Traditionally, marketing operations (MOps) has been a department focused on the tactical execution of efforts like campaign management, platform optimization, and lead nurturing. While these remain key parts of the role, it’s evolved beyond this and now encompasses strategic influence. In order for MOps professionals to contribute maximum value to their organizations and extend their career trajectories, they must also evolve their mindsets around how MOps can drive business outcomes and align with broader organizational goals.
The Role of Marketing Operations Today
A while back, Etumos debuted four marketing operations pillars that included campaign operations, platform operations, marketing intelligence, and development operations. This was a solid foundation, but the concept has been expanded upon recently to reflect the current expectations of MOps professionals more accurately.
The four pillars now include:
Technology and Data Management
Strategy Operations
Enablement and PMO
Marketing, Business Intelligence, and Insights
While tactical execution remains a throughline in all of MOps’ responsibilities, there is now a greater emphasis on supporting marketers, smoothing out processes, and managing large, cross-functional projects.
The integration of campaign operations within the enablement function ensures that marketing teams have the necessary tools, training, and resources to execute larger strategic goals. By aligning campaign efforts with broader enablement strategies, MOps professionals can help scale marketing initiatives and enhance collaboration across teams, ensuring that campaigns are tactical and deeply integrated into the company’s long-term vision.
Mindset Matters: From Operations to Product Management
One of the biggest shifts that modern-day MOps practitioners must undergo to succeed today is moving from a mentality of pure operations to product management. In reality, many professionals are already acting like product managers without realizing it, so the switch doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complex. Even so, this can’t be a one-off approach to a certain project; it needs to be the new way every aspect of the job is viewed.
For example, think about campaign operations, where the outcome is a “product” for delivering campaigns. The process to get to that outcome is very similar to product management, so the ongoing improvements and optimizations of the outcome are also essentially the function of product management.
When this idea is extrapolated further and brought to broader initiatives, it means a MOps leader can look at their GTM needs and productize almost anything. Their goal is to deploy features and functionality for modern GTM motions to take place, scale, and thrive.
The customer in this scenario is the entire GTM business and their users are made up of the teams internally as well as actual buyers of the products and services of the business they serve. MOps’ job is to deliver a GTM tech stack as a product and act as the product manager, constantly improving and optimizing the product to serve the needs of the business.
The Intersection of Marketing Operations and Product Management
Even though it’s becoming imperative for MOps professionals to blend their job responsibilities with those of product management, there are very few already doing so. The good news is that there is a lot of overlap between the skills needed for each. For example, both MOps practitioners and product managers must understand stakeholder needs, how to gather requirements, and how to build systems to deliver the outcomes that best serve the needs of the business’ stakeholder(s).
Bringing the two functions together can also further strategic business goals. MOps can increase revenue through improved marketing efficiency, and drive deeper alignment between all GTM teams by developing standardized processes for tracking what matters most to the organization.
Moving from Operations to Strategic Product Leadership
If you’re in MOps and are eager to become more strategic as you expand your mindset and work more like a product manager, here are some steps to get started:
Conduct a self-assessment: Identify the areas where you’re already thinking like a product manager; you might be surprised by how many there are. Then, think about where else you might apply this mentality where you haven’t yet.
Explore opportunities for impact: Go beyond daily tasks to focus on larger strategic projects. For example, leading a cross-functional team to align marketing efforts with product launches or customer success initiatives will have a far-reaching impact.
Build a roadmap for go-to-market: Take the time to develop user stories, prioritize features, and connect initiatives back to business objectives. For instance, collaborating with product teams to ensure seamless alignment when launching new product features can result in a much smoother market introduction.
Take a walking tour of your company: Understand internal pain points and align them with organizational goals to find new areas of impact. For example, by connecting with sales, customer service, and product teams, you can identify gaps in the customer journey and propose novel solutions with marketing automation and modern GTM tech solutions that improve customer experience.
Closing Thoughts
Marketing operations is not just about solving inefficiencies—it’s about driving revenue through strategic initiatives. If you plan to be in the MOps field for the long term, it’s in your best interest (and that of your company) for you to start thinking like a product manager. This will help you achieve both personal career growth and organizational success. The industry is changing; now is the time for you to embrace your evolving role and take the next step in shaping your future as a strategic leader.
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Originally Published on Martech Zone: Reframing Marketing Operations: Evolving Roles, Strategic Impact, and the Intersection with Product Management