Marketing Leaders on Marketing Operations

Have you ever wondered what CMOs and Marketing VPs think about Marketing Ops?

Recently I had the chance to connect with three Marketing leaders whom I’ve worked with in the past and who now run Marketing for their respective organizations.

This group included:

• Lauren Sommers, CMO at AnyRoad, Previously at Hopin, Gainsight, and Marketo

• Ewan Auguste, CMO at PlanSource, Previously at Adobe, Workfront, and IBM

• Logan Mallory, VP of Marketing at Motivosity, Previously at LogMeIn and Workfront

I asked each of these Marketing leaders the following questions:

1. How do you view the role of Marketing Operations on your team?

2. How do you structure your Marketing Operations team for success?

3. What should individual Marketing Ops pros be focused on to progress in their careers?

4. What do you see as the future for the Marketing Operations role within the broader Marketing team? Any emerging trends? 

5. What advice do you have for someone with a Marketing Operations background who wants to become a CMO/VP of Marketing in the future?

Let’s dive in!

How do you view the role of Marketing Operations on your team? 

The impact of a Marketing Operations team can’t be understated, especially with the ability to be able to influence the effectiveness of the entire Marketing team.

Ewan began by saying, “Marketing Operations plays a critical and strategic role within our team, serving as the backbone that underpins and ensures the execution of our marketing strategies.”

“They do so by optimizing workflows, streamlining processes, and leveraging data-driven insights, empowering us to make informed decisions and maximize ROI.” He continued. “additionally, it fosters collaboration and alignment across departments, enabling us to work towards common objectives with precision and agility.”

You can tell that Ewan has a Marketing Operations background. He ran Ops and technology teams in his previous roles before becoming a CMO. He has the core Operations lingo down pat - “optimizing”, “streamlining”, “empowering” - sound familiar? 😀

Lauren got straight to the heart of the matter, “I see Marketing Operations as the engine that drives the Marketing team's efficiency and effectiveness.”

Logan highlighted the fact that Ops teams are involved with nearly every delivery from the overall Marketing team. He said, “I see marketing operations as one of the most crucial roles on the marketing team. They have the influence to either elevate or ruin every effort from the rest of the team. Every single prospect's experience is better or worse at some point in their journey because of the Mops team.”

The thing that stuck out to me about all three of these comments was that none of the Marketing leaders specifically called out the tech stack. All three were focused on elevating the efforts of the broader team.

I’m sure that there are some assumptions that tools will be used to achieve that level of efficiency, but it might be eye-opening to some, given the amount of time we spend thinking about, implementing, and optimizing our tech stacks. That might be an interesting way to start measuring the tools in your tech stack - a 2x2 matrix of efficiency and effectiveness.

How do you structure your marketing operations team for success? 

Lauren said, “We structure our operations team for success by emphasizing clear communication, collaboration, and ongoing professional development.”

I’m going to call out communication here - if you aren’t spending. a good chunk of your time communicating, you are running the risk of being out of lockstep with the rest of your team and developing processes that aren’t relevant or helpful. Because Marketing Ops is such a centralized, core function, even a small bit of misalignment can be magnified significantly.

Logan mentions the importance of the Marketing Ops leader and their opinion. He said, “I'd rarely make a decision about the structure of a marketing operations team without the input of the Marketing Ops leader. I'm going to rely on their experience and input. This group can have a unique organizational setup at every company.”

He added, “I'm less concerned about the specifics and more concerned that the team lead has the ability to execute in a way that will make them successful as a leader.“ 

I appreciated Logan’s comment because it highlights an early opportunity for the Marketing Ops team (and leader in particular) to share their thoughts and opinions on one of the first concepts that will impact how the team can interface with the other Marketing teams.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to exact team structures, so collaboration between the Marketing Ops leader and the CMO on how the team is built can set the stage for more proactive and helpful conversations in the future.

I mentioned above that Ewan has a strong operations background, so I’m going to include his entire quote/recommendations here:

“When building out a team I think about three things people, process, and tools. At a small to medium-sized business, I would focus on the following:

• People – Key roles and capabilities to be successful:

  • Product Managers (They manage and implement tool stack). New integrations and lead life cycle management to ensure end-to-end hygiene during the execution of strategy.

  • Data Analysts -(They extract, transform, and load data). On my team, I think also about insights. Go beyond presenting the data and turn it into meaningful recommendations to help improve how we run the business and deliver success.

  • Campaign Operations (Behind-the-scenes set-up and execution of strategic campaigns and initiatives). This is where traditional Marketing Operations began.

• Process 

  • Documentation – How does it work and can we run it if you are out enjoying a well-deserved vacation?

  • Optimization – Is our team enabled to use and adopt it, are we inspecting and modifying it as we learn?

  • Repeatability – Is it simple, does it scale and can we replicate it?

• Tools

  • Automation – Minimize manual processes to remove human error, easily scale, and help make processes repeatable.

  • Integration – Share data across systems to improve SLAs and maintain data hygiene”

One thing that I wanted to call out here - Ewan referred to the team/individuals that own the tools as ‘Product Managers’. There is an evolving concept that centers on treating your entire tech stack as a “product” and following engineering or product development approaches in how you manage and improve it.

This is something I plan on exploring more completely in a future newsletter, but I think it is relevant and meaningful to change how you think about the tech stack as a whole.

What should individual Marketing Ops pros be focused on to progress in their careers?

Lauren mentioned, “Individual Marketing Ops pros should focus on honing skills in data analysis, technology platforms, and project management.“ The comment about project management resonated with me - we’ve all seen well-intentioned ideas die on the vine because they weren’t developed or managed effectively.

I’m still convinced that project management is one of the secrets of career growth - if you know how to do it, your ability to make an impact is increased significantly.

Ewan added, “Anyone looking to advance their careers should start by building deep knowledge in their area of competence. Then differentiate themselves by demonstrating a clear understanding of their business’s strategy and applying their knowledge to help deliver on said strategy.”

I appreciated Ewan’s comment because he highlighted what I think is the core definition of Marketing Operations - applying the strategic combination of processes and technology to provide an effective solution to business problems and opportunities. If you boil down any Marketing Operations job description, that is what it essentially turns into, so executing on that will certainly help you grow in your career.

Logan highlighted two separate points:

1. “It's easy for people in Marketing Ops to "take orders". They have demands from a lot of different counterparts and their time can be spent just completing requests. The best Marketing Ops professionals will identify and elevate opportunities that will change the business. They'll think of the entire business, will feel ownership, and will solve high-level problems...not just set up attribution and campaigns.  

1. Technology is changing so quickly, but the "typical" approaches are becoming less effective. Budgets don't go as far. Marketing Ops needs to help find solutions to that problem and the answer isn't going to be new or different tech stacks. Marketing Ops needs to be a loud voice when things aren't efficient so that the CMO has visibility and is empowered/justified in changing the marketing strategy.”  

Both of these points are excellent. Getting out of order-taking mode is a key step in becoming more strategic. Also, despite our collective love for all things tech, we can’t get sucked into the empty promise of new tools and need to do the hard work of understanding and improving the operating rhythms of our teams.

What do you see as the future for the Marketing Operations role within the broader Marketing team? Any emerging trends? 

Logan brought up the trend towards centralizing ope teams under the RevOps umbrella. He said, “RevOps teams are becoming more common where the role is centralized instead of specific to marketing. Be flexible, but decide what truly matters to you. That may mean choosing to work some for certain companies that align with your own philosophy on how operations should be run. Don't be afraid to pass up an opportunity if their structure will create conflicts.”

I appreciate that he called out that we’ll likely run into opportunities that may not fully align with how we think Operations teams should be built or run. In this situation, you can determine if it’s worth trying things differently to learn, or if you believe that ultimately a different philosophy or team structure is a better fit for you.

In a future edition of the newsletter, we’ll be exploring how you can evaluate various opportunities and understand what you’re getting into before you take a new role.

Lauren mentioned, “I envision Marketing Operations playing an increasingly pivotal role in driving efficiency and effectiveness within the broader marketing team, leveraging trends like AI and automation.” 

There are those two words again - efficiency and effectiveness. Understanding how your CMO thinks about these two words in the context of the Marketing Operations team is probably a worthwhile experience, don’t you think?

Ewan highlighted, “The marketing role has historically been thought of as brand management, public relations, and messaging. Today, these core functions remain relevant but there is growing emphasis on CMOs who are data-driven and more analytical than before, which I believe creates a pathway for Marketing Operations and other roles in marketing outside of the traditional ones I mentioned to rise into CMO and even CRO roles now and in the future.”

Other Marketing leaders have highlighted the importance of knowing the data, and like Ewan, I don’t think that this is a trend that is going away. It’s a key opportunity for Operations pros to leverage their familiarity with the data and, as mentioned multiple times by these Marketing leaders, strong relationships across the team to grow into a leadership role.

Ewan continued, “Additionally, one cannot think about any role without mentioning Generative AI and how it will impact said role. For current Operations teams how you embrace AI into your daily work using it to help you do more, will be critical.”

Of course, we weren’t going to make it through this interview without an AI 🤖 mention, and two of the three Marketing leaders included it in their answers.

I think it’s important to remember that while artificial intelligence is a truly transformational example, the most important concept here is to stay aware of coming trends across tools and process efficiency and know how to expertly apply them to your current situation.

What advice do you have for someone with a Marketing Operations background who wants to become a CMO/VP of Marketing in the future?

Logan answered, “You can't be a senior marketing leader if technology is your only skill set. Few organizations will promote or hire a completely data or technology-oriented marketer because the role will require broader skills.

That's NOT to say it can't happen. It just means that you'll need to be intentional in what projects you take on. Don't "check out" during brand meetings. Don't skip meetings about messaging and event planning so that you can go sit behind your computer.

You have the ability to understand even the softer side of marketing and that will be important to your eventual progress.”

Marketing Ops pros interested in senior Marketing leadership roles have to be able to see the promise that tools and tech can offer while still understanding the other key functions of a Marketing team. Your knowledge of tools and tech will be much better utilized as your understanding of how the broader Marketing team functions expands.

His point about not “checking out” during brand meetings to go sit behind a computer highlights the need to be present and visible. In many situations, it’s probably more about the fact that you’re building a relationship with the brand team, rather than gaining a deeper understanding of branding itself.

Lauren added, “My advice is to develop a well-rounded skill set, gain experience across various marketing functions, build strong relationships across the organization, and demonstrate a knack for driving business results.”

Ewan said, “Focus on mastering your field, aligning your work and outcomes with your company's strategy, and cultivating meaningful connections with key individuals who can propel your professional growth.”

Both highlighted the importance of building connections and relationships. This is an area that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Without intentionally focusing on this it’s easy, as Logan mentioned, to just go sit behind our computer and build another automation. Getting sucked into this trap can be detrimental to your overall career growth.

Wrap Up + Takeaways

I have three big takeaways:

1. What do Marketing leaders want from Marketing Ops teams? Efficiency and effectiveness gains across the entire Marketing team.

2. The specifics of the tech stack are an afterthought.

3. Some of the key levers to individual career growth have little to do with Operations specifically - project management, collaboration, and communication are all more general “soft skills” that anyone can master.

Action item for you to consider - do you know your Marketing leader’s answers to these questions? If not, it might be a good idea to grab some time to discuss these with them. Their answers will be very enlightening.

Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and context.