The ultimate guide to Martech | Austin Hay (Reforge, Ramp, Runway)

1. Adopt “Build and Buy” Strategy

Instead of a rigid “build versus buy” approach, embrace a “build and buy” strategy: purchase third-party tools for core functionality, then build custom solutions on top to achieve higher velocity and unique capabilities.

2. Adopt “Tools Solve Problems” Mindset

Consistently remind yourself and your team that tools exist solely to solve problems, fostering a problem-first approach rather than a tool-first mentality in MarTech strategy.

3. Use PPS Framework

When facing a challenge, apply the Problem, People, System (PPS) framework: first identify the ‘Problem,’ then the ‘People’ involved, and finally, what ‘System’ it impacts, to avoid prematurely jumping to tool-based solutions.

4. Practice “Thinking Gray”

Adopt the “thinking gray” philosophy by intentionally delaying decisions for as long as possible until absolutely necessary, fostering patience and allowing for better, more informed choices in both work and life.

5. Develop Probabilistic Attribution Skills

Familiarize yourself with probabilistic matching and attribution as a crucial skill set, as marketers increasingly rely on models to extrapolate insights from partial data (e.g., 30% of a population to 100%).

6. Future-Proof Tool Setup Minimally

When setting up or picking tools, always consider their long-term implications (1 year out) and take minimally invasive actions to mitigate future catastrophic risks, balancing future-proofing with immediate product market fit needs.

7. Prioritize Cross-Functional Management

When hiring MarTech professionals, prioritize candidates with strong upward, lateral, and downward management skills, as they will need to persuade and coordinate across multiple departments (RevOps, Product, Data) to achieve goals.

8. Set Up MTA Infrastructure Early

Prioritize setting up the correct data infrastructure for multi-touch attribution (MTA) from the beginning, as it’s not overly complicated and prevents future data gaps when you need MTA results.

9. Scrutinize SaaS Contracts for Scale

Pay close attention to SaaS tool contracts, terms, liability exposure, and future scaling costs, as managing these effectively can prevent significant financial losses and provide high leverage.

10. Centralize MarTech Ownership

As your company scales past 100-150 people, transition from a “village approach” where everyone manages tools to a centrally owned MarTech function to ensure data flow, schema, and legal compliance are properly managed.

11. Design Future-Proof MarTech Systems

Actively design and advocate for a 1-2 year vision for your MarTech system, considering financials, contracts, and operational efficiency to ensure long-term scalability and cost control.

12. Automate MarTech Administrative Tasks

Automate administrative tasks such as PII requests, tool admittance, and permissions to free up MarTech time and prevent issues like accidental mass emails from interns.

13. Prioritize MarTech Cost Efficiency

Set internal goals to continuously reduce the total cost of tooling per user or per seat as the business grows, striving for lean and efficient operations.

14. Implement First & Last Touch UTM

Store UTM parameters and ad network IDs (e.g., GCLID) locally on the device as “UTM first campaign” and “UTM last campaign,” updating the “last” value with each new visit to enable multi-touch attribution.

15. Design Data for Multi-Touch Attribution

Collect user attributes for both first and last attribution, and fire page view events with first and last UTMs, enabling your data warehouse team to coalesce all touchpoints for comprehensive MTA analysis.

16. Align Taxonomy with Tool Capabilities

When designing your data taxonomy, consider the limitations and capabilities of your third-party tools, as many only support user and event objects, influencing how you can structure and store data.

17. Control Schema with Data Warehouse

Build your own data warehouse for unlimited schema control (product, user, event), as most third-party B2C tools (except Snowplow) limit you to predefined user and event objects.

18. Consider Tool Object Orientation

Design your website and app tracking with the object orientation (user, event) of your third-party tools in mind, as this impacts how data can be collected and utilized.

19. Design Data Movement Process

Establish a clear methodology or process for how and when data should be moved between different tools and your data warehouse to avoid haphazard data management and system issues.

20. Optimize Ads with Full-Funnel Data

Enhance ad optimization by tying top-of-funnel data to bottom-of-funnel opportunity data (e.g., ideal value of an opportunity) and sending these “synthetic events” back to ad networks, rather than just optimizing for clicks.

21. Invest in Early Security Measures

Make small, early investments in security measures like SSO (e.g., $2,000 and two days of setup) to prevent larger security problems and future IT overhead.

22. Implement Safeguards Against Duplication

Establish safeguards to control SaaS tool sprawl, ensuring teams have necessary tools without introducing duplicative technology, which helps manage costs and simplifies the tech stack.

23. Hire for Intellectual Curiosity

Prioritize intellectual curiosity when hiring MarTech professionals, as the field constantly evolves, requiring a strong willingness and ability to learn new tools and technologies quickly.

24. Seek Scrappy Engineering Skills

Look for candidates with scrappy engineering skills (e.g., JavaScript, Python, API literacy) who can understand and solve technical problems, even if they aren’t full-stack engineers.

25. Hire Tool-Agnostic Problem Solvers

Prioritize hiring MarTech professionals who are tool-agnostic and view tools as solutions to problems, rather than defaulting to previously used tools.

26. Ask “MarTech System Audit”

Ask candidates to outline their approach to auditing a new MarTech system and proposing changes within a week to identify tool-agnostic problem-solvers who think backward from the problem.

27. Ask “How Did You Prepare?”

Use the interview question “How did you prepare?” to assess a candidate’s thinking process, planning ability, seriousness, and intellectual curiosity.

28. Self-Teach Core MarTech Skills

Acquire essential MarTech engineering skills (web/backend programming) through self-teaching or online academies, as a 6-month investment can make you “pretty dangerous” in the field without needing a formal degree.

29. MarTech Leaders Must Be ICs

Recognize that all marketing technologists, including leaders, must maintain individual contributor (IC) skills and be the most senior technical experts on all first- and third-party systems.

30. Place B2C MarTech within Growth

For B2C companies, position the MarTech function alongside or reporting into the Head of Growth or CMO, as its primary customer is the marketing/growth team.

31. Hire Technically Strong MarTech

Ensure your MarTech lead is a strong technical architect or operator to effectively represent the function to product and engineering organizations.

32. Avoid Decentralized MarTech

For most startups, avoid a decentralized MarTech model (e.g., a systems person in every org) as it can create more systems and spread resources too thin, unless you are a massive company.

33. Align MarTech Placement by Leader

Determine MarTech’s organizational placement (e.g., ops, product, engineering) based on the leader’s primary skills; an ops-focused leader might fit in a decentralized ops role, while a technical architect/PM leader might lead a standalone team.

34. MarTech Supports UA Campaigns

MarTech’s role is to support user acquisition teams by providing the technological infrastructure and expertise to optimize campaigns, improve CAC, and achieve other growth metrics.

35. Empower Growth Engineers for UA

Recognize that growth engineers with strong technical skills can be “superhuman” in user acquisition, setting up tools and running campaigns end-to-end without needing a dedicated MarTech person.

36. Distinguish MarTech from MarOps

Understand that MarTech typically involves an engineering background, focusing on technical implementation, while MarOps often involves systems/business analysis without necessarily requiring an engineering background.

37. Align MarTech Goals with Growth

Tie MarTech goals directly to the growth and user acquisition teams’ objectives (e.g., CAC goals) to ensure alignment and support their success.

38. Develop Persuasion Skills

Cultivate strong persuasion and salesmanship skills to effectively communicate the importance of MarTech problems and secure necessary resources and buy-in from other teams.

39. Plan Email Marketing Migration

Anticipate and plan for major email marketing tool migrations (e.g., from a small tool to Braze or Marketo) as the company scales, aiming for a safe transition without losing revenue over a 6-month initiative.

40. Utilize CDPs for B2C Data

For B2C businesses, leverage Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) like Segment or MParticle to collect user data, tie it to actions, and distribute it to ad networks, email tools, and product analytics.

41. Centralize Data in Warehouse

Adopt a data architecture where all data is stored and modeled centrally in a data warehouse (e.g., Snowflake), then use reverse ETL tools to activate and move that data to various platforms.

42. Leverage Reverse ETL for Stacks

For companies with an advanced engineering culture, existing data warehouses (like Snowflake), and modeling capabilities (like DBT), prioritize using reverse ETLs to activate data from the warehouse.

43. Center B2B MarTech on Salesforce

For B2B businesses, design your MarTech stack with Salesforce at its core, as it typically serves as the central hub for lead capture, CRM, and other related tools.

44. Strategize B2B2C User-Company Mapping

For B2B2C models, carefully plan how and when to tie individual user data to company or entity objects, considering tool placement and data flow to manage top-of-funnel complexity with CRM needs.

45. Carefully Map HubSpot to Salesforce

If using both HubSpot and Salesforce, meticulously plan and implement how data is mapped between them to avoid significant data management challenges, as there’s no single “good solution” for this integration.

46. Choose B2B2C Data Flow Strategy

Select a clear data flow strategy for B2B2C, such as collecting user/event data in Amplitude/Segment and merging it directly into Salesforce, or routing it through HubSpot first.

47. Monitor Threads for Ad API

Keep a close eye on Threads’ development, particularly how quickly they establish an advertising API and whether it integrates with Meta’s existing architecture, to understand new ad opportunities.

48. Explore Reddit for Ad Conversions

Investigate Reddit as an emerging advertising channel due to its opening conversions API and embedded ad formats that blend seamlessly with user posts.

49. Adapt to Aggregate App Attribution

Acknowledge that app ad attribution is now largely aggregate and deterministic matching is no longer feasible, requiring new approaches to measurement.

50. Account for Browser URL Truncation

Be aware that browsers are increasingly stripping out URL parameters, leading to more paid traffic being misattributed as organic, and adjust your measurement strategies accordingly.

51. Address Cookie Blocking Impact

Understand that third-party cookie blocking means users remain anonymous until login, leading to a lack of pre-conversion attribution data and potentially misclassifying paid traffic as organic.

52. Prioritize MTA & Probabilistic Modeling

For most businesses, focus on improving multi-touch attribution (MTA) and probabilistic modeling before investing in Media Mix Modeling (MMM), as they often lack the data or readiness for MMM.

53. Conduct Geo-Based Testing

For offline advertising (e.g., billboards), conduct geo-based testing to isolate campaign impact by controlling for confounding factors in specific geographic areas.

54. Recognize MarTech Overwhelm Signals

Look for signs like an overwhelmed growth engineer, lack of time, or increasing system complexity as indicators that it’s time to consider hiring a dedicated MarTech person.

55. Manage MarTech Contracts & Legal

Ensure someone is responsible for understanding data flow, schema, procurement, and legal aspects of MarTech tools to avoid infinite liability and manage contracts effectively as the company scales.

56. Identify MarTech Need by Sprawl

Consider hiring a MarTech person when you accumulate many tools and feel a need for greater efficiency in connecting data and backend infrastructure for growth measurement and execution.

57. Address MarTech Pain Points

Recognize “pain points” like inability to execute due to tool knowledge gaps, setup issues, or fear of impacting existing systems as key drivers for needing dedicated MarTech expertise.

58. Build Around Purchased Tools

Create financial models to demonstrate that buying a third-party tool at the lowest cost and then building custom solutions around it can be more cost-effective and faster than building the entire system from scratch.

59. Leverage Vendor Commitment

When building custom solutions on top of a purchased third-party tool, leverage the vendor’s commitment to your success to potentially achieve accelerated outcomes and support.

60. Apply “Thinking Gray” to People

Extend the “thinking gray” concept to evaluating people; avoid making quick judgments and allow yourself grace to not decide about individuals until a decision is truly required, leading to more nuanced understanding.

61. Cultivate Appreciation & Empathy

Cultivate appreciation by understanding the challenges people face in their daily lives, which fosters empathy, makes you more grateful for good moments, and enhances business relationships.

62. Understand People Beyond Work

Strive to understand colleagues and individuals beyond their work persona, delving into their personal drivers and challenges, which deepens appreciation and improves interactions.

63. Golden B2C MarTech Stack

For B2C, use Amplitude (CDP/product analytics), Customer.io (email, upgrade to Braze), Snowflake (data warehouse), Hightouch (reverse ETL), and AppsFlyer (mobile attribution) for an optimized MarTech stack.

64. Golden B2B MarTech Stack

For B2B, use Amplitude (product analytics), Branch (web attribution), Salesforce (CRM), Snowflake (data warehouse), Hightouch (reverse ETL), and Customer.io (email, upgrade to Braze) for an optimized MarTech stack.

65. MarTech Drives Growth

Understand that the core role of a MarTech professional is to leverage technology and tools specifically to drive growth for the business.

66. Create “Life Frameworks” One-Pager

Compile a one-page document of useful life frameworks (just the words) to serve as a quick reference and aid in remembering valuable mental models.

67. Small Teams: Growth is MarTech

If you’re a small startup (30 people or less), recognize that your growth acquisition person likely is your MarTech person, handling tool setup and data management for ad networks.