The MOPs Leader: 5-person team structure, driving business results, freelancing and more

In this edition:

1. Ideal 5-person Ops Team Structure

2. How to Drive Business Results With Marketing Ops

3. Borrowing Skills From Other Professions

4. Opportunities for Marketing Ops Freelancers

5. For Paid Subscribers: In the Trenches Prioritization 

Big news! The world’s best in-person marketing ops conference is back - get your early bird tickets here.

Listen up: Jeff and I release another episode of the Revenue Rhythms Podcast, check it out here.

UPSKILL: LXA’s Essentials of Marketing Ops Course is back! Learn about this awesome marketing ops class here.

---

Ideal 5-Persons Ops Team Structure

I asked two top marketing ops and revenue ops minds to share with me their ideal team structure if they had 4 direct reports.

I also offered my thoughts on a marketing ops specific team 5 person structure.

---

How to Drive Business Results With Marketing Ops

Here’s a quick guide on how marketing ops can drive business results:

• Campaign Efficiency

  Given you have effective marketing programs, efficiency gains, can help you reach more customers faster. Look for ways to shrink campaign deployment time and you’ll drive more business results.

• Reduce friction

  Removing bottlenecks from decision-making, processes, and cx can decrease time to value in multiple areas. Most friction is bad in any business context. Identify the reason why a particular task is not easy, and push to streamline.

• Automation

  Workflow automation reduces tedious manual effort and toil, freeing up time for more strategic initiatives. Marketing ops should assess for toil or repetitive activities and consider automation.

• Surfacing the Right Data

  Marketers should be able to easily access the data they need to make the right decisions. Marketing ops should use tools and processes to surface the right data to marketers at the right time.

• Repeatable Processes

  Marketing should not have to start from scratch every time. Marketing should be a dependable system with inputs and outputs. Marketing ops should create templates and centers of excellence that continually improve over time.

• Optimize Conversions

  A better conversion rate means less budget and resources for the same results. Marketing ops should look at segmentation and experimentation to improve conversions at every turn.

  

---

Borrowing Skills From Other Professions

Here’s what I mean. These pros have:

1. The creativity of a marketer the ROI-focus of an executive

2. The curiosity of a data analyst the user-centricity of a product manager

3. The problem-solving ability of an engineer

4. The organization skills of a project manager

5. The design-thinking of a user experience designer

If your company wants to grow in tough times, invest in marketing operations.

---

Opportunities for Marketing Ops Freelancers

Don’t freelance early in your career. Is this outdated advice that needs a bit of rethinking? Paul Wilson thrived in the early days of martech by breaking this advice. And now he sees a similar opportunity with gen AI today.

In episode 104 of Humans of Martech, Paul explains that back in the early 2010s, when martech and marketing automation were still finding their feet, he chose to freelance. This was a time when tech companies were hungry for experts, but mature agencies hadn't quite caught up.

His early freelance projects threw him into diverse environments. From complex CRM customizations to marketing automation implementations, he wasn't just consulting; he was absorbing, learning, and adapting to a new field that was rapidly evolving.

Fast forward to today. Paul sees the echoes of those early days in the current landscape of gen AI. See the familiar pattern? An industry at the cusp of major innovation, ripe for those willing to venture off the beaten path. He argues that today's martech pros, much like him a decade ago, are at a pivotal point. You can play it safe... or plunge into the freelance world (even moonlighting to start), where the learning curve is steep but the rewards are potentially game-changing and career-defining.

Should we be more like Paul and rethink old rules? Catch the episode on Spotify or Apple podcasts.