MarOps: Making The Case For Marketing Operations
Today’s marketing landscape is changing, and many organizations have developed marketing operations teams to help overcome new challenges and embrace new opportunities. Explore how organizations have overcome obstacles in the marketing operations team development process, and read more about the successes these organizations have achieved.
One minute insights:
Most use real-world or live-environment testing and choose the system access level to introduce failures
Organizations who have fully developed their marketing operations function report improved marketing efficiency and alignment with business objectives.
A top concern among marketers who are developing their marketing operations function is the lack of a centralized marketing tool for marketing operations.
Lack of human resources (i.e., marketers experienced in marketing operations), and siloed marketing functions are top concerns among marketers whose marketing operations team development is fully complete.
Among organizations with a dedicated marketing operations team, most report they have a marketing operations leader and that the role of their team is clearly defined
84% of marketing leaders whose organization has a dedicated marketing operations team also have a marketing operations leader, and an additional 12% report their organization plans to hire a marketing operations leader.
Does your organization have a marketing operations leader (i.e. someone specifically in charge of the marketing operations team)?
The majority of marketers agree (55%) or strongly agree (25%) that the function and scope of the marketing operations role at their organization is clearly defined.
How do you feel about the following statement: “The function and scope of the marketing operations role in my organization is clearly defined.”
73% of marketing leaders, at organizations with a marketing operations team, report the primary responsibilities of their marketing operations teams are; campaign management (73%), reporting (65%) and performance measurement (57%). Over half also selected technology/tools management (56%), continuous process improvement (56%) and data analysis (55%).
What are the primary responsibilities of the marketing operations team at your organization? Select all that apply.
Market research/competitive intelligence 50% | Budget management 46% | Strategic planning 44% | Strategic execution of marketing goals 40% | Data management/governance 39% | Marketing innovation 38% |Vendor relationship management 37% | Capacity planning 13%
n = 100
Lack of a centralized marketing tool and human resources were top reported obstacles marketers have faced when developing the marketing operations function
Most marketers (86%) report they are fully or somewhat complete with the marketing operations development process.
How far along the marketing operations development process are you (i.e. do you have people, processes, and tools in place)?
The top selected obstacles marketers have experienced developing marketing operations are lack of a centralized marketing tool (45%), lack of human resources (42%) and siloed marketing functions (42%).
What obstacles have you experienced while developing marketing operations? Select all that apply.
n = 100
Unclear data governance strategy 28% | Unclear business strategy for marketing operations 28% | Unwillingness to collaborate between marketing functions 27% | Inability to synchronize tech stack across marketing functions 24% | Siloed or inaccessible data 21%
Among respondents whose marketing operations development process is fully complete (n=41), the top selected obstacles experienced while developing marketing operations are lack of human resources (44%), siloed marketing functions (41%) and employees unwilling to consistently use assigned tools and resources (39%).
What obstacles have you experienced while developing marketing operations? Select all that apply.
Unwillingness to collaborate between marketing functions 29% | Inability to synchronize tech stack across marketing functions 22% | Underdeveloped marketing team members (i.e. lack of skill/experience) 22% | Lack of agility across marketing functions 20% | Unclear data governance strategy 20% | Siloed or inaccessible data 17%
n = 41
Question shown only to respondents who answered “fully complete – we are staffed and marketing operations strategy has been rolled out” to the question, “How far along the marketing operations development process are you (i.e. do you have people, processes, and tools in place)?”
Among respondents whose marketing operations development process is somewhat complete (n=45), over half of respondents selected lack of a centralized marketing tool (51%). Employees unwilling to consistently use assigned tools (44%) and siloed marketing functions (42%) were also top-selected choices.
What obstacles have you experienced while developing marketing operations? Select all that apply.
Unclear data governance strategy 36% | Underdeveloped marketing team members (i.e. lack of skill/experience) 33% | Unwillingness to collaborate between marketing functions 24% | Inability to synchronize tech stack across marketing functions 24% | Siloed or inaccessible data 24% | Unclear business strategy for marketing operations 20%
n = 45
Question shown only to respondents who answered “somewhat complete – we are still filling some roles, creating new processes, and discovering the best tools” to the question, “How far along the marketing operations development process are you (i.e. do you have people, processes, and tools in place)?”
Improved marketing efficiency and alignment of marketing with business objectives are top reported successes organizations have experienced since developing marketing operations
Improved marketing efficiency (72%), improved marketing alignment with business objectives (56%) and improved marketing collaboration across the organization (54%) are the top reported successes since developing marketing operations cited by marketing professionals.
Which of the following successes have you experienced since developing marketing operations? Select all that apply.
Improved marketing data tracking and reporting 30% | Increased customer retention 28% | Increase overall marketing agility 28% | Increased leads/impressions 26% | Streamlined marketing technology stack 21% | Improved vendor/supplier relationships 21% | Increased marketing innovation in the organization 20% | Improved organizational positioning in the market 18% | Other (fill in) 2%
n = 100
Other text: More bandwidth for other functions such as PMMs and digital
Among marketing professionals who say their organization’s marketing operations development process is fully complete (n=41), improved marketing efficiency (83%) is the most selected response. Increased marketing collaboration was selected by 71% of this group, an increase of 31%.
Which of the following successes have you experienced since developing marketing operations? Select all that apply.
Improved marketing data tracking and reporting 24% | Increased customer retention 22% | Increase overall marketing agility 22% | Increased leads/impressions 22% | Streamlined marketing technology stack 20% | Improved vendor/supplier relationships 17% | Increased marketing innovation in the organization 17% | Improved organizational positioning in the market 17%
n = 41
Question shown only to respondents who answered “fully complete – we are staffed and marketing operations strategy has been rolled out” to the question, “How far along the marketing operations development process are you (i.e. do you have people, processes, and tools in place)?”
Of those marketers who report their organization’s marketing operations development process is somewhat complete (n=45), improved marketing efficiency and improved marketing alignment with business objectives tied at 64% as the most selected response.
Which of the following successes have you experienced since developing marketing operations? Select all that apply.
Increased customer retention 33% | Increase overall marketing agility 29% | Increased leads/impressions 29% | Streamlined marketing technology stack 20% | Improved vendor/supplier relationships 20% | Increased marketing innovation in the organization 20% | Improved organizational positioning in the market 18%
Question shown only to respondents who answered “somewhat complete – we are still filling some roles, creating new processes, and discovering the best tools” to the question, “How far along the marketing operations development process are you (i.e. do you have people, processes, and tools in place)?”
40% of marketing professionals say alignment and completion of business objectives is the KPI that has been most impactful on the success of marketing operations at their organization.
What KPIs have been most impactful on the success of marketing operations in your organization?
Question: What advice would you give to marketing leaders who are just beginning to develop or launch a marketing operations function/strategy? Question shown only to respondents who answered “yes” to the question, “Do you think developing marketing operations as a function is critical to the overall success of marketing?” (n=96)
Understand the end goal first, what are the top 3 KPIs that matter the most, instead of chasing all. Identify high impact interventions, develop a use case & scale it up.
Prioritize cross-functional collaboration, establish clear processes, leverage automation, and focus on data-driven decision making. Align your strategy with business goals, empower your team with the right tools and training, and continuously improve for long-term success.
Question: What advice would you give to marketing leaders who are just beginning to develop or launch a marketing operations function/strategy?
[Marketing operations] is a must in current times to demonstrate readiness of new campaigns quickly and efficiently
It's a great idea to launch marketing operations as a separate function, but it needs to be aligned and in sync from a data point of view or it becomes useless. Technology that is easy to use is also important to encourage use of it. I've seen programs that get out of sync easily.
Talk to other industry leaders. There are best practices that may not be evident without learning [from] others' experiences.
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Respondent Breakdown
Note: May not add up to 100% due to rounding
Respondents: 100 marketing leaders whose organization has a dedicated marketing operations team