How marketing operations can get a strategic seat in marketing

Many of us who work in Marketing Operations oftentimes wonder why we aren’t more strategically involved with our marketing peers with their planning.  There are many ways that we can add value, including these value drivers: 

• Provide objective insights on marketing performance across a variety of dimensions
• Inform strategy based on technology trends that will impact marketing effectiveness.  
• Inform discussions around internal marketing processes (read: org alignment) that can enable marketing and their stakeholders to be more efficient and successful. 

Each of these value drivers for Marketing Operations being deeply embedded in the planning process is highly valuable, and we can argue that Marketing Operations as a function is uniquely positioned to deliver on this value proposition.  However, for many of us in Marketing Operations, we don’t have the necessary seat at the table in our organizations for this value to be delivered.  

Why don’t we occupy this seat? 

First, let’s admit that this level of exposure and strategic input is something that many of us tenured Marketing Operations professionals desire. It’s not because we don’t want a seat at the table.  

Our lack of position on the org chart isn’t (just) because we are tech geeks who just want to build Marketo Smart Lists, Workato recipes, or LeanData graphs.  They are the technical foundation of our careers and the meat of how value is delivered in the day-to-day, but those of us who are experienced, have business acumen, MBAs, and ambition want to influence decision-making in our organization.

However, there is a branding (good, bad, or indifferent)  that Marketing Operations is the “geek squad” of marketing.  This perception that Marketing Operations is the Agile IT team of marketing, fair or unfair, remains. It keeps us out of the boardroom and behind our screens.  

How do we elevate (or perhaps evolve)? 

There are two ways I believe we can elevate ourselves.  One of these ways involves our own professional acumen, and the other involves relooking at our technology stacks.  Let me explain.

First, we need to adapt how we present ourselves. 

In our Marketing Operations (MOPs) communities and among each other in our user group meetings, marketing operations professionals can often get into the trap of “geek speak.”  

What is “geek speak?” 

Essentially, it is where we inevitably use the jargon of our profession and the toolsets that we are experts in (and all senior marketing operations professionals are experts in one or more of these platforms) when we get into professional conversations.  We talk about MQL volume and lead velocity, conversion rates, spam rates (a current concern with pending Google updates), Executable Campaigns, Recipes, Graphs, REST API, etc. etc. etc.  

And… When we’re in the safe spaces of the MOPs community, this is good conversation.  

However, your marketing leaders and executives don’t understand this language, or the level of detail that it requires to explain it.  

Executives and marketing leaders (talking about the CMO) care about company strategy (read:  OKRs), finances, and returns on investment.  They want to know, in 15 seconds or less, why what we do (and the insights we provide) impact these three things.  Think about making a pitch on Shark Tank here, not an hour-long presentation on your process.  

Say “Smart Campaign” to this group to your peril.  

We have to, as Jessica Kao has trained many Marketing Operations professionals over the years, convert our “Geek speak to C-Suite” and learn how to succinctly communicate in the language of our VPs of Marketing and CMO.  These three priorities will help us, as will coaching and practice.  

Second, we need to enable ourselves to deliver C-Suite insights.

The second problem is related to the first problem, but it is something that we are familiar with.  It’s a bandwidth problem that is perpetrated by a technology problem.

I’ll set the stage here.  In our role as process and technology managers, we have set up our traditional technology stacks with the Marketing Automation and the CRM as the core of our processes, with marketer-focused enablement technology (for example:  content, chat, video, etc.) at the branches of our stack.  

If we are advanced, we manage the data in/out flows via orchestration and data warehouse (or CDP) technology and some form of BI (which may be Excel) to understand attribution.  

All of this sophisticated technology needs expertise and skill to manage.  With especially Marketing Operations teams being asked to “do more with less” (which often means, people), more of our time unfortunately gets dedicated to maintaining the operations of the stack and we have very little margin in our schedule for doing the necessary analysis required to create a story that will resonate with marketing leadership and earn that seat at the table (meme credit:  Jason Raisleger at Mopsmemes.com). 

It’s not that we don’t have the ambition.  It’s that we don’t have the bandwidth.  

This is where the comment about “being related” comes to play.  We in Marketing Operations need technology (or headcount, which let’s be honest, is a tough sell right now) to consolidate all of the data we collect and deliver us the insights we need to have these “boardroom conversations” and enable us to be relevant.  

In order to deliver, we need to invest in technology that enables Marketing Ops, which can be very difficult for us to go to bat for because we correctly have the mindset that we support the infrastructure and processes that enables marketing.  

However, the admins and enablers need support too, and we need to build our confidence muscle to either a.) ask for those tools, or b.) put in the sweat equity to build our own capabilities, among all of the other things that are on our plate (which include managing our lives).  

If we did have these tools, what would they look like? 

Here are some thoughts.  

1. Metrics should align outcomes to Objectives and Key Results (especially if your leadership is aligned to the OKR model)
2. Metrics should be tied either to an OKR or to a financial metric that resonates with the CFO.  Vanity metrics aren’t going to cut it here. 
3. Data should be predictive.  You can’t just “tell the news.”  Reporting results only gives part of the picture.  You also need to be able to use data to make the news… providing insights that can drive key gains in the marketing strategy that impact the metrics that matter (see #1 and #2) 
4. They should be straightforward to dissect.  Don’t get into this scenario in a strategic discussion (see meme).  

While a straightforward, relevant presentation is possible.  It does take work to make happen.  I believe the work is worth it and we should pursue it, because the value that our organizations will gain will be great.