Marketing operations

Scope

The scope of responsibilities varies across Marketing Operations teams and so, therefore, does the definition. Typically, MO is the responsible for marketing performance measurement , strategic planning and execution, budgeting, process development, professional development, and marketing systems and data. The role is quite responsible for the organization of the marketing organization. This work typically connects closely to, or includes, demand generation , and involves the alignment of Marketing and Sales, Business Units, IT and Finance. MO professionals’ career paths sometimes originates in Finance, IT, Sales Operationsand other analytical or process-oriented roles. The MO is a business operating organization, with formalized best practices, processes, infrastructure, and reporting.

This injection of left-brain thinking into the mainstream of right-brained-heavy marketing is one of the most important tools in the market. These newer skills include the ability to allocate resources based on strategic objectives and demonstrated performance; acting as an organizational interface to the parallel role of Sales Operations. Marketing Operations to coordinate and optimize marketing resources.

Evolving field

The rise of the function MO Was Observed first by analyst firm IDC in icts annual Tech Marketing Benchmarks study early in 2005, with a detailed analysis and framework for the staffing requirements and Responsibilities for this role’s contribution to the marketing organization. The 2006 IDC CMO Technology Study Benchmark found that the headcount allocated to MO was about 2.5%. This was the first time MO was determined as a stand-alone function in the IDC studies. By the end of the 2011, the allocation of marketing operations had more than doubled to 5.3%.

In 2007, the Marketing Performance Management Study by VisionEdge Marketing ^[1] found that companies were adding MO to the marketing function to help ensure systems, processes, and tools were in place to support marketing performance measurement and management. Also in 2007, the Journey to the Marketing Operations Maturity Study ^[2]by Marketing Operations Partners published an MO framework with marketing strategy and guidance supported by ecosystem alignment, leading to marketing processes and metrics supported by technology and infrastructure management. By 2009, other marketing studies began to turn questions about MO. The 2009 Lenskold Group / MarketSphere Marketing ROI and Measurement Study found that companies in place were twice (11% vs. 5%) as effective and efficient.

The role of MO is expanding, especially within marketing organizations serving as value creators and agents of change. Within these organizations, MO is moving beyond the field of automation and financial governance to facilitate accountability, alignment, and agility. Some CMOs treat the leader as a Chief of Staff. As such, they are often involved with handling communication to the organization and overseeing the training and development of marketing professionals.

Role

Whereas it is the responsibility of every marketing professional to engage in performance management ,

The 2014 Marketing Performance Management Study conducted by VisionEdge Marketing / ITSMA found that the role of Marketing Operations now includes the following:

• Analytics and predictive modeling
• Budgeting and planning; corporate governance and reporting
• Campaign analysis and reporting
• Customer, market, competitive intelligence , research, and insights
• Data management
• Organizational benchmarking and assessments
• Performance measurement and reporting
• Project management
• Strategic planning
• Talent and skills development
• Technology & automation and pipeline management
• Workflow process development and documentation

Value creation

Best-in-class marketers can be characterized as value creators because of their primary focus on the market, customer, and product / service decisions that create value for customers and shareholders. As a result, organizations are actively recruiting and developing people with the following skills, in priority order, in order to create greater value:

• Customer, market, competitive intelligence, research, and insights
• Analytics and predictive modeling
• Data management, project management, and change management
• Campaign analysis and reporting
• Budgeting and planning; financial governance and reporting
• Organization benchmarking and assessments

Marketing technology

Technology can help marketers manage assets, generate demand, and measure results. For many organizations, MO is responsible for evaluating, maintaining, and using the various marketing technologies. The marketing technology technology can be confusing, and the acronym alphabet used to describe these technologies only adds to the conundrum: DAM / MAM ( digital asset or marketing asset management), MOM ( marketing operations management ), MAP ( marketing automation platforms), and MRM ( marketing resource management ). Marketing technology ties together metrics, customer touchpoints , and internships of thecustomer lifecycle management in order to optimize its performance and agility in creating growth. Marketing technology platforms can be organized into four broad categories:

1. Market and Customer Intelligence and Insights for Business and Analytics. These technologies support automating intelligence gathering, such as social media monitoring / monitoring and business intelligence tools. The purpose of these tools is to turn market and customer data into actionable insights.
2. Customer Interaction and Commitment for acquiring and keeping customers. These technologies create customer interaction and support the customer-buying journey. This is where many organizations have made most of their current and rather extensive technology investments. Most marketing / email campaign automation, customer relationship management, contact management, demand generation and lead management
3. Project / Workflow / Operations Management for managing the work of marketing. These technologies enable marketing and managing productivity. Marketing resource management, digital / asset management marketing, content management and curation, and project management are examples of technologies that fit into this group.
4. Performance Management for improving the value of marketing. These technologies help monitor, measure and communicate marketing value, impact, performance, and contribution to the organization. Technologies that include this category include marketing attribution , analytics, marketing reporting and dashboard tools, marketing models, alignment and accountability tools.

A list of marketing technology by Scott Brinker has shown the category from 947 vendors in 2014 to over 1,800 in 2015. ^[3]

History

Formative underpinnings of MO

Pre-Digital

• 1920s – The Golden Age of Radio Spurred Market Research to Help Advertisers Understand Demographics and Competitors. This is a market management and marketing segment, a widespread practice in Marketing Operations today.
• 1931 – The consumer packaged goods firm The Procter & Gamble (P & G) established dedicated Brand Management teams for an end-to-end view of products, markets, and customers. Today, in companies like Clorox , Brand Management and Marketing Operations are inseparable practices that lead to align brand messaging with brand performance.
• 1961 – The Marketing Science Institute was founded, advancing foundational marketing concepts and research streams, such as marketing orientation, brand equity , ROI marketing and new product development.
• 1974 – Peter Drucker , in his book, Management: Responsibilities, Practices , proclaimed that the aim of marketing is to “make selling superfluous,. . . “Today, companies like Autodesk, Microsoft, and VMware are realizing that vision by integrating insight and business intelligence into their marketing operations scope.
• 1979 – The Institute of Management Science and Operations Research Society of America launched a series of annual market measurement and analysis conferences. Measurement and analysis today has a market focus to a holistic endeavor encompassing markets, customers, pipelines, campaigns, resources, processes, technology, teams and much more.
• 1979 – Computer Shopper Magazine invented “bingo cards” to track ads and records from the periodical to a sale. This practice was adopted by product-focused trade journals in the late 1980s. Modern marketers have many more tools at their disposal to close the loop between initial printing and purchase.

1980s

• Marketing textbooks added chapters on marketing metrics and organization structure, leading to big corporation experimentation with marketing ROI business models and marketing mix analysis, as well as the introduction of barcode readers , and database marketing. ^[4]
• Some public relations agencies adopted a business model aimed at guarantee results and be paid according to the advertising equivalent value of publicity. While this approach is more likely to have a negative impact on the game, it has not been possible to achieve this.
• Marketing mix modeling was widely adopted among consumer packaged goods firms. Computer software was developed to model brand switching and consumer preference, using economic modeling such as logit analysis, which was invented by Bernsen in 1944.
• The unveiling of electronic point-of-sale devices
• Database marketing became a driving force in direct marketing, with roots going back to 1967 when Kestenbaum Consulting was credited with developing new metrics such as customer lifetime value, RFM scores (recency, frequency, monetary), and applying financial and economic models to marketing.
• Integrated marketing communications originated in the late 1980s and won popularity in the 1990s.

1990s

• Peter Senge’s Landmark Book The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization influencing executives’ thinking about systemic management and mental models, practices that are at the core of how to make marketing decisions -making.
• Bain & Company ‘s 1980s research quantifying the financial advantages of customer retention spawned strong interest in a closed – loop view of marketing results. Concepts such as brand equity, customer equity, customer value management, customer lifetime value, customer relationship management, and customer loyalty were embraced in the language of marketing. Demonstrating accountability for marketing funds at this time. Integrated marketing communications emerged from the gap between messages and imagery, content and supply chain, and investment and accountability.
• Consumer Packaged Goods Firms (BUDs), BOMs and channel management. Initially, large companies such as P & G and GE addressed this problem by developing proprietary solutions in-house.
• Email marketing gained ground, and with it, privacy concerns grew. Invasion of privacy, and spamming complaints, led to the 2002 European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications and 2003 US CANSPAM Act. Facing potential fines of up to $ 15K per person, marketers are influenced to change their email “batch-and-blast” behaviors by more conscientiously focusing on respect (opt-in, opt-out, e-mail preferences ), relevance (right for the right audience at right time) and relationship.
• Commercial marketing automation software started by Unica (now part of IBM) in 1992, took its initial step towards mainstream market share of Aprimo (now part of Teradata ) in 1998 and Eloqua (now part of Oracle) in 1999.

early 2000s

• 2003 – The term “enterprise marketing management” (EMM) became widely recognized with the publication of the book, Enterprise Marketing Management: The New Science of Marketing by Sutton and Klein.
• 2004 – The idea of-combining processes, metrics and technology into marketing practice Was Introduced in the book, The New Marketing Mission: How Process, and Technology Metrics Can Unleash Growth by Hastings, Wade Duggal, Saperstein.

Formal creation of MO

2005

• Analyst firm International Data Corporation identifies the rise of the Marketing Operations function in its annual Tech Marketing Benchmarks study.
• The first article in Marketing Marketing was published by Gary Katz in MarketingProfs: Marketing Operations: Solving Marketing Seven Deadly Sins .
• Marketing Performance emerged as a hot topic with the publication of the book, High Performance Marketing: Bringing Method to the Madness of Marketing .
• The Digital Asset Management and Marketing Operations Management Symposium, organized by Henry Stewart Events, was held in Los Angeles and included in Marketing Operations Track Management, created by Beth Weesner, Endaf Kerfoot and Kieron Osmotherly, and chaired by Gary Katz. It was repeated in the fall of 2006.

2006

• A Silicon Valley Crowd Attended Marketing Operations: How It Will Transform Forever Roundtable Marketing , Organized by Adrian C. Ott, Chair of the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California. Panelists from Symantec, Cisco and BEA described best practices and how it worked in their organizations.
• The first marketing operations consultancy was established, Marketing Operations Partners, by Gary Katz.
• The first professional association focused on advancing practitioners and the field of Marketing Operations, the Cross-Company Alliance Marketing Marketing (MOCCA), was established by Larissa DeCarlo of Hyperion, Chris Ewert of Adobe, and Mikel Irizar and Damon Moss of Symantec.

2007

• The first framework formally defining Marketing Operations has been described by Adrian C. Ott as 5 Ts that supports all of the marketing functions: total strategy, techniques and processes, tracking and predictive modeling, technology, and talent. It was published for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association’s Thought Leadership publishing contest: “The 5Ts of Marketing Operations .” This work was based on the 2006 HBS Northern California roundtable and her work in Silicon Valley. a wider audience in Marketingprofs where the framework has been subsequently published in several marketing classes and university classes.
• The first benchmarking study, Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity , was published by Marketing Operations Partners and became the framework for marketing operations at many companies, including Walmart.
• The Marketing Operations Efficiency & Effectiveness Conference was held in New York by Henry Stewart Events, with the Marketing Operations track chaired by Gary Katz. The same organization and chair held a similar event in Los Angeles, called the Marketing Operations Symposium, which was repeated in New York in May 2008.

2008

• The first training course on Marketing Operations is conducted in Hong Kong by Gary Katz, who is responsible for the marketing of the operations of the Marketing Operations Symposium, held by Henry Stewart Conferences and Events.
• The first university-level course on Marketing Operations was introduced by Gary Katz at University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) Extension in Santa Clara, California.
• Marketing Operations, in the context of Marketing Resource Management, Jansen and Riemersma, Marketing Resource Management: The Noble Art of Getting Things Done in Marketing. Efficiently.

2009

• Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Sales and Marketing and Social Media Marketing by Borges.
• Marketing Performance Measurement in the book, Marketing Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization by Patterson.

2011

• International Data Corporation cited Marketing Operations at the fastest-growing profession in Marketing and the fourth most-staffed function of Marketing in large corporations.
• Marketing Operations was credited as “The Marketing Technology Department” by Sirius Decisions research firm.
• The MarketingGovernance.com blog has been established to extend the influence and impact of the Marketing organization through the strategic practice of Marketing Operations.

2012 – The Cross-Company Alliance Marketing Operations established its annual Executive Forum.

2013 – The Executive Marketing Operations Executive Summit was launched. Marketing Operations has been cited as a key to establishing a Revenue Marketing Center of Excellence in the book, The Rise of the Revenue Marketer: An Executive Playbook by Qaqish.

2014 – A new conference, the Marketing Operations & Technology Summit represents the field more broadly than automation / analytics / metrics by others to-date, to include career path, capability-building, organizational agility, customer experience, and cross-organizational collaboration.

See also

• Marketing automation
• Marketing effectiveness
• Media intelligence

References