Marketing is digital. Digital requires martech. Martech needs to be operated. It was with this hypothesis in mind that we launched the

second annual marketing operations survey,

examining the landscape.

Our survey unearthed a growing appetite for the burgeoning function of marketing operations. A near conclusive 93% of B2B marketers said the function is important or critical in delivering digital transformation, which is fascinating given that that role didn’t exist just a few years ago.

Who owns the martech arsenal?

The ownership of martech is a grey area, largely because it’s a team sport. We define ownership as the selection, development, deployment and integration of martech, and we asked our survey respondents who does it at their company. Almost half (47%) said it defaults to the most senior marketer (be that the CMO, marketing director, VP, or head of) whereas 21% have a head or director of marketing operations to do the job.

Almost a quarter (22%) of companies take a more free-flowing approach. Instead of singular ownership, they adopt a shared process with individual members suggesting martech solutions, and operating it on an ad-hoc basis. The IT department even sources the marketing technology in some companies, but they’re definitely outliers.

A growing army

It’s interesting to note the function’s growing presence within our organisations; not least because it’s a perfect example of a profession that didn’t exist just a few years ago. Over two thirds (67%) of our survey respondents have in place either a whole team headed up by a lead, or an individual running marketing operations. A further 21% have intentions of launching one soon (if you’re in that number, part 4 will be of particular interest to you.) Just 13% don’t plan to get involved, mostly saying their companies are too small to validate the function.

On a functional level

The

marketing operations function

sits within the wider marketing team, because it’s all about making the latter more efficient and effective. Simon Daniels, marketing operations consultant at Percassity Solutions outlines the six areas successful marketing operations teams focus on, pointing out that it has to start with strategy; “liaising with marketing leadership to understand the vision and then aid that through creating efficiencies.”

“Strategy is the bullseye of the target – the following are the spokes surrounding that bullseye,” he shares.

1. 
   Customer:
   
   Assist the entire marketing team in creating the optimal customer experience.
2. 
   People:
   
   Advise on the team structure and enable those team members by identifying skills gaps, documentation and training.
3. 
   Process:
   
   Build methodologies to align how marketing works and collaborates with other teams such as sales, digital, IT, and finance.
4. 
   Tech:
   
   Working with IT and marketing to select, deploy, adopt and optimise martech.
5. 
   Measurement:
   
   Metrics around campaign performance, revenue generation and operational efficiencies. Often marketing ops teams will have remit over the budget too.
6. 
   Data:
   
   Underpins all the other pillars because unless a company has a solid foundation here, its results will always Don’t miss our on be mediocre.