Marketing Operations is a Strategic Function

I feel like I am repeating myself on inquiry calls this week. Marketing Operations is a strategic function.

Is the marketing operations function bloated with responsibilities it shouldn’t do?

If marketing operations gets saddled with execution, it will prioritize execution and not the building/optimization of sustainable marketing systems. Those systems provide freedom back to the rest of marketing to do what they do best and were hired to do.

While marketing project management often gets place in marketing ops, that is not marketing ops. While project management could be a subset of marketing ops, it requires a different and evolving leadership “hat.” The considerations are:

• The work of an effective marketing ops team often reduces the need for traditional project management in favor of having the project managers oversee the work.
• The project managers can view and manage the work within systems that provide ultimate visibility, resourcing and other data that help them make decisions.
• And that data helps the project managers take immediate and necessary actions to ensure others are able to execute effective marketing work done in an efficient, easy manner.
• The workflow and processes should be invisible and simplistic. Like taking an Apple iPhone out of the box and using it because it’s intuitive to the user.

If marketing operations inherits corporate shared marketing services, that is not marketing ops. That is running a service entity.

If marketing operations runs an in-house creative team, that is not marketing ops. That might be consider creative operations, but it is still not marketing operations. The in-house agency helps the business creatively solve business problems.

The marketing ops leader and team act like a COO to the CMO

The CMO must allow, support and resource marketing ops. In doing so, the marketing ops team can build the systems to effectively manage the following:

• marketing performance
• operational martech
• finances and budget
• internal and external resources
• and the adaptive strategic planning process.

Gartner can help CMOs and marketing operations leaders ensure that the investment in marketing ops activities and roles pays off. And pays off both strategically and measurably for enterprise marketing and the internal clients and stakeholders they serve.

Let’s work together to help you achieve marketing operational excellence, the ultimate goal.

Recommended Reading:

CMOs Tackle Marketing Operations as Budgets Tighten