Who Needs Marketing Operations?

It’s easy to believe we don’t need the “big fancy things” when we’re just a scrappy little team or business trying to get off the ground. But you may need things you’re not currently using—or even know you need. Perhaps yours is the team that needs marketing operations.

Listen to Season 3: Episode 9

Because marketing operations is a relatively new term, and because technology and—let’s face it—marketing tactics, channels, and more are constantly in flux, it can be hard to know what roles you need on your team. Plus, it’s challenging to know what functions you want and might be missing.

Many marketing leaders, vice presidents, directors, and CMOs find themselves faced with a growing complexity to execute their function of expanding visibility and attracting people so that sales can be made and value delivered.

The Changing Landscape of Marketing

There is a huge opportunity to execute marketing really well with fewer resources than before, but the composition of those resources can feel elusive because it keeps changing. As if content marketing, social media marketing, websites, and email marketing weren’t enough, now there are also podcasts. Each of these channels and functions has its own set of software, rules, platforms, and apps that are required to be successful, not to mention the analytics and metrics parts.

It seems a daunting task just trying to keep track of what’s happening across all these channels and platforms. This is where marketing operations comes into play. If you are a team leader who is tasked with addressing many channels, creating a comprehensive marketing plan, and your organization wants to know how successful you’re being in executing that plan, then your team needs marketing operations.

When Your Company Needs Marketing Operations

As we’ve discussed in previous episodes, marketing operations is the pit crew for the race car of the marketing organization. In each and every function and channel, strategy, planning, and execution are required. What gets sticky is that when we get to the execution, we might realize that some of the technical implementation requires a slightly different strategy. Marketing operations is where the rubber meets the road. Even if you are just figuring out what kind of race you’re running, and you’re unsure what kind of tires you need, that’s a key role of marketing operations.

If this is all hitting too close to home and you’re now thinking your company is one that needs marketing operations, here’s how you can approach it:

• First, assess your current state. Where are the holes? Where is your team struggling and where are the tensions? Write yourself a list.
• Second, assign a category to each item on that list. Is this a strategy problem? A planning problem? An execution problem? Is this a technology problem? Then looking at your list and all those items categorized under execution and technology are likely the places marketing operations could help you with first.

If those categories make up more than 10% of your list, it’s definitely time to engage marketing operations.

The Benefits of Implementing Marketing Operations

When you can support your marketing team with the right marketing operations resources, everyone feels freer to fulfil the functions they’re responsible for. When the race car driver doesn’t have to worry if the right weight of oil is in the engine, he or she can focus more on the road ahead, when to shift, and use the skill set that makes him or her the best driver—and not the mechanic. The team functions better together, objectives get achieved, and the marketing organization can be more proactive about bringing to the table the best way to go about getting the job done.

Get Help with Your Marketing Operation Needs

Not sure where to start with improved effectiveness for your marketing team? It can be as simple as assembling information so tasks can be delegated and completed faster. I’ve created the Website Quick Reference template to help teams like yours pull together the technical details for your website to avoid delays and whoopsies when dealing with the website. Grab your free template at getffx.com/website.

In the next episode, we’ll examine the gap that many marketing teams have a hard time bridging, the one between the chief marketing officer and the chief operations officer.