3 tools every martech pro needs to turn strategy into action

Marketing technology is a team sport. As martech practitioners, we often wear many hats across organizations and projects. Our specific responsibilities can vary depending on our position within the organizational structure.

As a result, we’re called on to support and lead a wide range of initiatives, each demanding different skills and approaches. The following tools can help us take effective action and drive progress.

Project leadership

There are plenty of tools to help promote action during projects. 

Action item lists

This tool is simple but powerful. Many project management and collaboration platforms — like Confluence — allow us to create lists of action items assigned to specific people with deadlines. These platforms can even send reminders to individuals about their tasks. It’s a clear, straightforward way to assign and track responsibilities.

RAID logs

RAID logs help track risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies. Treat these logs as living, evolving documents.

Reviewing them regularly is essential to ensure items are added, updated and closed out as needed. RAID logs allow for tracking the complexities that often emerge during martech initiatives.

RACI charts

RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. A RACI chart clarifies what’s expected from each person involved. Ideally, RACI is defined at the individual level — not just the team level — and made accessible to the entire project team. When done well, it minimizes the need for repeated reminders.

Dig deeper: 9 features your marketing team needs in its project management tool

Artifacts

Artifacts are documented outputs that help guide, track and align project work over time. Common examples include:

• Business requirements documents (BRDs).
• Solution design documents (SDDs).
• Backlogs (for tracking tasks and user stories).
• Burndown charts (for monitoring project progress). 

ICE scoring

This prioritization framework evaluates initiatives based on impact, confidence and ease. It helps assess whether an idea is worth pursuing by scoring:

• How much impact it could have.
• How confident you are in that impact.
• How easy it would be to implement. 

This is a valuable tool when helping stakeholders weigh and prioritize objectives.

Dig deeper: How using the ICE model for prioritization can sharpen your strategy skills

Procurement

Martech procurement is often full of potential roadblocks. When selecting large, expensive platforms like a CDP, you might face FOBO (fear of better options). There’s also the common debate over whether to buy, build or combine both approaches. Fortunately, plenty of tools can help you move forward with a bias toward action.

Product catalogs

Product catalog services gather and organize information about vendors and platforms. They categorize solutions for peer comparison and often include product reviews. Examples include:

• CabinetM.
• G2.
• Capterra.
• Gartner.
• BuiltWith.

Requirement documents

As with any martech-related effort, understanding business requirements is crucial. These requirements can come from:

• Market research.
• Customer interviews.
• Online and offline data analysis.
• Regulatory input.
• The organization’s broader mission, goals and KPIs.

Procurement practitioners are valuable partners here because of their experience gathering and prioritizing stakeholder needs. One tool they may use is MoSCoW, which helps weigh requirements as:

• Must have.
• Should have.
• Could have.
• Won’t have.

RFIs

Requests for Information (RFIs) are helpful in the early stages of procurement. They let you gather details about available options when marketing materials don’t go deep enough. RFIs are especially useful when narrowing down a long list of potential vendors.

RFPs

Requests for proposals (RFPs) come into play once you have solid requirements and have identified several viable options. These allow vendors to respond directly to your needs. Organizations may also use non-disclosure agreements so both sides can share more detailed information. Insights from RFP responses are helpful when selecting the final solution.

Dig deeper: Why marketers need to master capability assessment and tool procurement

Change management

Change management focuses on the human factors of work. It assumes that any change will meet resistance, whether perceived as positive, neutral or negative. As martech practitioners, we’re often the movers and shakers driving those changes. Anticipating resistance increases our effectiveness and overall success.

Several frameworks account for this resistance and offer management tools and tactics. Prosci is one organization that has developed widely used resources, though there are also others.

ADKAR model

ADKAR stands for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. The model focuses on change at the individual level. Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt developed it to highlight all the elements needed for someone to understand and truly adopt a change.

ADKAR can be a powerful tool in a martech practitioner’s toolkit. Even major projects — like migrating to a new marketing automation platform — require focused attention on the people involved. No platform can succeed without adequate stakeholder and user adoption.

One interesting aspect of ADKAR is the relationship between knowledge and ability. They’re closely related but not the same. 

For example, a few years ago, I played in an extended family pickleball tournament. I knew the rules, but one of my relatives who had a tennis background easily outplayed me. I had the knowledge but not the ability; she had the ability but less knowledge. In a martech context, this illustrates the need for ongoing user enablement to develop both.

Coalition analysis

Another helpful Prosci tool is coalition analysis. Most changes involve multiple people and teams, so it’s essential to understand how individuals feel about the change.

Coalition analysis focuses on two main factors: whether someone is a proponent, opponent or neutral, and their level of competence related to the change. Enlisting highly competent proponents can help support the initiative and even influence opponents, regardless of their competence.

This kind of analysis is beneficial when:

• Justifying a budget commitment.
• Introducing a new platform.
• Changing a process or gaining adoption for any martech initiative.

Dig deeper: It’s time for a better approach to change management in marketing

Putting it all into motion

As with most aspects of our professional lives, martech practitioners regularly face complex decisions, often while collaborating with large groups of stakeholders on multifaceted projects.

Using these tools and partnering with colleagues such as project managers, buyers and change managers can help us take action and demonstrate our value by driving progress.