What is Marketing Operations?

Marketing operations (marketing ops) uses technology and data to create better experiences for customers and employees. It forms part of a broader change in how marketers work. There is an increasing understanding of the need to manage the entire organization as one interconnected ecosystem as leaders.

While the definition of marketing ops is widely agreed upon, some companies have taken a different approach to solving problems. Other firms view product management as the equivalent of marketing ops.

A marketing operations function provides critical tools for collaboration and communication, which improve efficiency across the entire marketing function. 

How MarTech and Digital Transformation Has Changed Marketing Operations

MarTech and digital transformation are new tools marketers use to reach their target audiences more effectively than before. 

Marketers can communicate better through data and analytics tools to track how effective each campaign has been. Consequently, they can adjust their campaigns and target customers more strategically.

The digital age has provided businesses with the ability to track everything online for each customer, including how they interact with advertisements or products.

Digital transformation has given marketers the ability to find new ways of reaching out to customers to understand and use when making purchasing decisions.

Marketing departments are adapting quickly, which is why digital marketing has become so successful for companies worldwide by utilizing digital tools such as MarTech.

Download our info-graphic on the changing structure of marketing – here.

Umbrellas of Marketing Ops

Marketing plans

They work in line with the corporate business goals and objectives while also looking at your company's core competencies.  The key here is aligning these plans to what stage of growth your company is at, whether that's early-stage or mature. Your tactics need to be focused on where you are in that lifecycle.

Company Culture

In terms of marketing, this means looking at how you communicate internally and externally as a brand.  It's also about evaluating those internal digital practices. These include social media behavior, website usability, lead nurturing efforts within the sales funnel, critical customer touchpoints—all of which align with your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Technology

You need to evaluate your tech stack and how it fits within your business goals. Your tech needs to be the enabler of every step in the customer feedback loop. This includes training employees on what good looks like through measuring results and taking action.

 Read here Simple’s 9 tips for getting the most out of your martech investment.

Why is Marketing Operations Important? 

Without marketing operations, you'll struggle to align your marketing campaigns with the broader business strategy. Here are some reasons why marketing operations are essential.

Understanding Your Customer Experience

Customer experience is the entire journey, from awareness through to purchase and beyond. This means not only evaluating how prospects flow through your sales funnel on a day-to-day basis but also evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs) across marketing channels and departments.

Encourages Customer Participation and Engagement 

Marketing operations ensure that you create an experience where your customers want to participate and engage with your brand. Your business may have the best product in its class. Still, suppose your onboarding process is long and arduous, or it's too complicated for existing customers to find help on fundamental questions. In that case, you're not going to create a loyal customer base.

You can build customer loyalty and increase overall satisfaction to achieve brand advocacy with the proper marketing operations.

Drives Suitable Customers into Your Sales Funnel

This means removing unqualified leads from marketing campaigns for many organizations, so more time is spent engaging with the right prospects.

The Scope of Marketing Operations 

The scope of marketing operations is broad. It can include everything from auditing marketing technology to setting customer experience standards for your employees.

Consider how it might touch on each of these areas:

Marketing Intelligence

This is the data essential to marketing campaigns like internal metrics and customer feedback. Analysis of marketing intelligence data can evaluate marketing performance and guide the decision-making for marketing campaigns. At an advanced level, you can use it to inform decisions on product trends, consumer behavior, and competitors.

Digital Marketing

Marketing operations cover all of the processes required for digital marketing, including web design and development; analytics; SEO; pay-per-click (PPC) advertising; email marketing; social media marketing (SMM); mobile apps, content management systems (CMS), etc.

Marketing Technology

Marketing technology (MarTech) and marketing operations go hand-in-hand. It's the range of tools, software, and technology used to build, run, manage, measure, and execute marketing campaigns. Examples include marketing operations platforms, marketing resource management software, CRM software, digital analytics tools, email marketing tools, and content marketing platforms.

Read here Simple’s 6 must-have features of a marketing operations platform.

How Marketing Operations Differs from Marketing Strategy, Branding and Marketing Technology

Marketing resource management (MRM) provides the framework for the effective allocation of resources. This considers how much needs to be invested, what that investment will do, and where it’s most effective.

On the other hand, marketing operations can be understood to be even broader in helping you understand which campaigns are most successful with your audience so you know where you should spend more money.

Marketing operations is about how something gets done, whereas marketing strategy is about what should be done. It also helps to keep your team grounded by putting resource allocation into a straightforward process that everyone can understand and follow.

When it comes to branding, marketing operations help you measure brand awareness through tools such as brand audits and site analytics. It helps you plan how to operate your marketing activities while using existing technologies to achieve success more quickly and efficiently than before (and at lower costs).

Marketing technology manages resources and marketing operations, but it can also help you understand the most effective resources. This type of information can be fed back into your resource management process.

There are four components of marketing operations: 

• Planning: It helps you understand your audience to create a powerful strategy that delivers results.
• Execution: The process by which the plans are carried out across all channels.
• Measurement/Analytics: Provides insights into how well your strategies are working using a variety of tools.
• Improvement: Ensures that your processes are continuously improved by leveraging data-driven insights.

Marketing operations is what happens in the middle, in the gap between strategy and tactics. It happens in a marketing function charged with driving success in a complex digital environment. 

They help you execute better, faster, and more efficiently. Typically, marketing operations are understood to be the department or group within an organization focused on supporting all aspects of the customer-facing side of the business. 

Best Marketing Operations Practices 

Establish Operational Metrics

Marketing operational metrics help identify and fix any issues before the campaign goes live and view the marketing campaigns' status in real-time, or hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

They'll give you a closer look at your performance, and where your efforts are failing so you can rectify them before the advance. This way, you can manage your campaigns and reach y0our marketing targets.

Decide What Kind of Data You'll Need

This decision is crucial, especially if you are not sure about the information your marketing department or agency might require from your side.

You will be able to collect detailed insights and increase growth opportunities with these data points. 

Understand the Technology

Technology is advancing fast, making it even more critical for marketers to keep up with the latest available technology. Apps and software now make marketing operations simple for campaign management, automating tasks, analysis, and performance insights. 

Additionally, technology helps you save time and resources. Thus, understanding it and how you can integrate it into your firm's marketing operations can make a significant difference.

By-Products of Successful Marketing Operations

Data Transparency

With marketing operations, nothing can be hidden from the brand and the marketers. All information regarding the product, customer interaction, and performance is stored in one place and can be tracked easily.

Scalability of the Workload

Automation is beneficial when managing a large number of customer data. Manual work can be time-consuming and tedious, but you don't need to worry about marketing operations.

Data Accuracy

With automation, your data will remain accurate and up-to-date because it eliminates human error. At the same time, it is easier to analyze data and come up with practical strategies.The process is faster and less challenging when using automated tools; thus, the time you'd have spent managing the data is drastically reduced.

Customer Engagement

Marketers can reach out to many customers and offer them personalized services based on their interactions with the brand. They can develop campaigns that the consumer can relate with, thus creating brand awareness and loyalty.  Consequently, there'll be effective engagement and hence an increase in lead generation and conversion.

Insight Generation

Data gives you an insight into understanding your customers better. Marketing automation helps you harness this data and power lead generation, customer service, personalization of the brand experience, and more.

Try Simple Marketing Operations

We can't stress enough how marketing operations are crucial for the growth of your business. If you want your marketing campaigns to succeed, you have to come up with actionable strategies.

This means establishing operational metrics, marketing technology, and marketing resource management, all of which are part of marketing operations.

At Simple, we're a solution-based team that accelerates your marketing operations by automating processes, creating visibility for marketers, and connecting teams, among others.  We offer you operational tools to take your marketing campaigns to the next level. Ready to take the first step? Book a demo today and glimpse into your future.

 Find out more about Simple Marketing Operations Cloud – here.