Getting your Marketing Operations Right in B2B; Tips and Best Practices

Marketing operations is the total combined function of all processes, people and technology collectively working to drive the marketing for their business. Marketing operations consists of designing a marketing strategy and its implementation, tracking performance metrics of the marketing campaigns, reporting, and analyzing all the acquired data and planning accordingly, budget planning to increase ROI, setting up the marketing technology and related martech management processes, etc. 

A marketing operations team plays a major role in every business. As Mirko Holzer, CEO of BrandMaker recently wrote in an article for MarTech Series, ”the marketing ops function has grown up quickly, whether or not we have taken notice. No longer the backwater of the department, marketing ops is taking a central role in the intelligence, development, and management of the marketing function.”

The marketing operations team conducts all the tasks connected to marketing plans and campaigns. In most cases, the marketing operations team is headed by a manager who directly reports to the COO or CEO of your business. The size of a marketing operations team depends on the size and niche of your business. Depending on that, a marketing operations team may need a data specialist, a marketing technology specialist, an analytics specialist, a content specialist, a demand generation specialist, a budget and planning specialist, a lead management specialist, a brand manager, etc.

Marketing operations can include complex tasks and a MarOps team must have the relevant skills to keep up with the changes in required tasks. A good marketing operations team members that can boast of skills such as agile team leadership, technology and technology integration skills, flexibility, campaign management skills, performance management skills, project planning and project management skills, analyzing social media, workflow process and development, understanding of analytics, data management, ability to learn and SAP.

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To understand more about the basics of marketing operations in B2B, here’s a quick breakdown

• Customer lifecycle management

Marketing operations is about managing a customer during the entire marketing lifecycle. Your team should be aware of which stage exactly is a particular lead at any given time. Customer lifecycle management is an important section of marketing operations.

• Lead routing

Lead routing is the process of routing a lead to a sales rep after its generation. As it happens, when a lead is generated, the lead contact and qualification rates start going down immediately. That is when marketing operations steps in and routes the lead to get the rate up quickly.

• Database and platform management

Database and platform management is a core function for marketing operations. They ensure the smooth functioning of the technology stack and do necessary changes and updates from time to time. Since without technology, working marketing operations is impossible, this is a core function.

Marketing Operations in B2B

Here are some of the most important aspects of marketing operations in B2B: 

• Connect sales and marketing

Marketing operations teams act as a bridge between the sales and marketing teams. The data collected from the marketing campaigns are used for making sales and closing leads. It has become inevitable to combine these two, and marketing operations act as their adhesive.

• Measuring performance metrics

Marketing operations teams set up Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure the performance metrics of their business. These KPIs give them insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.

• Content marketing

Marketing operations teams are in charge of creating SEO friendly content copies for their marketing strategies. The content can be in the form of images, videos, or animations. They not only create content but also track their performance.

Marketing Operations Tools

Some of the most popular tools that are used in marketing operations: 

• Wrike

Wrike acts as a centralized hub for marketing operations teams. It can connect all your customers, suppliers, and your teams through a centralized system. With Wrike, you can track, delegate and handle tasks efficiently. The easy @mentions feature allows you to tag anyone on your system.

• Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is an excellent tool for building sales funnels. It can separate and group all your website visitors into relevant groups and thus performs customer segmentation. Customer engagement is tracked, and the insights obtained can be used to increase the revenue of your business.

• Contentsquare

Contentsquare is a digital marketing suite that improves the online visibility of your business. With Contentsquare, you can do an organic search, paid marketing, competitive research, keyword search and rank, social media search, keyword volume determination, etc. 

There was a time when marketing operations had very little significance in the B2B market. But as the years passed and martech advancements were achieved, the role of marketing operations grew stronger. As of today, marketing operations are a vital part of several small to large businesses. There is now a bright future for marketing operations. As newer marketing technologies are built and customer behavior is studied more deeply, the need for structured marketing operations will grow in the market. Now is a good time for eager learners to jump up onto the marketing operations bandwagon.

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