Build or buy?
How to assemble your marketing stack
AI has made marketing tools faster and cheaper to build, but that doesn’t mean you should build everything yourself. See what’s worth building, what you should buy, and when to combine both approaches.
Who's this guide for?
- Marketing, marketing operations, and data leaders deciding whether to buy an existing platform, build a custom tool, or combine both approaches.
- Product and technical teams evaluating whether a custom marketing solution justifies the development time, maintenance, and infrastructure it requires.
What you’ll learn
STRATEGIC DIFFERENTIATION
Build only when customization is worth the cost
Consider building when existing tools can’t meet your requirements and a custom solution would create enough value to justify the development and ongoing maintenance.
FOUNDATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Buy proven infrastructure
Buying established infrastructure can help you launch faster without taking on the cost and maintenance of building connections, authentication, data normalization, and security yourself.
THE HYBRID APPROACH
Buy the foundation and build on top
Combine purchased infrastructure with your own workflows, logic, and user experience. This allows you to launch faster (and avoid ongoing maintenance) without giving up control of what makes the tool valuable.
What's inside
Building marketing tools
When it makes sense to build in-house.
Buying marketing tools
Why some parts of your marketing stack are better left to specialist vendors.
The hybrid approach
How to combine both, buying the underlying infrastructure and building on top.
Your decision checklist
A practical framework to help you decide, tool by tool.
Where Supermetrics comes in
How Supermetrics lets you choose how much of your marketing data stack you want to own.
Frequently asked questions
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It's a practical guide to deciding which parts of your marketing stack to build in-house and which to buy from a vendor — plus a checklist to help you decide, tool by tool.
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It’s for marketing, marketing operations, data, product, and technical leaders involved in deciding whether to build, buy, or combine the two.
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No. It covers the build-or-buy decision for your whole marketing stack, with AI as the current pressure point pushing more teams to consider building in-house.
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Supermetrics supports both approaches. Use its ready-made tools to connect, manage, analyze, and activate marketing data. Or, build your own products and workflows on its managed marketing data infrastructure.
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Yes, it's free to download as a PDF.
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Yes. The report is designed to be shared across marketing, data, and leadership teams to support alignment and planning.
