tion Marketing Ops as Strategic Partners: A New Year’s Resolution

2023 is here, and it’s a new year.

Many of us will set a goal to improve our physical health by setting a personal goal to start a new exercise routine. What are your goals for the new year? My new year’s resolution for 2023 is to improve the perception of my Marketing Operations team.

Too often, the MOps function can be viewed as a group that merely sends out emails to marketers. It is often overlooked that Marketing Ops professionals offer much more than their technical skills. The team can help the business understand its goals and find new opportunities to reach them. This is where the real value lies.

My resolution is to change how Marketing Ops is perceived to be a strategic partner for marketing leaders in order to realize their goals. To do this, I must market my team’s value internally. This plan is inspired by Darrel Alfonso posts and Ryan Dunn. It consists of five steps.

Dig deeper:

What is it?

Marketing operations

Who are the MOps pros?

1. Define your marketing objectives and key results to determine how you measure progress.

• Marketing leadership should view the Marketing Ops team and consider them a strategic partner.
  • 
    Key Result #1 – Increase the number of campaigns Marketing Ops are invited to participate in the initial strategy planning meetings
    
    • Too often, Marketing Ops is not included in the initial planning meetings and only brought in after the key decisions are made. It will be a sign that we are moving closer to being strategic partners by getting more involved in the planning.
  • 
    Key Result #2 – Track the ROI of campaigns in which Marketing Ops was involved up front, versus campaigns in which they weren’t
    
    • Marketing Ops can be included in strategy planning from the beginning. They can make suggestions for ways to use data to improve the targeting criteria or optimize the handoff between sales and marketing. These campaigns will be more successful and efficient than campaigns in which Marketing Ops rushes to get things out the door. Marketing Ops can be used to demonstrate the strategic value they bring as a partner by reporting on the differences in ROI.
  • 
    Key Result #3 – Reduce the number of back channel requests for technologies or campaigns that don’t follow the correct intake and evaluation processes.
    
    • If our colleagues don’t follow our intake procedures and try to work around them to get things done quickly, it shows that they don’t understand how much effort Marketing Ops must put in to do their jobs properly. This key result will show that we are successfully educating the rest the department about the value we bring to the department and the resources required to do our jobs well.

2. Identify target audience

• 
  CMO
  
  • Identify the most important focus of the CMO. Does it involve new customer growth? Current customer retention? How to increase brand awareness How can we reduce costs and become more efficient? It is crucial to identify her main objectives and find ways to help her reach them.
• 
  Channel Marketing Leaders
  
  • One good strategy to use with channel marketing leaders is finding an area of opportunity Marketing Ops can assist them with that they don’t have the time or resources to pursue. Are there potential audiences they aren’t able to reach yet? Perhaps a product they’ve been wanting to promote. Your Marketing Ops team can test these ideas and channel marketers will be able to see the value MOps bring as strategic partners.
• 
  Sales Managers
  
  • Although sales managers may not be part of the marketing department themselves, it is important to get them to know your Marketing Ops staff so they can recognize your team members by name. It’s going make an impression when a sales manager mentions the name of a Marketing Ops team member to the CMO. You should be able to solve a problem that sales can relate to. Which parts of their job is the most frustrating? Is there a process they are unable to fix or that could be automated? You can make their lives easier.

3. Target audience interviews

• Each quarter, identify 1-3 members from your target audience groups to interview for the following topics:
  1. 
     Tech Stack Audit:
     
     Which technologies do they use? These technologies are they included in the tech stack? Which features do they use with the tools? What are their favorite and least favourite features of the tools they use?
     • This allows you to evaluate their capabilities and help them find cost-savings by suggesting consolidating redundant or underutilized tools.
  2. Process Optimization Ask them to list the processes that they use most often. These processes should be documented and identified as areas for improvement.
  3. Data and reporting: Ask them how they measure success today and show you their current reports. Find ways to enhance existing reports or create new ones.

4. Prioritize four projects

• Once you have identified the projects that might be useful to your customers based upon the feedback received from the interviews it is time to rank those projects according to what you can accomplish this quarter. To rank which projects you will tackle first, create a weighted priority matrix. You will use these criteria to evaluate your projects: Business value, level of effort, customer influence, time to execute, etc. Each factor should be weighed according to its importance. Next, score each factor against the criteria. Then start to tackle the projects that have the highest scores.

5. Internal promotion

• Communicate to your stakeholders about the achievements of your teams and the impact they have made.

• Communicate to your stakeholders about the achievements of your teams and the impact they have made.
  1. Create a quarterly newsletter that highlights your accomplishments and highlights your projects. You can include testimonials and case studies from clients who have benefited from your efforts.
  2. Marketing Ops can host quarterly “Lunch and Learn” meetings on a variety of topics to show their capabilities. Topics could include trainings on various tools or research on industry trends or a review of a successful project. This is a great time to have Q&A with your stakeholders and understand their most pressing concerns.

As a way to help you reach your fitness goals, you can create a plan for your internal marketing.

Although it will require discipline, staying focused, continuing to promote your team, and educating your internal stakeholders about the value Marketing Operations can provide, your team will be able to earn a place at the table alongside other marketing leaders. Your organization can achieve anything if your team is perceived as a strategic partner.

The post Strategic Partner Marketing Ops: A New Year’s Resolution originally appeared on MarTech.