Marketers buy from a stack of 8-12 categories: marketing automation (HubSpot Marketing Hub, Marketo, Pardot, Customer.io, ActiveCampaign), CRM integration (Salesforce, HubSpot CRM), email service provider (Klaviyo for ecommerce, Iterable / Braze for product-led, Loops for SaaS), CMS + landing pages (WordPress, Webflow, Unbounce, Instapage), SEO + content (Ahrefs, Semrush, Surfer, Frase, Clearscope), social media (Buffer, Hootsuite, Later, Metricool, Sprout Social), paid ads (Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, plus Triple Whale / Northbeam for ecom attribution), analytics (Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Plausible, Fathom), and reviews + community (G2, Trustpilot, Capterra, Reddit, Slack communities).
The financial reality: most marketing stacks have 20-30% redundancy and gather dust. The leverage isn't buying more tools — it's actually using the ones you have well (specifically: email flow automation + content distribution discipline).