Cunningly Good Guide to our Marketing Tech Stack

I’ve been feeling inspired by a recent post by my good friend Heather Townsend on the 9 pieces of software she couldn’t run her business without.

It was a fascinating read for me. As a marketing agency, our business uses a ridiculous amount of software systems, from the free to the (very) costly, and at last count it was 46 separate systems. Yep, not kidding. Welcome to marketing in the 21st century.

Only one of Heather’s 9 systems crossed over with ours, and that was Sanebox, an email management software that I’ve had for over 10 years and which I literally could not live without. Yet some of the fundamentals of Heather’s business and mine are the same. We both sell professional services, in one format or another, and we are both very active on online platforms.

I started thinking about how we can get hung up on not having the right system, or doing things the right way in business. But the route to success is literally different for all of us. Heather uses what works for her and her clients, I use what works for me and my clients.

So, setting Sanebox aside, I thought I’d ask myself what would make it into my Top 9, I ask myself? And why? When there’s 167 to choose from, choosing just 9 is a tough call, but here goes:

Creativity and Productivity Tools

Adobe Express

Heather uses Canva, we use Adobe Express for much the same thing. We used to use Canva but they put the price up and, as we already use a number of Adobe products, it seemed sensible (and cheaper) to switch.

Adobe Express bought over one of our suppliers and we’re hopeful that, in time, some of the fabulous functionality of that product will reappear in the Adobe Express ecosystem which appears to be evolving day by day and which, for the teeny tiny price per user is far superior to the Canva offering.

It’s perfect for quick and easy content creation. Our designer, Gordon, sets us up with professional templates, freeing up team members to edit and update as they need them.

Metricool

We do a LOT of reporting across digital channels for clients and Metricool takes the heavy lifting out of this process for us, producing and publishing monthly reports automatically.

We also use it to manage publishing schedules for all social media channels, and it enables us to work ahead for clients and also ensure there’s no unusual overload of comms in any one day.

Its drag and drop calendar makes it super easy to move a post if needed, and reschedule it to a later date and it has a built in functionality that allows the client to use the system directly to review and approve content which also saves everyone time.

Microsoft Excel

I am a self professed Microsoft geek. Microsoft are not perfect, but their software is extensive and powerful if used to its full potential.

I use Excel for all manner of activities, from reporting to data analysis. Now, with Microsoft Copilot added into the mix, you don’t even need to have brilliant Excel skills to get results – just ask copilot how to, and it will give you step by step instructions.

I’ve built really complex tracking dashboards and interconnected reports using excel and it saves me huge amounts of time every week. It’s the software that keeps giving and a marketer’s best friend when it comes to number crunching data.

ChatGPT

I know, there’s lots of hype about AI, but ChatGPT is like the marketer’s multi-tool Swiss Army knife.

I use it to analyse very large anonymised data sets, interrogate complex google analytics data, as well as help me with day to day coding issues and technical fixes. It’s not always right, but luckily I’m an experienced driver and can help it navigate its own weaknesses to get the output that I need.

For me, it’s not about replacing skills like writing, but augmenting skills you already have.

The last time I was able to do this level of large scale data analysis I was studying for my PhD and using a software package called SPSS, which is the gold standard for data analysts. Could ChatGPT rival SPSS? Well, no, because it would struggle with the scale of data sets that SPSS can crunch, but as very few of us run businesses that need an academic level of number crunching, it works perfectly fine.

Maximising Efficiency

Fathom Video

This has been our AI game changer and we nicked it from our accountant’s playbook. Our days are filled with meetings and millions of actions. Fathom records the meeting, transcribes it and emails all the participants with a to do list and access to the recording and transcript immediately.

No more taking notes, and transferring them to a task list. No more confusion over who said what and when. It’s the ultimate secretary and a massive time saver for both us and for our clients.

Zapier

Sitting alongside Fathom in our Speedy Gonzales playbook is Zapier. It’s probably our most underused tool, largely because it’s fiddly to use, but when it works it really works.

All those actions we generated from the Fathom meeting? Well they go straight from there, into Zapier and are placed neatly and tidily into our Basecamp to do list. Once again, with links to what was discussed and clear info in case we forget.

It’s my mission to use Zapier more next year to automate because this time saving alone is worth its weight in gold in speedily progressing meeting follow ups.

Basecamp

Basecamp has been our task management tool since forever. Again, like Zapier, it’s not perfect but it’s functional. I’ve tried out all the others at one time or another and have always come back to Basecamp as the primary tool. Trello doesn’t work for me, Monday seems a bit OTT. I momentarily looked at Notion but it was too much effort to get going on it.

Do I wish the Basecamp team understood project management a bit better? Yes. But it’s ok, because I understand project management well and I can organise my Basecamp lists and timelines accordingly. If I could add one functionality to Basecamp to make it even more useful, task dependencies and workflows would be hugely helpful. Maybe one day. I live in hope.

What it does do really well is enable asynchronous collaboration on tasks, useful if your team is remote or works part time, and keeps everyone on track in one place.

Timely

Another AI game changer for me, this app follows me about on my PC all day and does all the hard work enabling me to accurately complete my timesheets with a granular level of detail of what I did during the day.

As our telephone system operates through teams it records the time spent on calls, both incoming and outgoing, meetings, team chats as well as productive time in browser based platforms. It has enabled us to better capture our time and also provide really robust and thorough reports for our clients.

Microsoft SharePoint/Teams

This isn’t a cop out. I know half the world uses SharePoint and Teams, and it’s not as sexy as all the new fangled systems out there but not all setups are built equally.

I know because we used to have a disjointed setup and we’re transitioning into one that is teams centric with SharePoint built around it and I can’t even begin to tell you what a massive timesaver it is.

Document changes actioned more quickly. Co-working on documents simultaneously. No version control issues. Access from literally anywhere (including your phone). It’s genius.

Now, if we can only get Microsoft to integrate Teams with Outlook and embed the outlook task system into the teams/SharePoint infrastructure then we’d be laughing.

Hear that, Mr Gates? I want commission. It’s your missing superpower, believe me. Or hire me, and I’ll tell you what it should look like.

So those are my top 9. A combination of time saving and output generating and they work for us.

I may do some future posts on the top software we use for each element of marketing because, once we delve deeper, there are some nuggets in there for those who work solely in PR, or in SEO/Websites for instance and technology is going no-where fast, so the more we all share best practices, the better.