Strategy is the core of marketing.

But technology is the force multiplier.

Jeff Shearer is a marketing operations and mar-tech strategist based in Seattle. Most recently, he served as Director of Marketing Operations Technology at Nintex, a workflow automation company. He has also been with Expedia's corporate travel division and just struck out on his own as an independent marketing, operations, and technology consultant.

"I describe marketing automation tools as Legos in business," he told me, "because you can build anything with them."

I asked Jeff about those Legos. We talked about mar-tech affects organizations at all levels, ways to get the c-suite to invest, what guides his decisions, how to evaluate marketing technology, and what Jeff sees in the future.