"Marketing operations is the backbone of marketing. When done well, marketing teams deliver the right message to the right people at the right time, with attribution in place that tracks return on investment (ROI) effectively."

Sean Kennedy, Senior Marketing Operations Specialist at Zapier

Introduction

So you're new in the universe of marketing operations and wondering what's all the fuss about? Let me make it simple for you.

Marketing operations (MOps) is the process behind the scenes in marketing. MOps ensure that the necessary systems and technology are in place to deliver large-scale marketing campaigns.

If you imagine a marketing campaign as a racing car trying to reach the finish line, marketing operations is the pit crew. The pit crew changes the tires, services the car, and refills the gas tank to ensure that all of the equipment is in good working order and does not break down.

The video below depicts what a typical marketing operation executive does!

Source: Youtube

An ideal marketing operations specialist oversees:

• Tech-stack management
• Data analytics and management
• Email and CRM operations and management
• Processes and people management
• Project management

When done right, marketing operations is the driving force of innovation and growth within organizations. There is a constant evolution in the role of marketing operations and to know more you can check out this blog.

For seasoned professionals in this field, that one question that keeps coming up is: 

How do you leverage marketing operations to grow your business?

The best companies are constantly looking for ways to improve, whether by offering better products or implementing more efficient processes.

This increases the burden on marketing teams to focus on “traditional” marketing that includes strategic and creative thinking and adopt modern marketing that’s more operational, metrics oriented and tied to revenue.

This brings to light - Marketing Operations.

According to McKinsey, marketing operations provide a 15% to 25% improvement in marketing effectiveness, as measured by ROI and customer engagement

MOPs professionals wear many hats and are relied upon to do many things:

Streamlining processes, automating tasks, process and people management, handling tech-stack, and reporting on analytics.

Here's a quick glimpse of the ways.

Understanding how marketing operations help grow your business

Customer-oriented business approach

Customers are the critical element in any business and all successful companies put in the effort to understand their customers and build a strong relationship with them.

Source: The Customer Edge

How do MOps help?

• Evaluates customer journey: Marketing operations help in tracking your leads' journey thus helping you make informed decisions on how your marketing campaigns are performing. Re-orient your business around the buyer’s journey and experience. 
  
  
• Responds to market trends and grows revenue: Marketing operations assist the company in tracking customers' needs, responses, competition performance, and overall market changes. It can then suggest the company in making necessary adjustments and pass on to sales higher-quality leads. 
  
  
• Provides data-backed insights: MOps evaluate data related to the existing state of the customer journey, like areas of the customer experience that failed, which sources are bringing in maximum traffic, what is the current lead attribution model, and so on.
  
  
• Segments audience: MOPs also help in segmenting the audience based on their activities, thus assisting in devising tailored strategies for different groups.
  
  
• Communicates customer behavior to other teams: Marketing operations communicate the customer behavior to other revenue teams like the sales team which has a direct impact on their roles and responsibilities.

Automate processes to boost efficiency & save time

According to a benchmark analysis, businesses that use marketing automation can grow their pipeline by 45%, enjoy 25% higher revenue, and allow sales reps to spend 22% more time selling. 

How do MOps help?

• Lead scoring: MOps help in setting up the lead scoring framework for your team and then automating it to notify your sales team when a lead goes from a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead which will increase the conversion rate.
  
  
• Automating manual processes: Marketing operations leverage automation for campaigns and landing page creation, email marketing, social media marketing, and marketing analysis. They use marketing automation softwares to eliminate the manual day-to-day efforts like posting on various social media channels. 
  
  
• Managing marketing tools: There are now thousands of marketing technology tools, and many companies use several or more at the same time. MOps professionals help in picking the best ones and most suited for your business.
  
  
• Deliver the best customer experience: MOps use marketing technology to automate the processes that enhance customer experience. Automation can bridge the gap between your marketing operation efforts and customer experience. Automation platforms like HubSpot allow personalized interactions, schedule email nurture campaigns, design workflows based on lead actions, etc.

Build scalable & predictable processes

Though there is an ever-evolving role of marketing operations, when business growth is at the center of the discussion, including marketing operations is crucial! It doesn’t only help in optimizing the business processes, but also gives an impetus to the marketing creativity, along with the intended outcomes.

Marketing operations consist of advanced technology and analytics which help build scalable and predictable processes, keeping the future in mind.

Similar to what Parley Pro cloud-based platform did! Read the case study below.

How do MOps help?

• Encourages process consistency: Marketing operations help define the processes for creating stellar marketing strategies, their implementation, measurement, and the way forward in terms of the improvements needed. This saves staff time and energy and saves the company money. 
  
  
• Ensures predictability: Marketing Ops provides data transparency, that way launching campaigns is risk-free and the marketing processes can be predicted.
  
  
• Decreases dependency: Marketing Ops automates the process hence the dependency on manual processes is reduced. The more it reduces dependency on one person, the easier it'll become to scale with the growing teams.

Providing measurable results

The first step is to recognize what growth means to your business. 

Is growth synonymous with an increased market share? Or an improved brand recognition? Or is it synonymous with an increase in revenue?

Once you have defined what growth means for your business, take a deep dive into the processes that you are employing to measure it. 

How do MOps help?

• Identify KPIs: A well-equipped marketing operations management team would assist you in devising the Key Performance Indicators for your marketing efforts, and the ways of measuring them. Combine it with advanced technology and analytics, and you will be able to judge your ROI and hence drive more growth. 
  
  
• Ensures data transparency: A well-managed marketing operation ensures that relevant data is collected and tracked. Most of the time, the entire company will have access to that data. This allows everyone to make data-driven decisions and make changes.
  
  
• Helps optimize marketing channels: Marketing operations assist a marketing team in understanding the outcomes of all marketing channels, such as email marketing, social media, advertising, print media, and others. It incorporates past successes and failures into the development of effective future strategies for the growth of your business.

Aligning sales and marketing teams

To improve your business performance today you need to align your sales and marketing is crucial. Sales and marketing teams working in silos have been a common issue throughout every industry where both aim at maximizing revenue and company growth but fail to realize that their work intersects to achieve those desired goals.

Source: The Manifest

How do MOps help?

• Inter and intra-team alignment: MOPs teams create work systems that benefit everyone in the company, which helps to create alignment and order within the marketing team as well as the larger company.
  
• They ensure team and project collaboration: Marketing operations also organize and ensure the collaboration of teams within the marketing department.
  
• Aligns marketing roles: Marketing operations also aid in the alignment of all roles within the marketing team, as well as the assignment of all important tasks and processes to a specific person or team.
  
• Ensures a long-term common goal: Marketing operations play an important role in assisting the company is focusing on long-term goals and then providing the structure to keep everyone on track toward those goals. Setting and tracking overall marketing strategies, as well as tracking the ROI for various marketing initiatives, will be required. It will also entail tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) in a variety of areas.
  

By always being there backstage to ensure everything is in order

MOPs can be viewed as everything that happens behind the scenes to ensure that the business stays on track. It is everything that you cannot see. When most people are celebrating the company's success, there is a crew backstage handling the "oh no" moments and ensuring that there is incremental growth. And so the curtains are drawn, with mops still working behind the scenes.

Way Forward

Marketing operations is not the most exciting aspect of marketing, but it is rapidly becoming the most important. With businesses struggling to keep up with changing consumer behaviour and the marketing landscape, the pressure is to put marketing operations in action—skilled people, efficient processes, and supporting technology. It will not only allow brands to connect with customers but also shape their interactions and grow.

You can start by building an internal team of experts who can perform results-driven marketing operations for your business. Or, you can also outsource these efforts to experts. At Fractional CMO, we have a team of talented marketing operations specialists who can help you with end-to-end marketing operations.

Want us to help? Let’s have a chat and understand you and your business better.