Unlock Your Marketing Potential: Why Your Tech Stack Matters More Than You Think

Do you have an IT department in your business helping to support your digital marketing? Most of our clients do not. Most of our clients outsource their technology (hardware and software) management to a third-party IT management company or have an occasional contractor help them set up solutions or solve problems. 

Regardless of the size of your business, and whether you have a robust IT department or cobble it together wearing all the hats of an entrepreneur (or maybe have that one “tech-savvy” employee who fixes all your issues), you do have a tech stack. 

What is a ‘tech stack’?

Your tech stack encompasses all the technology tools that your business relies upon. You may have accidentally found yourself with your current setup, or you may have designed the perfect interwoven web of solutions to maximize your spending and create efficiencies in your business. 

We think about your tech stack as a whole because many solutions overlap, and it’s easy to end up with subscriptions and licenses to things that can accomplish the same things for your business. When I founded Arlington Strategy, I would have NEVER considered myself a technology company. However, through our daily practice of brand and marketing consulting and digital marketing in Arlington, VA, I have proven myself ignorant because every single engagement includes some element of client tech stack analysis. 

Technology that we are agnostic about as marketers:

We don’t care about your email server or whether you use PCs or Macs to run your business. We are also indifferent about what accounting software you use to manage your business’s finances. None of that technology touches the marketing efforts of your company, and we generally don’t get involved in these types of technology.

Technology we care about as marketers:

When we partner with clients to develop and execute a marketing plan, we work closely with their marketing and communications tech stack. 

What do we mean by that? 

Email marketing programs

How do you communicate with your clients? If you engage in email marketing, do you use MailChimp, Constant Contact, or Omnisend? The options are vast, and the best fit for any marketer is going to depend on the size of your list, the integrative features you need, and how much design capability you desire, among other features.

Social media scheduling tools

What scheduling tool do you use for social media marketing (and you should!)? From Loomly and Metricool to Sendible and Hootsuite, many options have robust capabilities that may make some existing technology solutions redundant.

Graphic design, photo, and video editing

What graphic design or photo editing software or subscription programs do you use? Many clients use Canva for everyday social media graphics, photos, and video editing. Recently,  Canva rolled out new features that could be a game changer in developing and scheduling your social media. For higher-level editing of videos and photos, many people turn to apps such as Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, and InShot.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

How do you manage your customers? Integrating CRM into your marketing tools is critical for efficiently and seamlessly moving customers through the sales journey. Whether you are using HubSpot or a custom Salesforce-enabled CRM, your data (and how it is accessed) is marketing gold for your marketing team! 

Website content management system (CMS)

Your website is the foundation of your marketing. How it interfaces with your other technology solutions will impact the different tactics we can utilize when developing and executing your digital marketing and comprehensive marketing plan. Whether you are using a custom WordPress CMS or a proprietary Squarespace website, your marketing team needs to be comfortable with the interface, understand its full capability, and have the appropriate level of access to do your marketing. 

Our favorite technology marketing solutions

While we care about many aspects of your tech stack as marketers, we are nimble and have worked with a plethora of different systems. Even if we could wave our magic wands and have our clients adopt our favorites, we still wouldn’t have a single tech stack list to uniformly recommend across clients. I’ll explore some of the considerations as we explore our favorite tech solutions. 

I polled my team and asked them their favorite marketing technology solutions, and here’s what they shared:

Grammarly

Antra picks Grammarly. “My favorite tech tool is Grammarly because it helps improve your writing and easily catches grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors. It also has a built-in AI feature that can improve your writing style and clarity. This is a convenient feature when writing copy for clients because it helps us tailor our writing to meet their intended audience.”

As an agency responsible for generating content for many clients, we all use Grammarly (Premium version) to ensure that we not only spell correctly but also avoid grammatical mistakes. However, we still have to be cognizant of every client’s voice and don’t always follow the tool’s recommendations. 

Descript

Emily’s favorite is Descript. “Descript is tremendously helpful for both video editing and writing captions—it speeds up the process and helps ensure consistency in tone and messaging. I also use it as a tool to extract key sentiments and talking points from client meeting recordings. This makes it easier to shape content that aligns with the client’s voice and priorities without revisiting hours of audio.”

Descript is an excellent example of using a marketing tech tool to do more for our clients – saving them valuable resources. While a lot of human management is still necessary to select the best clips for marketing and to prompt the tool to make the desired edits, it is a tool that removes mundane and time-consuming tasks, allowing our team to focus on the bigger picture aspects of content strategy. 

Canva

Kayla enthusiastically recommends Canva! “Canva is a must-have tool for marketers. It is reasonably priced, easy to use, and has templates for everything from Reels to social media posts to print documents. Canva constantly releases new upgrades and integrates seamlessly with all your other marketing tools, making having it in your toolbox a no-brainer!”

Now, this is a big change of tune from Kayla 😉 As a designer trained in the industry-standard Adobe suite of design technology products, Kayla was initially skeptical of Canva’s utility for an agency. Our entire agency uses Canva – often because it’s the tool our clients use, which allows us to collaborate more seamlessly with their staff. But even when we’re producing digital content, we opt for Canva more often than not. However, our designers still use Adobe to create new logos or original line art. 

How can your tech stack streamline your marketing?

Compiling the right mix of tech solutions can create fantastic efficiencies in your traditional and digital marketing. You can save hours by using social media schedulers that incorporate the features you need for your platforms, and save your team from having to post natively daily. With integrations like Canva into some social schedulers, you can further streamline your graphic design with your social media scheduling. Integrate a Grammarly Premium subscription (which plays well with everything you do on your computer) and you seamlessly incorporate writing and editing into your process. And the benefits go on. 

If you want to streamline your marketing through technology tools, you need to start by mapping out all of the functions that your team performs in their marketing activities. Once we know the universe of activity, you can work with a marketing consultant to recommend the right technology stack that minimizes the number of separate tools while maximizing the quality and efficiency of the marketing team. 

The reason there is no one-size-fits-all approach is because for some clients, there are a number of people involved and approvals of output vary by marketing tactic. For other clients, the marketing team is limited to using solutions of their corporate brand, or the tech stack was built at a much larger scale for the company, and the marketing department has limited resources to augment. 

But in an ideal, ground-up world, your marketing team can select a set of tools and solutions that work best together to achieve your marketing goals, within your management structure, and utilizing the skills and capabilities of your existing team. 

Keeping your marketing technology current 

I am on the receiving end of sales pitches every single day for new marketing tools, platforms, plug-ins. It is easy to get sucked into the “what-ifs” and go down a rabbit hole every day exploring a new software demo or wondering if your set-up is somehow lacking. I highly recommend scheduling regular check-ins with your marketing team (for our team, it’s yearly) to evaluate your current tech stack.

Tech check-ins are a great opportunity to browse the newest and latest tools, and recommit to your stack or make changes with the entire stack in mind. When I get the cool new pitch, I simply make a note of it in an Asana task to consider at that scheduled time. The upside of waiting is that some new technology simply doesn’t make it. While it can be fun to get in on the ground floor of new tech, it can also be buggy, volatile, and short-lived. 

Common problems with tech stack systems and marketing

Acess issues

One of the most common problems we run into is access issues. A client may have a single license or “seat” for a particular tool or software, and they share those credentials with everyone on their team. But with that “cost savings,” you run into delays with systems triggering two-factor authentication. (“I need the code to log in to MailChimp.” or “Who can verify my Instagram login?” – sound familiar?) The pros and cons of sharing technology need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. 

Another access issue is continuity planning. This is really important for businesses where staff accounts may simply be disabled upon departure. Are files transferred to other team members? Are credentials passed on? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve worked with large clients, even those who don’t know who has the proverbial keys to the Meta Business manager! See our blog post on this for more. 

Duplication of tools

Another common scenario is paying for tools but only using a portion of their capabilities, which can lead to a more complicated tech stack than necessary. Even within Arlington Strategy, we are reevaluating some of our tech stack for inefficiencies, including our paid Zoom accounts (we have Google Meet), Calendly (Google Calendar has improved booking options!), and WiseStamp, a great tool that allows us to have custom, branded email signatures, might be redundant to what we can create in our paid Google Business Apps. 

Transition time to new tools

Keep in mind that sometimes, by seeking efficiency, though, we create new problems. When changing from a known tool or platform to another, you need to manage the transition carefully. Simply standing up a new *anything* in your business is going to have bumps. This change management challenge is often underestimated, especially by small businesses that are not accustomed to it. Onboarding new tech means training, habit-building, setting SOPs internally, transferring data (at times), and sunsetting old systems. This is why we don’t simply adopt a new technology without following an internal review process and careful timing. 

Conclusion

Your marketing tech stack isn’t just a collection of random tools — it’s the infrastructure that supports your team’s efficiency, creativity, and results. Whether you built it intentionally or pieced it together over time, it deserves regular attention and thoughtful management. From favorites like Grammarly, Descript, and Canva to broader considerations around access, integration, and change management, your tech choices have a real impact on your marketing output. By taking the time to evaluate your stack holistically, streamlining where possible, and planning transitions carefully, you set your marketing team (and your business) up for smoother operations and stronger outcomes. Tech stack decisions don’t have to be perfect — they just need to be deliberate.