Amy's Ice Creams

There is a tool for everything now.

Email, loyalty, social, paid media, e-commerce, customer data, reporting, automation, AI. And every few weeks, it feels like there is another platform we're supposed to know about, test or somehow fit into what we're already doing.

I love technology. I use it every day. But I've also learned that adding another tool doesn't automatically make your marketing better. Sometimes it just gives your team another thing to manage.

For me, the question has become less about “What else can we use?” and more about “What are we actually trying to fix?”

Start With the Problem

It's really easy to get excited about what a platform can do and then try to find a reason to use it.

I've been guilty of that.

Now, I try to start with the actual problem. Are we trying to get customers to come back more often? Sell more online? Reach people who don't know us yet? Understand what's driving sales? Make something easier for our team?

Then we can figure out if technology is actually the answer.

Working with brands that have physical locations makes this especially important. We can spend all day talking about digital customer journeys, but at the end of the day, someone is walking through our door and buying a burger or a scoop of ice cream.

Working with brands that have physical locations makes this especially important. We can spend all day talking about digital customer journeys, but at the end of the day, someone is walking through our door and buying a burger or a scoop of ice cream.

Having the Data isn't Enough

We can measure almost everything now.

That sounds great until you have five dashboards, 20 reports and a team spending more time pulling numbers than doing anything with them.

I don't think more data automatically means we understand our customers better. The important part is figuring out what the numbers are actually telling us.

"The best marketing tech stack isn't necessarily the biggest or the most impressive. It's the one your team actually uses and your customers actually benefit from."

Did this campaign bring people in? Did they come back?

Did we reach someone new? Did we spend $1 to make $2, or did we just get a lot of clicks that looked good in a report?

I'd rather have a few numbers we actually understand and use than a giant report no one looks at again.

AI Should Give Us More Time to Be Human

AI is obviously a huge part of this conversation.

I use AI. My team uses AI. I think it's an incredible tool when we use it for the right things.

It can help get through repetitive work faster, organize information, look at data differently, get past the blank page and give smaller teams access to things that used to take a lot more time or resources.

What I don't want it to do is make the actual marketing feel less human.

If AI saves us two hours, I want those two hours back to think of a better idea, spend time in our shops, talk to customers, build a partnership, create something weird or actually understand the community we're trying to reach.

I don't think the brands that win will be the ones that use the most AI. I think they'll be the ones that figure out what AI should do and, maybe more importantly, what it shouldn't.

Sometimes the Best Move is Simplifying

One of the biggest things I'm learning as a marketing leader is that sometimes the smartest thing you can do is remove something.

Every platform has a cost beyond the invoice. Someone has to learn it, manage it, pull information from it and make sure it's actually doing what we bought it to do. So before adding another tool, I'm trying to get better about asking whether we already have something that can solve the problem.

The best marketing tech stack isn't necessarily the biggest or the most impressive. It's the one your team actually uses and your customers actually benefit from.

There will always be another platform, another AI tool and another “must-have” piece of marketing technology.

We don't need to use all of it. We just need to get better at knowing what actually makes the work, the brand and the customer experience better.

Would love to hear your thoughts and am happy to adjust anything based on what would be most relevant for your readers!