Back in the Day
Remembering back when I was a marketing intern (before “Marketing Ops” or “Revenue Ops” existed), we had two big systems to manage:
- Customer Relation Management (CRM)
- Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)
Somehow, I got put in charge to administer both and was promoted to a Marketing Specialist. I remember sending out my first major email to our database announcing our company’s leadership in some magic quadrant– our biggest campaign of the year. I also managed to “push send” and deliver an email to 100,000 people with a broken link!
My devastation subsided. A year later, I got recruited as a Marketing Operations Manager for double the pay in downtown Boston. That was the first time I had heard that phase “Marketing Operations”.
I was hooked.
Over the years — with help from great mentors, teammates, and partners — I’ve been fortunate to lead many successful global marketing technology projects. But, despite our experiences and tribulations, it seems that our job is getting harder, not easier.
The Impact of Complexity on Ops
Today, instead of just 2 technologies a B2B Marketing Ops team manages at least 10, usually more. Marketing teams are being pushed to justify their largest technology budgets ever while supporting this complexity. Perhaps an even more notable trend is these teams are being pressed to prove ROI and work towards a pipeline or revenue goal.
What proof?
In 2017, the typical B2B Enterprise Marketing team leveraged 91 tools.
But yet, as of 2020 only 30% of marketers are confident in their reporting, while 72% have pipeline or revenue targets.
A typical stack today has MANY more acronyms, and ops pros have 7,040 vendors to choose from:
- Customer Relation Management (CRM)
- Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)
- Content Management (CMS)
- Ad Platform (DSP/DMP)
- Data Provider (IP Lookup, Enrichment services, TAM, ICP)
- Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- ABM / Personalization Tools (RTP)
- Reporting Visualization (BI)
- Tag Managers (GTM)
- Marketing Budgeting (MRM / MPM)
Data and system complexity are obviously exploding. The net-net effect of all this is that because it’s harder to manage all your systems and harder to manage your data, it’s harder to act on data to deliver revenue.
When complexity goes up:
- Certainty goes down
- Time-to-Action (and time-to-revenue) increases
- To combat this, marketing teams need more skill
Operations Teams, Unite
More than ever, operations professionals (Marketing Ops, Revenue Ops, and Customer Ops) teams must stick together. More than ever, we must learn from each other’s ideas, network, and share information. Just as top organizations share budgets, KPIs and goals; the greater operations community is stronger together.
There are several good marketing and sales communities popping up– mailing lists, Slack groups, etc. If you’re an industry professional we recommend you join them! For example, if you’re a CMO, you may be part of revenuecollective.com. If you’re a sales leader, you may be a member of Modern Sales Pros. Here at CaliberMind, we’re sponsoring a new, invite-only group specially oriented towards Marketing Operations / Revenue Operations / Customer Operations.
The MasterOps community is here.
We’re starting off with an in-person event series:
- Denver, CO – 2.12.2020 (just wrapped)
- San Francisco, CA – 2.19.2020
- New York, NY – 3.11.2020
- Toronto, Canada – 3.12.2020
- Austin, TX – 4.15.2020
- Atlanta, GA – 4.16.2020
Those attending the MasterOps events [register here] will get first invites to the club’s Slack Channel, Resource Library, and in-person Meet-Up sessions led by other members. After that, the MasterOps group will only be accessible via referral.
Together, we will become the next wave of leaders in innovation and revenue generation via people, process, and technology.
I’m excited to take the journey with you. Are you ready?
