The Rising Importance of Marketing Operations for CMOs Guide

Introduction

Today’s marketing landscape is complex, busy and data-driven. Trying to keep up without streamlined processes, skilled people, and fit-for-purpose technology is an endless uphill battle.

Marketing Operations for CMOs is fast becoming a priority. As we transition to a world without third-party cookies, where consumers control their data, balancing analytics and strategy is more critical to success than ever. Likewise, as budgets remain tight and competition increases unabated, agile campaign management processes and solutions enable speed and quality for busy marketing teams.

CMOs are taking notice of the operational efficiencies, process improvements and innovations that a well-tuned MarOps function delivers. They’re also taking stock. If you’re one of the CMOs turning your focus internally to find efficiencies and growth potential, you’re already on the journey to stepping up Marketing Operations capabilities.

This guide will help you formalize, strategize and operationalize. It will challenge conventional ideas about Marketing Operations, and will reposition marketing technology as a strategic tool, not an afterthought.

Ultimately, we hope it puts a framework around your goals and leads to a future-ready Marketing Operations function. 

MarOps is having a moment:

• 73% of top-performing companies are investing in MarTech
• 93% of B2B marketers believe Marketing Operations is mission critical
• 75% of marketers report on how campaigns influence revenue
• 76% of companies use marketing automation

How do you define Marketing Operations?

The exact definition of Marketing Operations is up for debate. So is the correct abbreviation: MarOps? MOps? MO Pros? Marketing Ops? MO? It might seem arbitrary, but the definition significantly impacts the scope of Marketing Operations within a business.

For example, some sources define Marketing Operations as being responsible for the people, processes, strategy and technology within the marketing organization. Others demote Marketing Operations to a delivery service, leaving strategy and optimization off the list. Others bloat the function until it effectively is the marketing organization.

So, to avoid any confusion, here’s how Mediatool defines Marketing Operations:

Marketing Operations is responsible for the systems, tech stack, strategy and resources that enable the broader marketing organization to perform at the highest level. 

(And we settled on “MarOps” as the best abbreviation.)

Within an organization’s marketing machine, Marketing Operations is the analytical and strategic engine that drives growth. We believe the focus should be equally on technology, process and people. One can’t work without the others.

The recent rise of Marketing Operations

Without getting bogged down in the history of Marketing Operations, what’s important to note is that it came into existence for three main reasons:

1. MarTech was getting more complex and ubiquitous
2. CMOs and COOs shifted their focus to results
3. Marketing transitioned from a soft skill to highly technical 

Today’s marketers still need creative and interpersonal skills. But there’s an increasing demand for analytics and software skills. Every marketer uses technology every day, for simple tasks to complex campaign management. In many cases, functional ownership of marketing platforms or tools has shifted from IT to Marketing, creating specialist roles within the Marketing Operations team that didn’t exist a decade ago.

This paradigm shift presents a puzzle for CMOs. When resources are finite and there are competing business cases on the table, which investment decision is the right one? The answer, somewhat frustratingly, is “it depends”. 

It depends on your marketing organization’s maturity. It depends on your company’s growth goals and the timeline to achieve them. It depends on your risk appetite. It depends on your in-house capabilities, your comfort level with consultants and freelancers, and your confidence in the current job market to supply the right specialists.

But there is a formula for establishing an efficient and effective Marketing Operations team that supports sustainable business growth. We’ll get to that shortly. 

Glossary of helpful terms

Marketers enjoy an abbreviation. Maybe a little too much sometimes. You’ll see these terms pop up a few times throughout this guide, so let’s get the definitions out of the way first.

• CMO = Chief Marketing Officer
• CTO = Chief Technology Officer
• COO = Chief Operations Officer
• MarOps = Marketing Operations
• MarTech = Marketing technology 
• CRM = Customer Relationship Management
• CMS = Content Management System
• CDP = Customer Data Platform

Where MarOps fits in modern companies

 

 

Let’s take a step back and look at the broader marketing organization. To understand where Marketing Operations adds value, we must first define where it begins and ends.

This diagram admittedly oversimplifies most company structures. But it’s useful for a couple of reasons: first, it separates Marketing (and MarOps) from Sales, Operations and IT, and second, it nests Marketing Operations within the broader marketing organization.

Unlike other players out there, we take the view that Marketing Operations falls under the CMO’s purview, with equal weighting to the marketing delivery arm. 

In other words…

• Marketing Programs focuses on sales leads, demand generation and customer experience 
• Marketing Operations focuses on the systems, tools, processes and strategies that improve productivity, reduce costs and enable growth

Another way to look at Marketing Operations is the architect of a future-ready marketing organization. MarOps provides the technology, intelligence and insight that Marketing uses to manage campaigns, produce content, connect with customers and generate leads. Of course, many of these things still happen without a mature MarOps function. But they won’t be optimized, effective or scalable. 

Technology

• MarTech stack selection
• User training and onboarding
• Campaign management platform
• Data integration and management
• Performance measurement

Systems

• Project management (not campaign management) 
• Workflow development and documentation
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Streamlining reporting processes
• Improving business processes

Strategies

• Competitor benchmarking
• Advising on resources, budget and hiring
• Marketing data analytics
• Finding efficiencies in (and beyond) the marketing organization
• Growth strategies

Why MarOps should be on the CMO agenda

 

 

Chief Marketing Officers have a lot on their plate. Navigating the competing demands of growth goals, budget constraints, the Great Resignation, and a cluttered MarTech landscape can feel like running on the spot. We’re not promising that investing in Marketing Operations will solve all these issues in one move (wouldn’t that be nice?). Instead, we’re encouraging CMOs to look at how their MarOps function is structured and why.

Demonstrating success with data

It’s always challenging to assert marketing’s importance in a growing business. Even more so after the pandemic rattled supply chains and dented profits. Marketing Operations plays a pivotal role in rebuilding confidence, especially in companies implementing digital transformation strategies.

According to HubSpot’s research into marketing analytics, over 75% of marketers are correlating campaign performance to revenue, and 35% rank understanding ROI as “Very” or “Extremely” important. This lines up with our experience at Mediatool. In demos, onboarding and dashboard design sessions, we frequently help Marketing Operations teams to establish the link between campaign performance and revenue generation.

Marketing Operations is the architect and enabler of marketing data analytics. And data analytics is the foundation of demonstrating the marketing organization’s contribution to the business. So it follows that any CMO asking for a bigger slice of the budget needs to adopt a MarOps mindset to demonstrate how technology, systems and strategy come together.

Delivering better experiences

It’s fair to say that linear customer journeys have gone the way of the dodo. Today’s customers are unpredictable and demanding, jumping between channels in a non-linear journey. As a result, Marketing and Sales teams are more interdependent. They share data and collaborate to reach customers with the best offer at the best time on the best channel.

But customers don’t see ‘channels’ and ‘journeys’ like marketers. They’re simply living their lives. As Google points out, most decision-making happens in the “messy middle” between the first touchpoint and point of purchase. The marketer’s job is to find their audience, understand the pain points and thrill triggers, and deliver a personalized experience that converts a sale and builds loyalty. The salesperson’s job (specifically in B2B) is to close the deal, demonstrating that they anticipate the customer’s needs and can provide a relevant solution.

How? You guessed it – data. The role of Marketing Operations is to provide the tools, reporting systems and operating structure so Sales and Marketing can find the answers themselves. This, in a nutshell, is the idea of democratizing data.

Optimizing operations

Marketing budgets are recovering, although not yet to pre-pandemic levels. What’s interesting to observe is the back-to-basics approach of CMOs focusing on campaign management, brand strategy and Marketing Operations.

Marketing data analytics, marketing insight, and customer analytics, which could reasonably be bundled together, account for a significant portion of the average CMO’s budget. Meanwhile, Front-end efforts have taken a back seat. Apps, UX design, loyalty programs and eCommerce programs are being deprioritized in favor of building a better foundation.

Although this chart represents a tiny slice of global marketers, it signposts the shift toward Marketing Operations as a growth engine. Analytics, insight, and campaign management capabilities enable the strategic, data-driven growth that CMOs are looking for.

Unlocking efficiencies

In 2020, Gartner found that MarTech made up 26% of marketing budgets, yet marketers reported utilizing just 58% of the stack’s potential. Of course, that has probably changed in the intervening years. Still, it’s a sign that businesses invested in technology they weren’t ready for.

Two years on, it’s likely that some of those companies are experiencing the sunk cost fallacy first-hand. Despite investing heavily for two years, they continue to throw away good money trying to operationalize a tool without a clear Marketing Operations strategy. CMOs should step in and put a stop to these inefficiencies, at least until the groundwork is in place.

The first step is transferring ownership (read: accountability) from Marketing Programs to Marketing Operations. Then the tool can be evaluated as a strategic initiative instead of a delivery resource. Whether it’s a CDP, campaign management platform or email automation tool, every layer of the MarTech stack should serve a strategic purpose and enable growth.

Streamlining systems

A mature and efficient Marketing Operations team will focus on optimizing marketing processes (and collaborative processes with other departments) by standardizing workflows, automating time-consuming tasks and democratizing data. CMOs might not be able to change organizational structures single-handedly, but through Marketing Operations, they can:

• Facilitate cross-organizational collaboration
• Democratize data to give other departments decision-making power
• Define metrics for marketing success
• Improve workflows across the business

Nobody should feel like there are roadblocks preventing them from getting ads live or launching campaigns. Too much process is frustrating for everyone. On the other end of the spectrum, non-prioritized tasks and data bottlenecks lead to last-minute chaos and, ultimately, disappointing results. Marketing Operations focuses on getting faster, more efficient throughput, like a Process Engineer for anything that touches marketing. From concept development to campaign management, their influence is invisible but vital.

Delegating fire-fighting duties

In an ideal setup, Marketing Operations won’t deal with day-to-day bug fixes or platform tweaks. That responsibility sits with the platform specialist or with IT. MarOps is there to prevent fires from starting in the first place.

Reaching this level of maturity takes time. In the early stages, CMOs must keep a close eye on progress and listen to their teams to ensure out-of-scope requests aren’t burning people out. Leaders between the CMO and MarOps team, such as the Head of Marketing or Marketing Operations Lead, are responsible for prioritizing programs that alleviate the challenges rather than implementing band-aid solutions.

For example, if CRM data is incomplete or messy, sending a marketing specialist to fix individual records sets a poor precedent. Instead, a data clean-up program should climb the priority list. Similarly for collating and analyzing campaign data. Marketers can easily spend hours in spreadsheets. But they shouldn’t need to. A fit-for-purpose integrated campaign management platform delivers significant time savings, better collaboration, greater data accuracy and instant access to decision-making data.

We’re not there yet

 

 

A near-unanimous 93% of B2B marketers agree that Marketing Operations is mission critical, especially in delivering digital transformation. And yet, only 50-65% of companies have a dedicated Marketing Operations team or leader.

One in four professionals in the field are working alone, and nearly one-third (32%) don’t have a defined role. If Marketing Operations is vital to growth, why are companies still struggling to embed a functional team? 

The Cost Question

Building a Marketing Operations team is an investment. In theory, one that delivers significant, exponential and wide-ranging ROI. But budgets aren’t bottomless, and the person holding the business’ purse strings needs to decide where those limited funds are best spent.

The Priority Problem

Which comes first – technology and systems or the Marketing Operations strategy? CMOs often end up in an endless cycle of indecision because there isn’t a single correct answer. The answer is to be agile. Trial low-risk initiatives and build from there.

The Knowledge Gap

Most CMOs understand the importance of Marketing Operations in a technology-driven landscape. Can the same be said for CEOs and CTOs? And who gets the final say? Raising awareness of the Marketing Operations function remains a challenge, even as the C-Suite demands to see data and results. 

Marketing Operations models

 

 

Just as there is no universal definition of Marketing Operations, no two businesses build their team the same. Mostly, this has to do with the dual nature of MarOps. It’s both integrated and independent, simultaneously strategic and operational.

Ultimately, that means the Marketing Operations model that suits your business will be unique. However, it is still possible to learn from other companies’ successes and model your Marketing Operations structure (at least the initial version) on best practices.

Break down the challenges

Building a Marketing Operations team is a little like strategizing a marketing campaign. It begins with enterprise-wide goals and marketing’s role in reaching them. Audiences and key stakeholders come next, each with their own pain points and positive triggers. Then a channel plan starts to form. This is your MarTech stack and systems design, and a Marketing Operations mindset is already kicking in. Finally, the timeline and content schedule – otherwise known as the CMO’s plan for filling out the team’s capabilities.

The result is a roadmap to maturity. 

The MarOps maturity model

Going back to “The Priority Problem” outlined above, don’t expect your organization to have a fully matured Marketing Operations function from day one. It is typically more practical to develop in stages by adding capabilities, restructuring, formalizing and investing in MarTech as you go.

But, as these things go, no model applies universally. For example, an industrial manufacturer selling multimillion-Euro machines will have a distinctly different MarOps requirement than an eCommerce company selling consumer goods. Marketing Operations is a strategic function. It should serve a strategic purpose. But strategy without operational efficiency is empty.

So it might seem contradictory to have MarOps people in operational roles, but that’s often a valid approach – at least in the early stages of maturity. Or your Marketing Operations team might be entirely strategic. It all comes down to the company’s needs. Which, as we all know, begin and end with the customer. 

Marketing Operations models for modern businesses

 

 

(Quick disclaimer: these models are for illustrative and inspirational purposes only. If they seem reductive, that was a deliberate choice not to overcomplicate things).

The classic

 

 

The line between Programs and Operations is clear in this model, which will be familiar to CMOs with established MarOps functions. Marketing Operations do the planning and enablement work while Marketing Programs deliver front-facing campaigns. Requests to and from other teams flow through the Head of Marketing.

The tech stack trailblazer

 

 

Ingrained MarTech expertise is the goal here. Marketing Operations becomes the owner, guru and guide for the full MarTech stack. Although this relegates the team to an enablement partner (and could be seen as a demotion), the advantage is an unbiased tech solution that serves the entire organization equally.  

The lead gen engine

 

 

Growing businesses might lean towards a model like the lead gen engine, where the marketing organization outsources delivery to a third party. Marketing activity becomes sales driven. Every decision, for better or worse, is based on reaching growth targets and bringing in new business. Marketing Operations relies heavily on data analytics to translate sales goals into marketing strategies.

The efficiency evangelists

 

 

It’s all about trimming waste and improving processes. Most of the hands-on MarTech work is outsourced to an agency partner, because the MarOps team is focused on operational efficiency at the strategic level. This model keeps overheads low and prioritizes value-adding activity, but you’ll notice Marketing Operations is missing. MarOps essentially is the marketing organization, which means content creation and marketing campaigns become by-products. 

The agile adapters

 

 

The agile adapter model might be closest to the ideal state for any business. Business Partners in different teams ensure buy-in and provide valuable guidance, essentially flipping the tech stack trailblazer model on its head by democratizing decision-making. External MarTech specialists implement and maintain the platform under direction from the MarOps team, although this function could gradually be in-housed as the business grows.

How CMOs can transform Marketing Operations in 5 steps

 

 

Marketing Operations teams aren’t built overnight. It takes time, trial and error, investment, and buy-in from the business. But the good news is there is a framework CMOs can follow to build out MarOps capabilities, regardless of where the company is right now.

Start with a scoping exercise

Avoid falling into the top-down trap by getting buy-in on the scope before anything else. Although it’s a given that Marketing Operations delivers value, the how, why, who, and where aren’t always obvious.

CMOs who scan wide before rolling out a restructure are signaling that the outcomes will benefit the entire business, not just Marketing and Sales. The first stages of the program should involve:

• Consultation with all areas of the business
• Peer-led focus groups
• Collaborative design
• Honest, explorative discussions about business challenges

The goal is to understand not only the pain points, but where the business wants to go. Don’t get carried away by the solutions other teams will inevitably offer at this stage. Your role as CMO is to shape the conversation and set expectations that MarOps will support the entire business. 

Workshop the solution

CMOs bring a significant amount of experience to the marketing organization. The same could be said for COOs in the operational arm, CTOs in IT…you get the idea. But – and this is crucial – don’t limit input to the C-Suite. They’re not the ones doing the day-to-day work, creating content, launching campaigns, analyzing marketing data, and dealing with customer feedback. 

Step 1 should map the stakeholders relevant to step 2. Ensure that the stakeholder map includes representation from all levels of the business and as many cross-departmental voices as possible. Your role as CMO is to guide the purpose, priorities and governance. Let the team develop solutions together. It’s not easy, because everyone brings a bias toward their team’s needs and wants. But with a little massaging, you can create a structure that suits everyone.

Look long-term

Listen for the growing pains and long-term goals expressed by your solutions team. In designing an agile, built-to-grow MarOps function, you need to look past the next 12-18 months to the business’ future states.

Announce the plan (and be ready for feedback)

Transparency is key to securing business-wide buy-in. Once the Marketing Operations plan is ready, reassemble the team and communicate the plan in detail. Digital (and organizational) transformation tends to ruffle feathers, so be prepared for push-back. Build in reviews and amendments to your early timeline.

Stress-test the plan

No plan is perfect the first time. Any heist movie is evidence of that fact. Being open to feedback and suggestions from the team can improve the plan – so long as the suggestions align with the scope established in step 1. And if they don’t, think about whether the scope was under-communicated or whether scope creep is affecting your Marketing Operations project. 

Co-create the rollout

A well-designed Marketing Operations function will touch almost every part of the business. So once you have buy-in on the structure, allow leaders to influence how the change rolls out. They know their teams.  

Be firm on priorities

In the final stages of designing a plan, it’s easy to become sidetracked or get held up by stubborn stakeholders. Ensure you are clearly communicating why a decision needs to stand; namely because it prioritizes long-term growth over individual short-term comfort. Every decision links back to business goals. That’s the only justification that matters. 

Time to roll out

Depending on the details established in steps 1-3, your business might undertake the rollout internally. More commonly, though, external consultants and/or technology vendors become like close friends as you overhaul the Marketing Operations structure.

Implementation timelines can vary from months to years. For example, a growing business with tight funding might look at a years-long timeline that gradually builds out MarOps capability in line with certain growth milestones. More established firms can focus on restructuring to overcome the current bottlenecks and build a more flexible operating model.

The timeline isn’t so important. What’s important is doing the job right so you don’t end up back here in two years, wondering where it all stalled.

How Marketing Operations project should look

How they look in reality

Monitor and maintain communication

Throughout the Marketing Operations rollout, whether it takes months or years, your role as CMO is essentially two-fold.

Evaluate the outcomes

Marketing Operations overhauls are dynamic and multi-layered. With each significant step, you can expect to make progress toward the overall growth goals. Some efforts, like implementing a campaign management platform, have measurable outcomes. Time savings, lead generation, and higher return on ad spend are all success measures.

Others are more nebulous. Completing a CRM clean-up doesn’t directly contribute to increasing sales. Streamlining the content briefing system won’t translate to more leads. But each of these micro-projects results in some noticeable changes, such as:

• Staff retention
• Higher productivity
• More content going out
• Faster time to market
• Delivering personalized emails

Understand the goals and keep an eye on them, so you can demonstrate success when called upon – or change tact if the approach isn’t hitting the mark.

Maintain communication

As new projects enter the peripheries and people experience MarOps fatigue, the CMO needs to remain the champion of the project. That doesn’t always need to mean singing its praises. If the people delivering the project and operating in the new structure believe the leadership has lost touch, they’ll start to stray.

• Be honest about challenges
• Celebrate milestones
• Involve the project team wherever possible
• Make the plan available to anyone who wants it
• Establish feedback channels
• Check in regularly

A little re-work is always expected. That’s why you build redundancies and contingencies into the project plan. Like a marketing campaign, it’s also perfectly acceptable to A/B test solutions until you find the most realistic final model. As long as you communicate the changes early and often, drawing a line back to the business goals, you should be able to maintain most of the goodwill established in the early stages.

 

Dos and Don’ts for CMOs 

 

 

Do

Embrace an agile approach

There’s a fine line between well-documented processes and too much process. A MarOps mindset embraces an agile approach to reducing waste, finding efficiencies and prioritizing value-adding activity. 

Prioritize strategy

As we saw in the Marketing Operations Models section, whether or not MarOps has a delivery function depends on the organization. The focus, however, should always remain on strategy. Marketing Operations is concerned with solving business challenges and enabling growth, not squashing bugs.

Allocate budget to build, test and improve

Marketing Operations maturity doesn’t happen overnight. The agile methodology involves testing and optimizing to find the best solution. For example, selecting a MarTech stack takes time when thousands of software solutions are available, with almost infinite combinations and integrations. 

Share the roadmap

Post-pandemic, marketers might feel like they’re on shaky ground with the rest of the business. Your role as CMO is to foster confidence in the team you’re building. One way to do that is by being transparent with the Marketing Operations strategy, especially if your team asks for patience or resources.

Democratize data

By making data available to those needing it, MarOps teams can break down siloes and reduce unnecessary back-and-forth. Mature operations go a step further, training colleagues on using the MarTech stack to find solutions. 

Don’t

Forget about the customer

In all this talk of Marketing Operations, it’s easy to deprioritize the customer. That’s why collaboration between Operations and Programs (and Sales) is so crucial. CMOs can ensure the customer remains a priority by structuring the marketing organization around customer centricity. 

Allow siloes to form

CMOs already face an uphill battle to build a Marketing Operations function in a competitive, budget-constrained landscape. Getting the business behind the effort helps to push uphill with more gusto. Buy-in comes from collaboration, transparency and demonstrating value along the way. 

Hire generalists for specialist roles

Expecting a content marketer to manage the MarTech stack will inevitably result in “tech debt” that costs time and leads to frustration. Tech debt is the workload of managing a platform or tool; updating CRM fields, fixing email templates, pulling reports for other teams. It’s all work a specialist or consultant should be doing.

Bloat the MarOps function

The size and structure of your MarOps team will vary from your competition. Keep it lean and efficient by looking for opportunities to delegate service delivery to specialist teams. For example, collaborate with IT for user licensing, and democratize data so Sales aren’t chasing reports every week.

 

Building a scalable MarTech stack

 

 

Technology plays a significant role in building out a Marketing Operations function. A mature MarTech stack will unlock insight, automate time-consuming tasks, inform strategy, and enable Marketing Programs to optimize campaigns. So why have we, a marketing technology leader, left it so late in this guide? Primarily so the focus stays on strategy, and MarTech follows as a strategic enablement tool.

Before buying a license, consider whether the technology supports the growth your company is targeting. McKinsey found that 73% of the top-performing companies are investing more in MarTech. The focus, earning 63% of CMOs’ attention, is on using MarTech to inform strategy. Automation and campaign execution comes next at 41%, followed by CRM optimization at 37%.

In short? High-performing businesses invest in new technology strategically. Know the problem you want to solve and build the MarTech stack around it.

That’s great in theory, right? In reality, you’re likely dealing with a cobbled-together MarTech stack or a platform nearing the end of its useful life. Implementing a scalable MarTech framework might mean having some tough budget conversations. 

The only mistake is to fall into a sunk cost trap, where you continue trying to retrofit a stack that won’t deliver what you need. The earlier you switch to an all-in-one campaign management solution, the more you stand to gain.

Involve IT early and often 

It’s also crucial to secure IT support, rather than being tempted to sidestep the ecosystem. McKinsey also reports, somewhat worryingly, that 45% of executives said Marketing and IT aren’t working together. At some point, rogue MarTech arrangements are either replaced entirely or integrated into existing business systems. Both scenarios are frustrating and expensive. 

 

The all-in-one campaign management solution for modern MarOps teams

 

 

There’s an inflection point in every Marketing Operations maturity model. It arrives when the CMO recognizes that future growth depends on investment. Until that point, a piecemeal MarTech stack and half-documented processes have almost been enough. But now you’ve hit a ceiling and stakeholders are asking to see results.

This inflection point is exciting. With the right investment, you can demonstrate ROI and improve audience interactions in one move. It all depends on finding a platform that ties everything together and sets you up to scale.

That’s Mediatool in a nutshell

Mediatool is a marketing campaign management platform designed for growing agencies and busy global marketing teams. The features, functionality and third-party integrations unlock productivity at every stage of the marketing campaign process.

Planning

• Create marketing plans without spreadsheets
• Merge marketing data into one platform
• Share plans with external partners
• Organize plans in folders
• Protect privacy with secure sharing

Collaboration

• Share and comment on marketing plans
• Automatic version tracking
• Collaborate internally and externally
• Streamline approval processes
• Establish goals and KPIs

Measuring

• Integrate all your marketing channels
• Consolidate data in real time
• Eliminate information siloes
• See all your marketing data in one place
• Track performance at a glance

Evaluating

• Filter dashboard data to find insights
• Create custom reports in seconds
• Demonstrate ROI with charts and graphs
• Structure dashboards however you like
• Compare data from multiple channels

Optimizing

• Free up time for strategy
• Use data to make more informed decisions
• Get the whole picture
• Easily share insights with colleagues and clients
• Gain confidence from more accurate data

What’s next for Marketing Operations?

 

 

Research from Gartner shows digital transformation is a priority for 22% of CEOs, up from 10% previously. Technology innovation is a target for 17% of CEOs, up from 9%. These used to be the CMO’s domain, but they’ve become enterprise-wide priorities. That doesn’t reflect a demotion as much as a collaboration opportunity.

Meanwhile, eCommerce and omnichannel capabilities are less of a priority, falling from 16% to 4%. It’s unclear whether it’s widely understood that these outcomes rely on MarOps, or CEOs are reprioritizing to focus on tech instead of strategy. But the message isn’t. Marketing Operations is in the spotlight, and expectations are high.

Moving forward, you can use the examples and models in this guide to think about your own organizational structure. Challenge the ideas as you would have others challenge your thinking. Read widely. Take calculated risks.

There is a correct answer to Marketing Operations. It’s the one that enables your business to grow, remain agile, and compete in an increasingly complex field.