For this month’s MOPs Unplugged exercise, a question was posed to our panel:
“Tell me about a time you had to pivot during a campaign – when did it happen during the campaign, why did you have to pivot, and how easy was it to pivot?”
This was in one case an easy question to answer, but the question itself highlights one of the divisions in the Marketing Operations profession and begs the question. Many of us who live in “Performance Operations” (a label coined by one of my former leaders, that I believe encapsulates the Platform and Intelligence/Analytics functions that many of us do) don’t get involved in the day-to-day of campaign operations, so how do we think about this question? Watch below to see how my peers and I answered this question.
This is going to look like the stereotypical “politician answer.” You know, where someone uses the time slot afforded by a question to talk about whatever he/she wants to talk about and eat up time, regardless of the question asked. The topic of the week was to talk about “a campaign” that we pivoted, and now look at me pivoting to talk about the four pillars of Marketing Operations and what role Campaign Operations truly plays in our function.
I do feel that Platform Operations and Marketing Analytics Operations do deserve a little respect here. Anyone else hear Aretha Franklin in your head now?
Our day-to-day, at least on paper, isn’t a punch list of campaigns to get out the door. We mostly look at the processes executed by marketing, the effectiveness of the MarTech stack, our alignment with our sales partners, and conducting deep analysis using the data collected across our platforms to help us understand how our companies can unlock revenue opportunities and “unstick” leads and opportunities in the pipeline.
There is a perception that still exists that anyone that is in Marketing Operations is automatically assumed to be a campaign manager at their core. The only exception is when you’re in the niche “MOPs” community and talk with like-minded people who understand the unseen side of our profession. I liken what we do sometimes to being the Offensive Lineman on a football team (the Super Bowl recently happened, so this should align). The members of the Offensive Line don’t show up on the stat sheet, and the only time you hear one of their names is when they get called for a false start or holding penalty. It’s an “invisible role” but did you know that it’s also the most highly paid role (outside of the starting quarterback)? Why is that?
Because without a stellar offensive line, your quarterback would spend most of the game in the turf, rather than scoring touchdowns. Travis Kelce doesn’t get the ball and Taylor Swift doesn’t cheer if Mahomes is running for his life. That OL serves such a critical role, even though it gets little fanfare.
Marketing/Platform Operations is the same way. The campaigns don’t execute unless…
Oh wait, there is this thing about campaigns, isn’t there?
The Offensive Line is still in the play, aren’t they?
So perhaps if we get ourselves too distanced from the Campaign Operations execution, we are getting ourselves into a ditch.
Because the core operations that are supported by our MOPs teams at the end of the day are the prospect engagement and execution workflows. For most, if not all, marketing organizations in the year 2024, they are still considered and run as a Campaign.
As much as we talk about “killing the campaign” in the digital experience space, it’s here to stay.
We as strategic platform and analytics operations professionals ignore that key fact to our detriment and the detriment of our organizations.
There are, I believe, (at least) two ditches that MOPs can fall into in this regard.
The first ditch is that “Platform Operations” is so system and process focused that we essentially become indistinguishable from IT. In fact, in some organizations the marketing automation system gets owned by the Information Technology department because of this mindset and becomes a “Business Systems” team rather than a true operations team that exists to enable business success.
This scenario is a ditch because in this world the Marketing Operations team detaches from the business operations and becomes a technology team that navel gazes in the tools and becomes detached from the “why do we have these systems and processes in the first place?” question. This team is detached from marketing. Jira, rather than revenue, is your new friend.
The second ditch is that we become a “Demand Center” and we literally are a campaign production house that has little time (or interest) in the operations. There’s little time for good systems and process work because we’re always chasing the next new campaign and all of the projects coming downstream to us from the demand generation team.
Or much less desirable: The “MOPs team” is really the demand generation or the campaign execution team. You are MOINO (Marketing Operations In Name Only).
Live in this ditch for too long and your marketing automation system will start to resemble one of those houses in the show Hoarders, and someone will start to ask “why did we purchase {insert sophisticated and costly platform here}?” It’s a large reason why many costly migrations occur, and they don’t have to.
Let’s be honest, neither of those places are where Marketing Operations either wants to be, or should be. There has to be a better way.
This better way, I believe, is in both embracing the “why” and the “how” behind how we do our jobs as Platform and Analytics operations professionals. We have to embrace that one of the core processes that we support is the campaign execution and that Campaign Operations is not only the team tasked with executing the demand vision and getting campaigns out the door, but that they really are one of our core business partners.
If campaigns aren’t well-designed, mass-customizable, and technically excellent, all of the work we do in scoring, lifecycle, integrations, sales alignment doesn’t get too far, does it? We have to be aligned with them, understand the campaign plans and be willing and proficient to join them in the trenches of campaign development.
With campaigns, we are consulted and indeed responsible. Accountability is with our Campaign Operations partners.
We also have to be the process leaders and the technical experts and hold the line on good practice (note I did not say “Best Practice”), and align these key stakeholders in the campaign and demand operations with the other key stakeholder that we serve…
Sales, Support, and Customer Success.
Aligning these functions is not easy. Few do it well. Even fewer do it with excellence.
This is where the focus of our systems and process expertise needs to focus us. If we focus on “systems” then we become glorified admins and fall into the IT ditch. However, if we instead use our expertise and business acumen to leverage the capabilities of technology and create value then we have exponentially elevated ourselves to that strategic pillar that Marketing Operations both craves and deserves.
This requires a “RevOps” mindset that is both independent of the day-to-day business operations, yet still strategically aligned and embedded within it. We own the partnership and enablement, as well as the metrics that matter that facilitate success. We facilitate and govern, report the news and forecast the art of the possible.
When Marketing Operations lives in this space, magic happens. This is when we truly become strategic partners on the road to success.
When I share the video from this month’s MOps Unplugged, you will notice that I did answer the question, because I believe you can’t separate campaigns from the core operations we support. You also can’t separate out the people, because in creative development it is the people and the insights that we gather together that makes this work both interesting, fun, and enjoyable. We can’t lose sight of this in our day-to-day managing the operations, and I hope that we never do.
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