Marketing Operations as a Career

Do you know that marketing operations can bring about a full-blown and stunning growth when implemented rightly by professionals along with an efficient marketing tech stack? That directly leads us to discuss the beginning. Let’s start by defining the term marketing operations itself.

Marketing operations refer to the administration and optimization of marketing procedures. The act promises that automation and technology are deployed and integrated productively, objectives are defined elaborately and clearly, sales funnels are well-optimized, data monitored carefully, communication is performed effectively, planning is practical, and insights are used, and reports applied. Marketing operations is what establishes the foundation of marketing procedures, keeps your efforts in marketing together, and allows scale. The definition is indeed broad and overarching. There’s a great deal of variety in what the role of a marketing operations expert can entail.

What does the role include?

The responsibility of a marketing operations expert is fairly complex, and no two such experts have the same roles to accomplish. So, to cut through the question, we need to further delineate the general responsibilities, expertise domains, salary, and sample profiles.

The marketing operations director or manager supervises the enterprise’s data, tools, automation, and integrations. In most cases, they need to bring in the data and support the executives in creating reports. Hence, marketing operation directors assist in coming up with strategic decisions and setting the tone for the next thing to be done. These professionals help ascertain that the processes run without any hitch. In addition to providing data and helping in the strategy-building process, marketing helps managers fortify teams by offering professional development opportunities and scopes.

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What skills are needed for a marketing operations manager?

When it comes to the role of marketing operations, it is not old as a hill and also is rapidly and continuously developing. There are various ways to consider the role. The necessary skillsets needed to be an expert marketing ops manager are described in the article, The 3 Major Job Functions of marketing Operations Professional, by Dave Rigotti, which are technology, alignment, and data. Let’s discuss these further. Read on!

• Technology: This is a fundamental domain strongly associated with marketing ops. The need to manage different marketing automation systems is what triggered the need for this role. Hence, it is obvious that the person interested in the role must be equipped with the needed tech. Currently, the requirements of expertise have extended further to include the complete marketing infrastructure.
• Alignment: This experience empowers the team to utilize tech and data. This can occur in decision-making, planning, leadership & support, setting up communication routines, and training.
• Data: This prowess is needed for taking relevant action on insights and data provided by the technology. It is also necessary to ensure a smooth and proper data flow in the marketing technology stack.

Evolution of the marketing operations role

Let’s now look at how this role came into being and how it would develop in the near future. Let’s parse through this!

• Early on, in the period of roaring 1920s, the first market research about competition and demographics. This instituted targeting and segmentation.
• The earliest end-to-end view of the customer’s journey began in the 30s.
• Customer analysis and insight were focused on later in the 70s by Peter Drucker to understand the customer well.
• The information era began in the 80s, which increased the importance of marketing data management skills.
• The early marketing software helped resource management and customer retention in the 90s.
• In the early 2000s, marketing automation came into existence. Metrics, technology, and process became a robust business benefit.
• Gary Katz coined the term “marketing operations” in 2005.
• In 2007, Marketing Operations Partner published “Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity as a standard study.
• Katz persisted in evolving this domain; by 2008, there was a marketing operations course, association, and consultancy.
• Laura McLellan and Scott Brinker coined the title “CMTO” in 2014, identifying the requirement for leadership and executive clout to render the marketing tech stack a reality.
• The marketing operations field was earlier restricted to digital marketing. Now, marketing ops is seen as synonymous with the role of demand generation. However, marketing ops professionals always do not actively engage with paid acquisition, and the two roles are seen diverging lately.
• Marketing operations experts have been shifting from VP and director levels. As per the predictions, marketing ops will be a crucial area of expertise down the road.

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What salary can you expect for the role?

For entry and manager-level marketing ops roles, you can expect between $40k and $70k. However, the most typical salary range for director-level and specialist-level marketing ops positions is $80k to $130K.

Now that you have walked through the roles and responsibilities of a marketing ops manager, the typical salary range, the skillset required by this professional, and the evolution of the marketing operations field, you can understand how a marketing ops expert can benefit your business.