The Comprehensive Guide to Consolidating Your Marketing Tech Stack

In 2011, Scott Brinker of chiefmartech compiled the first of many marketing technology “Supergraphics,” illustrating the rapid growth of companies supplying digital marketing tools.

The original displayed the logos of 140 prominent marketing tech brands. Today, that chart contains over 15,000 logos.

It’s one of the most eye-popping illustrations of why consolidating your marketing tech stack is both difficult and vital. When built right, a martech stack connects your CRM, marketing automation, analytics, and customer data into a system that drives pipeline. When built wrong, it's a mess of disconnected point solutions that burn budget and slow you down.

Here are some of the best expert tips on how to build a leaner, more efficient martech stack.

What Is a MarTech Stack?

A marketing technology stack (martech stack) is the integrated set of software tools and platforms that B2B marketing teams use to manage, measure, and execute campaigns across the entire customer journey. It includes everything from CRM and marketing automation to analytics platforms and data enrichment tools.

For B2B teams, a martech stack goes beyond individual tools. It's an ecosystem where data flows between systems, attribution connects campaigns to revenue, and automation handles the manual work that used to eat up your day.

The difference between a good stack and a bad one isn't the tools themselves. It's how they integrate, how clean the data is, and whether your team actually uses them.

If integrated effectively, your marketing tech stack increases your productivity, efficiency, campaign visibility, and most importantly, revenue.

How a MarTech Stack Works

A martech stack works by moving data between systems and triggering actions based on buyer behavior. When a prospect visits your website, that event fires to your analytics platform. When they fill out a form, that data flows into your CRM and enrichment tools validate it.

When they hit a scoring threshold, your marketing automation platform routes them to sales. Each tool handles a specific job, but the value comes from how they connect.

APIs and webhooks are what make this orchestration possible. They let tools talk to each other without manual exports and imports. A strong integration layer means your lead scoring model in one system can trigger personalized campaigns in another, or your intent data can update account records in real time.

Here's what a functioning martech stack handles:

• Data automation: Flows from capture to enrichment to activation without manual handoffs

• Identity resolution: Connects anonymous website visitors to known contacts and accounts

• Signal tracking: Captures buyer signals across channels and surfaces them to the right teams

• Campaign automation: Executes campaigns based on triggers, not calendar schedules

• Data governance: Ensures data stays clean and tools stay aligned with strategy

Core MarTech Stack Components

Full-funnel marketing tech stacks will look different for every marketing team depending on individual team needs, functions, and goals. Still, it's important to keep a few fundamentals in mind when you're thinking about which key solutions to keep.

Audience and Data Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can quickly become flooded with poor-quality data, a side effect of users creating records with little to no regulation.

"By using automation and ZoomInfo to gate, clean, and enrich data, we make sure that anything making its way into our CRM is managed by the correct systems for the most up-to-date data," says Ben Daters, vice president of sales at ZoomInfo.

This category includes the tools that help you understand who your buyers are and keep that data accurate. Customer data platforms (CDPs) unify customer information from multiple sources into a single view. Data enrichment platforms like ZoomInfo add firmographics, technographics, and intent signals to your records.

Identity resolution connects anonymous visitors to known contacts. Together, these tools ensure your segmentation and targeting work from clean, complete data.

Key tool types in this category:

• Data providers: B2B data and enrichment platforms like ZoomInfo

• Customer data platforms: CDPs that unify customer information

• Identity resolution: Graph databases that connect visitor identities

• Data infrastructure: Warehouses and lakes for storage

Market intelligence tools will help your demand generation team interpret data and put it to good use. High-performance platforms can help your team turn marketing-qualified leads into sales opportunities at scale by leveraging AI and automation.

Top-quality market intelligence gives your team access to a wide variety of signals that can be interpreted, analyzed, and surfaced to the sales team at just the right time, providing valuable leverage in an environment when every little edge could make the difference.

Content and Digital Experience

This category controls how buyers experience your brand across digital touchpoints. Content like blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, and case studies drives buyers through your funnel.

Content management systems (CMS) control your website and landing pages. Digital asset management (DAM) platforms organize your creative files and brand assets. Personalization engines tailor what visitors see based on their profile and behavior.

Campaign Automation and Orchestration

Marketing automation platforms handle the multi-channel campaigns that drive demand. Email, paid media, social, and webinars all get orchestrated through these systems. The best automation platforms connect to your CRM and data layer, so campaigns trigger based on real buyer behavior, not just time delays.

Social media tools handle upper-funnel marketing and brand awareness. You may need content calendars, social listening tools, post scheduling software, and employee advocacy systems to effectively leverage social platforms.

Analytics and Measurement

Optimizing your website to suit your buyer's journey and strategically guiding website visitors further down the funnel is a key part of any SEO strategy. Tools here may include analytics, heat maps, keyword research, and content optimization platforms.

But analytics goes beyond just SEO and web traffic. Attribution platforms connect your marketing activities to pipeline and revenue. Business intelligence (BI) tools help you spot patterns and build dashboards. Performance measurement systems track campaign ROI and help you allocate budget to what's working. This category answers the question every marketing leader faces: what's actually driving results?

Adtech and Media Activation

For B2B demand generation, paid media tools handle your programmatic display, LinkedIn ads, and retargeting campaigns. These platforms connect to your audience data and intent signals, so you're reaching accounts that are actually in-market. The key is making sure your ad platforms can tap into your first-party data and CRM records, not just running broad targeting.

Steps to Build a MarTech Stack for B2B Growth

Here's how to build or optimize your marketing tech stack.

Step 1: Identify Goals and Strategy

Start with what you're trying to accomplish. Is it more pipeline, better conversion rates, faster sales cycles, or improved attribution? Your martech stack should map directly to those goals. Define your key performance indicators and the specific business outcomes you need to hit.

Ask these questions before evaluating any tools:

• What are our top strategic priorities for this year?

• What metrics define success for our marketing organization?

• What capabilities do we need to hit those targets?

Step 2: Audit Existing Tools

Begin by creating a complete inventory of all the tools your teams currently use. Then, point out redundancies (as well as feature gaps) in your tech stack. This step requires a true understanding of technology architecture and data diagrams to be able to map out processes like lead routing, enrichment, and defining a single source of truth where your data will be stored.

"An audit of existing solutions includes identifying if there are any existing tools that can solve your business needs without bringing in new tech," Daters says. "If you do need to bring in new tech, it's important to think about people, process, and technology, in that order."

Specifically:

• Do you have the right people?

• Is there an audit process already or do you need to create one?

• What are the business and technical requirements for the technology we need?

Don't forget to consider the associated costs as well.

"Prioritize spend based on strategic priorities in the company or biggest challenges in the business that your current tech can't solve for. There should be quantifiable business impact and measurable return on investment with clear timelines and deliverables," Daters says.

Step 3: Align Stakeholders and Teams

Your martech stack doesn't just serve marketing. Sales needs clean data and fast lead routing. Operations needs reporting and governance. Product needs feedback loops and usage data. Get input from all teams that will touch the stack before you commit to new tools.

Identify champions in each department who can advocate for their team's needs and help drive adoption later. Cross-functional alignment at this stage prevents the "shadow IT" problem where teams buy their own tools because the official stack doesn't meet their needs.

Key stakeholders to involve:

• Sales leadership and operations

• Revenue operations and analytics

• IT and security teams

• Finance for budgeting and procurement

Step 4: Map Workflows and Data Flow

Before selecting new tools, document how data should move through your systems. Where do leads enter? How do they get enriched, scored, and routed? What triggers campaigns? What updates the CRM? A clear data architecture prevents the integration headaches that come from bolting on point solutions without a plan.

After pinpointing the tools to consolidate, craft a detailed migration plan. Start by coordinating the transition with your existing contract renewal periods to reduce downtime and save costs.

Map out a step-by-step roadmap, including specific timelines, key milestones, and precise tasks for moving data and workflows from outdated systems to new solutions.

Don't overlook how important change management is during this step. Prepare your team by scheduling hands-on training sessions that delve into the new platform's advanced features, like custom API integrations or automated data syncs. Additionally, set up a robust support system.

Designating a point person or team to address technical issues, especially those involving data integrity or system compatibility helps ensure a smooth transition to a more efficient tech stack.

Step 5: Set Budget and ROI Targets

Calculate total cost of ownership for each tool, not just the license fees. Factor in implementation costs, training time, ongoing management, and integration expenses. Set clear ROI targets before you buy. What pipeline increase or efficiency gain justifies this spend?

For most B2B teams, martech ROI comes from three areas:

• More pipeline generated from better targeting and automation

• Higher conversion rates from personalization and lead scoring

• Time saved from eliminating manual work and data entry

Step 6: Evaluate and Select Tools

Now you're ready to vet solutions. Use your goals, workflows, and budget to build an evaluation scorecard. Here are the critical questions to ask before purchasing any new solution:

Step 7: Enable Training and Adoption

One of the best ways to prevent tool bloat is to establish a technology governance council. As a team, a council oversees the evaluation, selection, and adoption of new tools while making sure each addition aligns with company goals and gets the company closer to operational efficiency.

Say your company is considering the introduction of an AI-powered analytics platform. The governance council continually assesses this and other tools' integration capabilities, workflow impact, and fit within the tech ecosystem, on top of considering cost, scalability, and long-term benefits.

Involving enablement partners from the outset facilitates training and support. As partners, their job is making sure everyone understands the "who, what, when, where, and why" of each new tool and clearly communicating it. Ultimately, it's all about finding ways to enhance visibility into the value and usage of each solution.

Step 8: Review and Optimize

Your martech stack isn't static. Tools that made sense six months ago might not fit your current strategy. Set up quarterly reviews to assess tool usage, integration health, and ROI. Kill tools that aren't delivering. Double down on what's working.

Daters says three key points can help teams assess the state of their tech stack:

• ROI: Are we able to effectively measure and report on how this tech leads to positive returns on pipeline and revenue?

• Adoption: Do our users rely on this as a must-have or is it a nice-to-have? Is it a crucial pillar within their workflows?

• Efficiency: Are we able to save time and money? Can we easily measure and report on the impact this tech is having on our business and processes?

Data, Integration, and AI in the MarTech Stack

Your martech stack is only as good as the data running through it. Bad data means bad targeting, bad personalization, and bad decisions. Integration problems mean manual work and missed signals. And increasingly, AI is what separates stacks that scale from stacks that stall.

Data Quality and Governance

Clean data starts with enrichment and validation at the point of entry. When a lead fills out a form or enters your CRM, enrichment tools append firmographic and contact data automatically. Deduplication rules prevent the same contact from cluttering your database with multiple records.

Normalization ensures field formats stay consistent. Without these standards, your CRM becomes a dumping ground.

Data governance sets the rules for how data gets created, updated, and used. Define who can create records, what fields are required, and how often data gets refreshed.

Data quality standards to maintain:

• Enrichment at entry: Mandatory enrichment on all new records before they enter the CRM

• Automatic deduplication: Automated rules that merge and update duplicate records

• Decay monitoring: Regular audits to flag outdated contact information

• Field validation: Point-of-capture validation to prevent bad data

Open APIs and Interoperability

APIs connect your tools without forcing you into a single vendor's ecosystem. Open APIs let you pull data from one system, transform it, and push it to another. Webhooks trigger real-time actions based on events in other platforms. This interoperability prevents vendor lock-in and gives you flexibility to swap tools when better options emerge.

The strongest martech stacks use a hub-and-spoke model. Your CRM or data warehouse sits at the center, and APIs connect it to specialized tools for each function. When everything flows through a central data layer, you avoid the point-to-point integration mess that breaks every time you add a new tool.

AI Decisioning and Personalization

AI tools in your martech stack handle the pattern recognition and predictions that humans can't do at scale. Lead scoring models use machine learning to predict which contacts are most likely to convert. Intent detection surfaces accounts that are actively researching solutions like yours.

Personalization engines decide which content to show each visitor based on their profile and behavior. ZoomInfo Copilot uses AI to prioritize accounts, suggest next actions, and automate outreach based on buying signals. Instead of manually reviewing intent data and updating lead scores, AI handles the decisioning and surfaces the highest-value opportunities to your team.

MarTech Stack Examples and Tool Categories

B2B martech stacks vary by company size, industry, and sales model. A small team might run on a CRM, marketing automation platform, and analytics tool. Enterprise teams often manage dozens of specialized B2B marketing tools and platforms for every stage of the funnel.

B2B SaaS Stack Tools

A typical B2B SaaS martech stack includes:

• CRM platform: Salesforce, HubSpot, or Microsoft Dynamics 365 for contact and opportunity management

• Marketing automation: Marketo, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), or HubSpot for email campaigns and lead nurturing

• B2B data and enrichment: ZoomInfo for contact data, firmographics, intent signals, and buyer identification

• Web and product analytics: Google Analytics 4, Mixpanel, or Amplitude for behavior tracking

• Revenue attribution: Marketo Measure (formerly Bizible), Dreamdata, or HockeyStack for pipeline attribution

• Account-based marketing: ZoomInfo Marketing, Demandbase, or 6sense for ABM campaigns

Analytics and Attribution Tools

Attribution modeling connects your marketing spend to revenue outcomes. Common models include:

• Multi-touch attribution: Tracks every touchpoint a buyer encounters before converting

• First-touch attribution: Credits the campaign that started the relationship

• Last-touch attribution: Credits the final interaction before purchase

The right attribution model depends on your sales cycle and buying committee size. Complex B2B deals with long cycles need multi-touch attribution to understand the full customer journey.

Why MarTech Stacks Fail and How to Fix Them

Most martech stacks don't fail because of bad tools. They fail because of tool sprawl, fragmented data, and low adoption. Here's what breaks and how to fix it.

Tool Sprawl and Consolidation

Regardless of the business model, company size, or industry vertical, marketing teams have long dealt with tech-stack challenges that get in the way of maximizing their go-to-market potential.

Tool sprawl happens when teams add point solutions without removing old ones. You end up with five analytics platforms, three lead scoring tools, and no one knows which data to trust. Every new tool adds integration complexity and management overhead.

The fix is consolidation. Look for platforms that can replace multiple point solutions. A unified data platform like ZoomInfo eliminates the need for separate enrichment, intent, and contact discovery tools.

Marketing automation platforms with built-in email, landing pages, and forms reduce the tool count. Warning signs of tool sprawl:

• Redundant tools: Teams using different tools for the same function

• Manual processes: Data exports between systems instead of automated syncs

• Data conflicts: No single source of truth for key metrics

• Cost creep: Rising costs without corresponding productivity gains

"Getting rid of all the manual work and segmentation frees up your people to do what they really enjoy," says Daters. "Any marketer would rather spend time being creative and driving results, not managing vendors and handling manual tasks."

Fragmented Data and Unification

Point solutions often don't integrate as well as they should, leading to siloed marketing data, misalignment between sales and marketing teams, and data inconsistencies across the funnel. The result? Fumbled handoff of leads, improper scoring and routing, and ultimately, lost sales.

Data fragmentation happens when each tool maintains its own database without syncing to a central system. Your marketing automation platform has one version of a contact record. Your CRM has another. Your analytics platform has a third. No one can agree on basic facts like lead source or engagement history.

The fix is data unification. Establish your CRM or data warehouse as the single source of truth. Every other tool reads from and writes to that central system. Set up real-time syncs, not nightly batch jobs. Use enrichment platforms to fill gaps and maintain data quality.

Low Adoption and Enablement

You can buy the best tools on the market, but if your team doesn't use them, you've wasted the budget. Low adoption happens when tools are too complex, training is inadequate, or the value isn't clear.

The fix is enablement from day one. Start with hands-on training that shows real use cases, not just feature tours. Create champions on each team who can answer questions and model good behavior. Build the tool into existing workflows instead of asking people to change how they work.

Sales and marketing alignment should be a constant goal of any high-performing marketing tech stack. When everyone uses the same system as your sales team, you'll all be working from a single data set, which reduces the risk of human error.

Track adoption metrics:

• Active user percentage week over week

• Feature usage rates for key capabilities

• Time to first value for new users

• Support ticket volume and common issues

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does buyer intent data fit in a MarTech stack?

Buyer intent data sits in your data and enrichment layer, feeding signals to your CRM, marketing automation, and sales tools. It identifies accounts actively researching solutions and helps teams prioritize in-market buyers over cold outreach.

How many tools should a B2B MarTech stack include?

There's no magic number. Focus on integration over tool count. Start with core systems (CRM, marketing automation, data, analytics) and only add specialized tools when they solve a clear gap.

If you're looking for an end-to-end platform that consolidates your point solutions, increases efficiency, and drives revenue from a unified data foundation, start your free trial of ZoomInfo Marketing today.