Your Comprehensive Marketing Ops Career Guide for 2025
Also - Marketing Tools Without Databases - Podcast Episode
In this edition:
Your Marketing Ops Career Guide for 2025
Marketing Tools Without Databases - Podcast Episode
For Paid Subscribers: The Truth About Being More Strategic in Marketing
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Your Comprehensive Marketing Ops Career Guide for 2025
Entry-Level (0 to 1 Years): Building the Foundation
Goal: Gain exposure, build technical skills, and gather experience.
At this stage, curiosity and a willingness to learn are your biggest assets. Your goal is to build foundational knowledge and hands-on experience. The marketing operations field is vast, and understanding the ecosystem of Martech tools will give you a competitive edge.
Tangible Steps:
Enroll in Online Courses: Platforms like Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, HubSpot Academy, marketingops.com, and Maven offer free and paid courses on marketing automation, CRM tools, campaign management, and project management.
Certifications to Consider: Google Analytics, HubSpot Marketing Automation, Salesforce Administrator, Marketo Certified Expert, Digital Marketing Institute (DMI) Certified Digital Marketing Professional.
Freelance and Internship Projects: Look for small freelance gigs, internships, or volunteer opportunities at non-profits where you can apply your knowledge. Even assisting on small projects counts as real-world experience.
Shadow and Assist: Offer to assist senior team members on campaign builds, CRM configurations, or data projects. Learn by doing and observing.
Example:
John, an entry-level marketing ops enthusiast, spent his weekends working on small HubSpot projects for a friend’s business. By the end of the year, he had hands-on experience with email automation, list segmentation, and campaign reporting.
Specialist (1 to 4 Years): Developing Expertise
Goal: Focus on campaign execution, process optimization, and problem-solving.
This is the phase where you begin to narrow down your expertise. Specialists are known for running efficient campaigns, troubleshooting issues, and developing repeatable processes. This is where attention to detail and mastery of documentation shine.
Tangible Steps:
Campaign Management: Take ownership of specific campaigns. Ensure proper setup, testing, and deployment. Document every part of the process.
Root Cause Analysis: When things go wrong (and they will), don’t just fix the problem. Investigate the root cause. This builds a habit of continuous improvement.
Report Generation: Learn to create dashboards and reports that track KPIs. Make reporting a routine to understand the impact of your work.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with content, sales, and customer success teams. Understand how marketing operations fit into the broader go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
Example:
Amy, a 3-year marketing ops specialist, documented her company’s entire webinar program process, cutting down planning and execution time by 20%. She became the go-to person for webinar programs and virtual events.
Manager (5 to 8 Years): Leading Systems and Programs
Goal: Design scalable systems and lead projects.
As a manager, you begin shifting from execution to strategy. You’ll build systems that enable teams to execute campaigns at scale, establish frameworks that prevent errors, and ensure alignment across teams.
Tangible Steps:
Tech Stack Design: Evaluate and recommend Martech tools that align with business objectives. Understand integration points between CRM, automation, and reporting platforms.
Set Guardrails: Establish guidelines for campaign launches, lead routing, and data hygiene. Guardrails prevent issues before they start.
Goal Setting: Develop goals around pipeline contribution, lead quality, and operational efficiency. Use these to benchmark your team’s progress.
Manage Up and Across: Start presenting to leadership. Clearly articulate the ROI of marketing operations and how it contributes to overall growth.
Example:
James, a marketing ops manager, re-architected his company’s tech stack, saving the company $50k annually by consolidating redundant tools and improving lead flow efficiency.
Senior Manager (9 to 12 Years): Scaling Through Operational Excellence
Goal: Scale operations by building and leading a high-performing team.
Senior managers lead teams and focus on scaling operations. The emphasis here is on developing others, optimizing large-scale processes, and aligning marketing ops with business goals.
Tangible Steps:
Team Building: Hire and train specialists. Create a culture of excellence and accountability.
Strategic Reporting: Develop GTM dashboards that highlight performance, attribution, and ROI. These reports inform executive decisions.
Empowerment and Training: Build internal training programs to upskill your team and keep everyone aligned with best practices.
Partnerships: Establish partnerships with vendors, sales teams, and IT to drive cross-department collaboration.
Example:
Jessica scaled her team from 3 to 10 members, increasing campaign throughput by 150%. Her focus on mentorship resulted in two promotions within her team.
Director+ (13 to 16+ Years): Driving Strategy and Culture
Goal: Drive innovation and customer-centric initiatives.
At this level, you’re driving overall strategy, managing budgets, and acting as a key decision-maker. Directors influence culture, lead change management, and focus on long-term growth.
Tangible Steps:
Strategic Planning: Align marketing operations with company-wide objectives. Set 3-5 year roadmaps for tech stack evolution, automation, and data strategy.
Budget Management: Optimize marketing spend to maximize ROI. Lead conversations about technology investment.
Thought Leadership: Publish content, speak at conferences, and lead internal workshops. Build your personal brand as an industry expert.
Succession Planning: Develop a pipeline of future leaders by mentoring senior managers and high-potential team members.
Example:
Michelle, a marketing ops director, developed a multi-year strategic planning framework that streamlined campaign processes and aligned marketing efforts with company growth objectives. By clearly defining priorities and milestones, her team improved efficiency by 40% and reduced misaligned initiatives by 30%. The planning framework became a model adopted by other departments.
Excerpt from the Humans of Martech Podcast: Marketing Tools Without Databases
In the Humans of Martech podcast, I talk about Martech predictions with Phil Gamache.
Let’s talk about the first two predictions for martech from my list.
I predict that in 5 years, most marketing tools will no longer rely on databases. At first glance, this concept might seem shocking—after all, marketing automation platforms, CRMs, and CDPs are fundamentally built on relational databases. But this assumption is rooted in tradition, not necessity, and outlines a shift toward a warehouse-native or zero-copy data architecture that could redefine how tools operate.
Consider apps like Yelp or Google Places. When you share a restaurant with a friend, the app doesn’t create a duplicate of your contacts database; it accesses the data on-demand. Contrast this with the typical marketing stack, where almost every tool replicates contact data, creating endless updates, sync errors, and manual fixes. I estimate that more than 80% of a team’s data work revolves around ensuring consistency across these copied datasets—a cumbersome and inefficient process.
The inefficiency extends beyond wasted effort. Think of bi-directional sync loops that occur when two systems endlessly update each other, introducing a frustrating complexity to even the simplest workflows. These scenarios highlight how deeply ingrained data copying is within current systems and how much time is spent combating its limitations.
Shifting to a zero-copy model could eliminate these inefficiencies. A warehouse-native approach would enable tools to work directly from a centralized data warehouse, bypassing the need for constant synchronization. This not only streamlines operations but also reduces the risk of errors. It’s a radical departure from the status quo but one he believes is inevitable as teams demand greater agility and accuracy in their tools.
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