Technology is a norm for marketers, and not just in small doses. With the huge array of martech available, it’s a growing challenge to select the right kit – and even more so to implement and integrate it. Marketing leaders are starting to realise that the responsibility of overseeing martech and data cannot just be an add-on. Somebody needs to drive this change.
Marketing operations is the department (or single person) with this as its primary focus. It’s devoted to activities around selecting and implementing tech that monitors, measures and delivers marketing. Ultimately introducing marketing operations will give the concentrated attention your martech and marketing team need.
A study we conducted on the rise of this role showed that 72% of B2B companies either have a team or individual carrying out marketing operations; 19% haven’t currently got a marketing operations function but have made it a goal for the future. So, for those who haven’t heard of marketing ops – or considered its benefits – now is the time to take note.
Here we outline what you need to know about the role so you can decide whether it’s right for your company, and how to get the most from it if you have.
The responsibilities of marketing operations
A marketing operations team will carry out a number of tasks your general marketing team may already cover. However, instead of doing them separately and sporadically, marketing operations dedicates more time and carries out the tasks in a more consistent and cohesive way. These tasks include:
- Owning and managing customer experience journeys and supporting processes.
- Owning and governing data.
- Providing insight and analytics.
- Delivering and managing change.
- Owning and managing marketing technology in partnership with IT.
- Delivering ROI.
- Owning and managing the marketing budget.
Where marketing operations sits in the organisation
Marketing operations sits within the main marketing team. Often the director of marketing operations reports to the CMO. The department is usually viewed as the glue between other departments and external stakeholders.
“Instead of being a siloed function [marketing operations is] an eco-system of practices. It’s almost a conduit for other functions such as finance, IT, sales and even procurement”
Case study: How TMF Group established marketing operations
It’s been six years since Ian Bennison was hired by professional services company TMF Group to become its first marketing operations director. His appointment marked the business’ initial move to set up a marketing operations function, but like many prospective employees you’ll come across for this new role, Ian had no direct experience. He’d worked in sales operations at BT and aimed to draw on these skills to deliver the marketing operations function.
Ian decided to start by focusing on the basics. “My boss wanted to ramp up my team the first year I was there but it would have been wasted because the organisation was just starting to professionalise itself along the sales and marketing channel,” he says. Instead Ian set about doing two things. First, he got a handle on the budget as expenditure wasn’t being tracked properly. Secondly, he linked business enquiries to the CRM. This allowed him to immediately start showing the impact marketing was having on revenue.
Ian knew he not only needed to produce results on marketing’s ROI but vocalise them in a language that the CFO and board would understand. “You can’t just go in and talk to the c-level unless you’re talking about revenue,” he says. “Once you prove your worth, they’ll invest in you more.”
Ian’s approach proven fruitful. Over the past five years the marketing budget has quadrupled, which gave Ian the resources to build a quality team.
As pre-made marketing ops experts are few and far between, Ian looked to employ specialists; rather than hire general marketers who could do a little of a lot, he hired staff who could dedicate themselves to one specific task within marketing operations’ responsibilities. This tactic he’s found invaluable.
“Having a specialist speeds up the journey,” he explains. “Two years ago, our data was in a really bad state due to a lot of acquisitions. That’s when I hired a data manager. Having brought in that specialist, we moved so quickly that our database went from 50,000 to 400,000 within a month. It’s also completely segmented to industry and job.”
Now Ian faces a new problem. His team has grown to 11, which means he needs to introduce a new level of management. “My biggest problem is thst I still do a lot of stuff I shouldn’t do. I keep trying to decide when it’s the right time to bring in an operations manager. I’ve got plenty of specialists but it’s me who holds it together at the moment.”
Defining relationships with finance and IT
Marketing operations has the responsibility of maintaining relationships with other departments, particularly finance and IT. It’s therefore important you know what’s expected from other departments, and vice versa.
A first and basic step in defining relationships is to make sure everyone in IT has a firm understanding of what the role will involve and what you will be owning – some marketing operations and IT roles may overlap.
“You need to have buy-in from IT and be clear which IT decisions are owned by marketing operations,” confirms Hayley Sykes, head of brand, content and marketing operations at Virgin Media Business. “If marketing operations is constantly asking IT’s permission to purchase a new platform or implement a process, it won’t deliver the changes required at the pace you’re presumably looking for.”
The finance team will expect marketing operations to deliver the concise data of marketing’s ROI, as the marketing budget will sit with the marketing operations director. Hayley says this will always be somewhat of a challenge. “At the outset you need to be able to invest resources and budget to facilitate the outputs you expect from a marketing operations function. You can’t do that on a shoestring,” she says. She advises you embrace a platform that you know will enable you to deliver the insights you need, approaching it from a marketing campaign perspective.
Challenges you’re likely to face
In his career in marketing operations, Finastra’s marketing operations lead Harjeet Singh came to recognise the difficulties that are common for companies that are either creating the department for the first time, or for more established marketing ops teams.
- Understanding the end goal of the different functions within your organisation. This is something a marketing operations leader needs to be on top of, especially as they’re interlinks with so many companies in the business. “Only then will you be able to solve the first problem, which is following the ROI of all activity. That’s the biggest challenge,” Harjeet says.
- Understanding the processes within your company. To offer the general marketing team some foresight you need to understand the way processes work within your company. This could mean taking time to understand how data is collected. “You should be able to understand what the next roadblock is going to be and help enable and solve that,” he explains.
- Understanding the customer journey. The technology and data you’ll be monitoring all connects back to the customer, so it’s vital you keep up to date with the customer journey. “Understand how the organisation finds the right kind of companies to work with, what the media touch points are, and how the customer interacts with the company,” says Harjeet.
The marketing operations mindset
For marketing operations roles there are some specific traits that can complement the role a marketer has to undertake.
“The person must be a logical and structured thinker,” says Harjeet. This is because a lot of the time a marketing operation marketer will need to use data to guide their decisions in future investments.
Ian says it’s also imperative to recruit someone who doesn’t have a blinkered approach. “I want people who think about what they’re doing, why they do it, the impact they’re having and the value it can add,” he shares.
Hayley also believes marketing operations requires marketers to be agents of change and to be confident in making decisions, and embracing new technology. “You have to be prepared to set tech up, to monitor activity, and then make a decision for change moving forward. Otherwise we’d be stuck in a world of marketing resource management systems. As content consumption and the channels consumers choose change, the technology we use to monitor it needs to keep up.”
Essential skills needed for marketing operationsOrganisationAwareness of other departmentsIT skillsAn eye for new technologyProject managementKnowledge of end-to-end marketing flowAnalytics.
