While you are reading this, I can imagine you thinking, I have done everything right in my digital marketing strategy including using great marketing tools but then the results are not showing up. Don’t worry, you are not the only one, a lot of Founders, CEOs' and Marketing heads have the same worry running in their minds.
As businesses, we are currently in the most challenging times, the customer behaviour is changing very dynamically. There are a plethora of products and services coming in the market every day and the customer has lots of choices. This is one of those golden eras for customers, where supply is more than demand.
Hey, don’t get disheartened. There is a lot of good happening for businesses too. Technology has come to the rescue of the marketing and sales team and we are already witnessing and using great products in the marketing space like Hubspot, Marketo, Google Analytics, Mailchimp etc.
You also need to have an equivalently capable team to manage and execute these wonderful products. This team is referred to as 'Marketing Operations'. This team's key metric is to help the business grow by reducing the cost of acquisition.
As a Formula One race cannot be won without the right pit crew, Digital Marketing cannot generate results without a proper Marketing Operations team.
What is Marketing Operations?
The marketing operations team has emerged due to the need for a more transparent, efficient, and accountable view of marketing According to Mark Maurits, Microsoft "MO is the function that is accountable for driving efficacy on both sides of the balance sheet – both improved marketing results and cost reductions.
The MO group is like a factory manager who is responsible for having the right tools and resources in order to get the product out on time and with quality." In general, Marketing as a function has always been considered as a right brain activity which is being more creative and psychological but Marketing Operations is more of the left brain activity i.e. being more analytical, technical and data-driven.
According to Bill Macaitis, the former CMO of Zendesk, "Marketing operations and analytics teams is the first marketing team every SaaS company should build because this team erects the experimental infrastructure for determining which marketing tactics are viable.
Over time, it also becomes the largest team." The marketing department should have a proper marketing operations team that can introduce the right technologies, provide the analytical analysis by crunching data and align the goals with the actual results with different departments.
KPI of Marketing Operations team
The marketing Operations team’s single point metric is to help the sales and marketing departments generate positive results.
The following are some of the Key Performance Indicators of the Marketing operations team
Marketing Enablement through Technology
This team is responsible for managing the technology infrastructure required for Marketing Team. Some of the key technologies could be Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, CRM, Web Analytics etc.
Integration of these technologies in the right way is the key to success. The main goal of technology is to make customer journeys more efficient and consistent across different touch points.
Process Management
Establishing the right guidelines & processes for both people and technology is important for the success of the whole marketing technology ecosystem. For example, The Lead Scoring system needs continuous analysis and modifications till we reach the magic number where we convert the marketing qualified lead to sales qualified lead.
Data Management & Quality
Quality Data is the heart of marketing technology. If the data is not proper then the systems and processes put in place will not be effective. Making sure that the contact information doesn't decay is very critical for business.
For example: Sending the same offer to the same contact multiple times is a terrible user experience or sending the product awareness content to an existing customer shows that there is a big issue in your customer lifecycle management.
Reporting and Analytics
Reporting and analytics bring transparency, and insights and align the goals with the results for different teams across the organization. The marketing operations team offers data-driven insights to improve workflows and identify areas for improvement along the customer journey.
For example, while analyzing the email campaign reports, you see that there is a steep dip in the email opens then it’s important to highlight this and diagnose for the possible reasons which could be like improper content for the audience or wrong timing of the email etc.
Conclusion
Marketing Operations is not the sexiest part of the organization but a very critical one for the success of your business. Do you have your Marketing Operations, team? We at Fractional CMO truly understand this and can partner with you in doing your day-to-day marketing operations and building your scalable, reliable and efficient growth engine.
