The Marketing Ops Leader: Try This Challenge, Which Tool to Buy Next, and MOPs Expectations

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In this edition:

1. Try the Marketing Ops “Fitness Challenge”

2. 13 Things People Should Know About Marketing Ops, But Don’t

3. Marketing Ops Expectations vs. Reality

4. Poll: Which Martech Tool Will You Buy Next?

5. For Paid Subscribers - Exclusive Video: Growing Your Career in Marketing Ops

PS: LXA’s Marketing Operations course is back! Check out The Essentials of Marketing Operations.

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Marketing Ops Fitness Challenge

I love challenges, especially fitness challenges, they spice things up and make the mundane fun again. Try these “workouts” to boost your marketing ops fitness.

WORKOUT A: TRAINING AND DOCUMENTATION  (1 Video, 1 Process, 1 Workshop)

• 1 Video

  • Warm up! Record your screen and talk through a common marketing process. This could be building a landing page, generating a report, or adding a new user. Share the recording with your team, and add it to your onboarding library.

• 1 Process

  • Heating up! Document a key marketing process in a step-by-step format, complete with screenshots and reference links. Try articulating how your nurture programs work, or how to manage the lead lifecycle in your CRM. Add this document to your internal wiki or resource center.

• 1 Workshop

  • Push through! Organize a 60 minute workshop (doesn’t have to start this week). Pick a key Martech concept and teach stakeholders all about it. If appropriate, have them follow along and try for themselves. See the comments for examples.

WORKOUT B: TEAM STRUCTURE AND ROLES (Performance, Stakeholder Management, Future Hirers)

• Performance

  • Set the tone! Assign a team member to review the performance of a marketing effort and outline ways to improve it. For example, how is the newsletter performing? What are key metrics that should be improved? What business results is it driving? What new things can we test to improve performance?

• Stakeholder Management

  • Collaborate! Assign a team member to create a plan to improve the relationship with stakeholders. Rate your relationship with each team between 1 and 10. Where are the relationships weakest? What meetings, feedback sessions, or projects can you undertake to improve those relationships?

• Future Hirers

  • Chart the course! The best time to recruit is before you need someone. Use Linkedin and other means to reach out to potential candidates, and have an informal meet and greet with them. At the minimum, you will learn something new! More importantly, you will build a pipeline of qualified candidates that you can bring on and shorten the recruitment cycle.

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13 Things Most People Should Know About Marketing Ops, but Usually Don’t

1. It takes time and talent to ensure data is ready for marketing and reporting.

2. Many B2B marketers send emails that they know are uninteresting.

3. Most non-marketers don’t know that MQL is a self-defined metric. It could be a hand-raiser, or a cheeseburger. You don’t need to throw a whiteboard in the trash if you don’t like what’s written on it.

4. A large marketing automation instance typically requires a highly experienced admin to achieve full potential.

5. Most B2B emails could be greatly enhanced by cutting them in half.

6. In today’s job market, you’ll have to pay 20% above competitive for a senior marketing ops hire.

7. Optimizing marketing has a quick cap without great content.

8. Marketing attribution is popular, but most non-marketers don’t understand it. This creates a disconnect between marketing and the rest of the business.

9. Marketers say they want to personalize campaigns, but you can’t do that without a solid data strategy.

10. Enterprise versus startup marketing ops is very different. It’s not exactly apples to oranges different, but be wary of where you get your advice.

11. People love announcing the purchase of a new Martech platform, but no one ever talks about how poorly some are adopted.

12. No one ever remembers emails that were sent late. Everyone remembers emails that were sent with mistakes.

13. Marketing ops prefers that people bring us their problems, not their solutions. (by Simon Daniels).

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Marketing Ops: Expectation Versus Reality

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Poll of the Day

Reporting/Analytics Tools is the winner!

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Answering Reader Questions:

Short answer: No. I would focus on one, gain strong proficiency, and then start to focus on other areas like how to drive alignment with sales and product, how to analyse reports, how to come up with new initiatives to drive results. If you are looking to become a Martech leader, which is like a marketing ops leader but with a larger focus on technology, I would study data, tech team management, and product management. Incidentally, I personally am only proficient in one of the three big MAPs.