to fall into the pit of adopting any new and exciting technology based on the simple belief that more cutting-edge tools will automatically translate into more efficiency and productivity.

However, gaining access to, and training employees to effectively use, MarTech tools is costly. Like every other business expense, they are only really worth it if the return on investment (ROI) exceeds the initial cost of acquiring it in the first place.

Therefore, before adopting any new software, ponder these questions: Are you acquiring it solely because it is advanced, or because its unique features will specifically help your company's business in the long-run? Are the features and benefits provided by the new technology ones your business actually requires in particular? Can you already do what this new technology allows you to do with the technology and systems you already own and know how to use? Only after you consider these questions, can you see which technologies truly add value to your business, and which ones don't.

Stay Up to Date on the Newest Features

Marketing technology doesn't stay static forever. Unlike physical technology such as washing machines and television sets, software products are constantly expanded on with new features via updates from their developers.

Thus, before you go off into the ether looking for new technologies to fill a gap in your capabilities, check whether you've installed the latest version of the software you already own. It's quite likely that those new features you were looking for may already have been added in, so long as you kept up with the latest updates.

Understand Your Audience

Not every audience is available in every medium. For example, older social media platforms such as Facebook have lost a large chunk of its younger user base over the last few years, leaving them to be much more the purview of older adults. Therefore, it makes little sense to market youth-oriented goods and services in these spaces.

Likewise, if your ideal customer is someone older and less likely to be up-to-date with the newest tech, it would make little sense to push your message through live streamers instead of traditional email campaigns.

Just like you should know what your limits are, you should also know where your target audience truly congregates. Only then can you really focus your efforts on those avenues that will reach their eyes and ears, rather than waste money shouting into a void.

For all the caveats I've mentioned, Marketing Technology is truly one of the best ways to spread your marketing message to people in this densely interconnected age. If you know what you're doing, you can leverage the power of MarTech to reach exponentially more people than could ever be dreamed in the pre-Internet days. Just don't expect it to come easy.