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Marketing is essential to the success of your business-to-business (B2B) organization—any marketer can tell you that. But there’s a world of difference between an ineffective marketing team struggling to get the support they need to achieve their goals and a strong, data-driven marketing powerhouse backed by a team of operations experts.
In other words, if you want your marketing team to be successful, you have to equip them to succeed.
How? With marketing operations (MarketingOps).
What Does Marketing Operations Do?
MarketingOps is responsible for the people, processes, and platforms that help your marketing team operate efficiently, scale as your company grows, achieve revenue goals, and turn marketing strategy into actionable steps.
A marketing operations team will empower your existing marketers and make sure they have the support, tools, and resources they need to succeed.
But what does that look like, day-to-day? What does marketing operations actually do? What problems can MarketingOps solve?
Let’s take a closer look.
A marketing operations strategy solves marketing problems at scale and ensures your marketing team can operate at peak performance.
Marketing Operations Team Structure
Your MarketingOps team deals with a variety of activities, from user operations and lead rotation to data analysis and project management.
There are a few roles or responsibilities that are common in a successful marketing operations team structure:
- Marketing operations manager: Responsible for leading your team of MarketingOps specialists
- Marketing operations specialists: Responsible for performing MarketingOps tasks and providing support to the marketing team
- Data analysts: Responsible for collecting, organizing, and analyzing marketing data
- Marketing strategists: Responsible for developing a data-driven marketing operations strategy that works to achieve your overall marketing and revenue goals
- Content specialists: Responsible for content project management and optimization
- Search engine optimization (SEO) experts: Responsible for ensuring your marketing team has the SEO data and technology they need to optimize your organization’s website and content as well as increase your online visibility
- Marketing technology specialists: Responsible for selecting and maintaining your marketing technology stack as well as training your marketing team members on how to effectively use the platforms
Depending on the size of your B2B organization, your marketing operations could be run by one individual who covers these responsibilities or by an entire in-house team dedicated to MarketingOps.
Another alternative is to outsource your marketing operations to an experienced MarketingOps agency to ensure you have access to an entire team’s worth of marketing operations skills—an especially helpful option if you don’t have the budget or resources to hire a full-time marketing operations staff.
How to Create a Marketing Operations Strategy
Building a successful marketing operations strategy involves collaborating with key stakeholders, your existing marketing team, and MarketingOps experts. Whether you are adjusting your existing strategy or starting from scratch, follow these steps to build an effective MarketingOps strategy.
1. Define Stakeholder Objectives
Since MarketingOps supports the marketing team, it’s important to understand the goals, objectives, pain points, and strengths of stakeholders, such as members of your organization’s B2B marketers or high-level managers.
Communicate with key stakeholders to define the specific objectives they want MarketingOps to accomplish. Based on what you learn from their input, you can then establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and SMART goals that align with these objectives.
2. Establish Quantifiable Metrics to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Operations Strategy
Since your marketing operations team works with your marketing department as well as the teams within that department—from the email marketing or content creation teams to the lead generation and social media teams—it can be difficult to keep track of how successful your MarketingOps strategy is across those various projects, teams, and individuals.
Establish quantifiable metrics and KPIs that connect to the objectives defined in the first step. Then, it will be easier to measure the effectiveness of your marketing operations strategy as marketers work toward team- and organization-wide goals.
READ: The 5 Most Important Metrics for Your Demand Generation Funnel
3. Set Your Marketing Operations Goals Using the SMART Format
Now that you have MarketingOps objectives in hand as well as a list of measurable KPIs, it’s time to outline goals. Your marketing operations goals will guide your MarketingOps team and B2B marketing department, give them a sense of direction, and help you execute your marketing operations strategy.
Use the SMART format to create attainable goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—it’s the difference between “Get more email subscribers” and “Increase the open-rate of email newsletters by 5% over the next six months.”
Set SMART goals that align with your established MarketingOps objectives and metrics.
4. Collaborate with the Marketing Team to Refine Your Strategy
A successful marketing operations strategy relies on an aligned, goal-oriented marketing team. It’s important to collaborate with your marketing team and get input from marketers as you refine your MarketingOps strategy.
However, members of your existing B2B marketing department may not know what marketing operations is or how MarketingOps can support their work. Make sure you create opportunities where your MarketingOps team can collaborate with your marketing team to streamline processes, manage expectations, and work to achieve your organization’s marketing goals.
You hired your marketing department members for a reason. Their expertise can be a helpful part of developing a successful marketing operations strategy. So don’t go through this process alone; to ensure your marketing operations strategy is optimized from every angle, get input from others.
5. Determine Actionable Steps to Achieve Your Marketing Operations Goals
What exactly needs to happen for your MarketingOps team to achieve your marketing operations goals?
Draw a roadmap to success for your marketing operations team, which involves defining actionable steps based on your SMART goals, communicating those steps with your MarketingOps specialists, and collaborating with your team members to adjust the steps as needed.
And remember, there’s more to it than a to-do list. Your roadmap also needs to ensure your MarketingOps team has the resources they need to be successful, the technology they need to stay organized, and the support they need to, in turn, support the marketing department.
6. Assign Specific Tasks to Each Team Member
Once you break down your SMART goals into a roadmap with actionable steps, it’s time to put those steps into action.
Assign specific tasks to each MarketingOps team member. Then, create a workflow system so your marketing operations specialists can update the entire team on the status of each task, crossing items off the list as they go and communicating essential information about each goal.
Communication is key here. When each individual knows what they need to accomplish—and how those tasks contribute to your overall MarketingOps goals—your team is more likely to succeed.
Transform Your Marketing Performance with Our Marketing Operations Services
A marketing operations team, armed with the right tech, processes, and strategy, will unlock the full potential of your B2B marketing team. If you haven’t yet created a marketing operations strategy, now is the time to consider how MarketingOps can help your marketing team do their jobs well, create successful digital marketing campaigns, and achieve your marketing and revenue goals.
You could start from scratch, which would require hiring a team of data analysts and project managers, expanding your tech stack, and pausing progress while you reconfigure your marketing processes—or you can work with an established, experienced marketing operations agency like OneIMS.
If you decide to partner with us, you’ll have access to a team of marketing operations experts, our MarketingOps platforms, and personalized guidance—all stemming from our long history of working with B2B companies to build a strong marketing operations foundation.
We have a long history of working with companies in a variety of industries to develop innovative and data-driven marketing solutions. We pride ourselves on producing measurable and sustainable results.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. View testimonials from our clients and read our blog to get an idea of our training, experience, and track record of success.
Are you ready to create an effective and data-driven marketing operations strategy? Schedule a consultation with us today to get started.
