B2B marketing is easy, said no one ever.

Selling to consumers is more creative and easier than selling to businesses, which gets monotonous and complex with time. However, knowledge is power and when B2B teams know the kind of challenges they need to address ahead, they can find solutions as well.

Let us walk you through what a B2B marketing operations team does and the kind of challenges they face while planning, strategizing, and implementing marketing decisions.

Marketing Operations, aka MOPs, is an umbrella term describing people, processes, and technology that empower a business’s overall marketing strategy and increase the chances of success.

B2B marketing operations (marketing ops) teams play a critical role in ensuring the success of marketing campaigns. They are responsible for a wide range of tasks, from managing marketing data and technology to developing and executing marketing programs.

The marketing Ops team oversees the entire marketing tech stack. The list includes content management systems, search engine optimization and keyword research tools, marketing automation tools, and every other tool that helps in strategizing marketing decisions in an organization. The team is responsible for everything that happens behind the scenes for a B2B marketing strategy. From streamlining the workflows and automating marketing tasks, to improving productivity, and analyzing customer data, they do it all.

Overall, a B2B marketing Ops team ensures that marketers have the right tools, strategies, systems, and resources required to reach out to the target audiences, deliver marketing campaigns at scale, and achieve organizational revenue goals.

However, marketing ops teams also face many challenges. Here are 10 of the most common:

1. Strategizing Marketing Decisions

Marketing strategies should offer a balanced outlook, it should look both agile and reactive. These days, the marketing Ops teams are burdened with overwhelming interests that are difficult to accommodate. It leaves them directionless, with comparative data and undefined KPIs.

The teams feel directionless when it comes to defining the needs of the audience, budgets they can secure, and what success looks like for their organization.

2. Data silos and fragmentation

B2B companies often have a variety of marketing data sources, such as CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, and social media analytics tools. The data extracted data can be siloed and fragmented, making it difficult to get a complete view of the customer.

3. Lack of resources

60% of marketing leaders feel the lack of skilled resources in the organization. Coping up with this lack of talent is the biggest challenge for the MOPs teams. Marketing ops teams need a variety of skills to be successful, such as data analysis, marketing technology, and project management.

Even when the organizations can secure the top talent from the market, yet another challenge of training and resource management awaits.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Oren Kandel, CEO and Co-founder at Munch

4. Upkeeping with the latest Martech Stack

As the marketing technology landscape evolves, it becomes difficult for the marketing Ops teams to adapt to all the advanced tools. Even if they miss out on a few latest tools, they have the regret and guilt of not keeping up with the market trends.

5. Measuring the ROI of marketing campaigns

It is one of the duties of MOPs to measure the ROI of marketing campaigns, however, it is not possible to measure the exact ROI of each campaign, especially the ones meant for long-term execution. Marketing ops teams need to develop effective methods for measuring the impact of their work.

6. Aligning marketing and sales

MOPs teams must work in tandem with sales teams to ensure that marketing campaigns are well-aligned with the sales goals. After all, both of these departments work hand-in-hand to achieve the business objectives. Unfortunately, the goals and objectives of teams differ from each other, which creates an issue for the marketing operations team.

7. Meeting the demands of stakeholders

Marketing ops teams are often under pressure to meet the demands of a variety of stakeholders, such as marketing managers, executives, and customers. This can be a challenge, as stakeholders may have different priorities.

8. Keeping up with the pace of change

The business world is constantly changing, and marketing ops teams need to be able to adapt to change quickly. This can be a challenge, as it can be difficult to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.

9. Dealing with budget constraints

Marketing ops teams often have to work with limited budgets. Due to the low budget, it becomes difficult to procure the resources they need to streamline work.

10. Demonstrating the value of marketing ops

Finally, it is difficult for the marketing Ops team to demonstrate its value to stakeholders. Organizations should find a way to articulate the importance of MOPs to the stakeholders and board of directors so that the team gets its deserved place.

 Wrapping Up

The marketing operations team plays an inevitable role in an organization. Irrespective of the challenges they may face in their daily operations, they have the onus on their shoulders to streamline people, processes, and technologies in their organization. It is they who keep the internal processes aligned so that the external ones have a good face in front of the customers and market.

The challenges we discussed are general and there may be some specific challenges that your MOPs team might face. Feel free to discuss it here in the comments.

Marketing Technology News: Marketers Overwhelmingly Call AI “Game Changing.” How Can They Steer That Change?