The other day I was helping someone build a workflow that required some external scripting and an API to bend an email tool to our will, and it reminded me of the importance of point solutions in our martech stacks.
I’m defining point solutions as highly-specific solutions that are either pre-packaged as a product, or are created specifically for you (Scott Brinker calls them the "long tail" solutions in the martech landscape). There are trade-offs between custom-building a solution vs buying a pre-packaged product, but they both have their place for focused solutions to problems
Many of us default to assuming we should focus on consolidation and getting the most use from our existing tech stack. And that’s a good place to start, but taken too far it leads us to compromising on our business goals.
It's like not having salt in your cabinet but being determined to only use what you have available to you. Sure, you can add a bunch of herbs and spices to your food, but it’s still going to be mediocre or terrible without the thing you really need: salt.
As B2B marketing moves to more “composed” tech stacks, the importance of finding the right mix of tools and solutions that match your business goals will continue to increase in importance. Our competitors are already working to get their perfectly customized stack, it's probably time we catch up.