Insight50 Takeaways: B2B Marketing Operations—Using People, Process, Tech and Data to Maximise Revenue

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FOREWORD 3

KEY SESSION INSIGHTS 4The Big Picture for Marketing Operations 4

People—Hiring and Alignment 6

Process—Developing, Improving and Setting Priorities 7

Technology—Key Pitfalls to Avoid 9

Data—Managing Volume 9

FINAL TAKEAWAYS 10

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FOREWORD

As marketers, we always have too much to do and too little time.

The Insight50 series is designed to address that. In less than an hour, ON24 looks to speak to those at the cutting edge of their field, ask the questions that matter to you, and find out from them what works and what doesn’t.

August 2019’s session was on B2B Marketing Operations—Using People, Process Tech and Data to Maximise Revenue. Joining us for the session were Rebecca Le Grange, Managing Partner at Sojourn Solutions and Bekkah Lyman, Senior Global Marketing Operations Manager at Oracle NetSuite. This takeaway report is based on the insights that these panellists passed along as well as the answers to the poll questions posed to the attendees.

As marketing has increased in technological complexity, its potential to deliver more than ever has risen. But marketers also feel that they are struggling to keep up. Data from The CMO Survey1 shows that, on average, marketing leaders rate their organisations behind their peers in most areas of competency. MarTech’s Law as posited by Scott Brinker sums up the challenge as “technology changes exponentially, but organisations change logarithmically.”2

Within B2B marketing, the marketing operations function has arisen to help close that gap. But responses from the attendees show a marked difference—while half of the webinar attendees report that marketing operations is presently delivering almost all marketing’s value, the remainder reported either a limited impact or that they didn’t have such a team at all.

Data from the 2019 Marketing Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report by Sojourn Solutions3 confirms that challenges remain, with only 25% of enterprise firms possessing such a function stating that their team fully has the skills required.

So what can marketers do to improve marketing operations—and for those without such a team already, what can they provide? This mini-report contains actionable recommendations based on the insight shared.

Read on for a summary of what was covered, and make sure to view the webinar on-demand. We look forward to seeing you at future Insight50 sessions.

1. The CMO Survey, August 2019 2. ‘Martec’s Law: the greatest management challenge of the 21st century.’ Chiefmartec.com 3. Sojourn Solutions

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Key Session InsightsThe Big Picture for Marketing Operations

What is marketing operations?

Marketing operations is a relatively new addition to the marketing team and even seasoned marketers may not know what role marketing operations plays if they do not have such a function. So what is marketing operations and what is their remit? According to Sojourn Solutions:

“Marketing operations was developed to balance the instability, complexity and rapid change that define modern marketing.”4

Econsultancy adds to this by illustrating how digital technology has changed the purview of marketing operations:

“Marketing ops should allow marketing to adapt quickly to changes in the market, in business strategy, and in customer behaviour. The increasing influence of digital technology in marketing has expanded the scope of marketing ops from project management and governance to areas including marketing performance measurement, strategic planning,

resource allocation, process development and marketing systems and data.”5

So, what does a marketing operations function help solve? Rebecca explains that as technology continues to play an important role in today’s marketing, there needs to be a team who understands the technology and makes sure the data they are gathering is being put to good use, and that insights are being shared with the people who require it.

“Any organisation that is using any type of technology is going to be gathering lots and lots of data. So, how can the marketing department utilise that to really draw insights out and be able to surface those insights to the relevant people? The other consideration when I think of marketing ops is always that this is the team that has access to data, tech insights, and so understands the holistic strategy. Taking all of those, they have this unique position within marketing to be able to ask some really tough questions.”

4. Sojourn Solutions 5. Econsultancy

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What are the benefits of marketing operations?

About half of the webinar attendees report that marketing operations is presently delivering almost all marketing’s value within their company. Even with a relatively small sample of respondents on the webinar, this says a lot about the benefits of having a marketing operations team in place.

Although there are several benefits to marketing operations, Rebecca sees one of the most important as marketing operations’ ability to drive ROI:

“[Marketing operations] is a discipline within marketing that helps the overall marketing function to be more efficient and effective. Ultimately, it’s about how is marketing using all of those resources that it has at hand as wisely as possible and in alignment with the overall marketing strategy to drive ROI? How can we use all of those resources in the best way?”

ROI is not the only KPI for marketing. Marketing is also responsible for ensuring that sales teams are supplied with quality leads. Bekkah sees this as one of the core functions of a marketing ops team:

“We, as marketing operations organisation, are supposed to make sure that leads are constantly flowing to the sales reps and ensuring that they have activities to

act upon in a concise and clear manner. We can do that by leveraging multiple technologies. We can also ensure that our sales team provides us with feedback as to how those leads are performing and then we can identify ways to improve our data collection or the facilitation of that data over to them so that it is like giving them a present that they get to open up and act upon every single time.”

How do you explain marketing operations to others?

It’s not always easy trying to explain marketing operations’ function or its importance to non-marketers. Luckily, Bekkah shared a brilliant analogy that everyone can understand:

“I basically look at it as they [the marketing operations team] are Batman’s computer. Marketing operations is not Robin. We’re not Batman. We’re not even Alfred. We are the computer that has all the information, all the details. We have insights into the data, we have insights into the technology and we have insights into the process, the strategic alignment from the business. So, if you think about it, Batman’s computer is always on, it always has the answer and it’s able to give it back to them in relatively quick order and provide an answer to them that is digestible to whoever’s reading it.”

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People—Hiring and Alignment

What to look for when hiring for marketing operations

Sojourn Solutions’ 2019 Marketing Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report discloses that, of the top performing companies (those companies that exceeded their 2018 marketing goals), two-fifths (41%) fully agree that their marketing operations team has the knowledge and skills required to support all marketing operations related functions.

But what about those organisations which lack a knowledgeable staff? What should employers be looking for when forming a marketing ops team? Here’s what Bekkah looks for when hiring someone for Oracle NetSuite’s marketing operations team:

“I really need the individuals to identify a problem and then be able to synthesize it in a way that can be explained in multiple capacities. Another piece that I look for is someone that is open to change. In our job when you start your day, you know you have a set number of items you have to do, but no day is ever going to be a cookie-cutter on the next. That’s just not possible in a marketing ops role. I try to look for someone that can translate information, working with others, and is trying to bring in some pieces that weren’t there. They’re always trying to improve what they’ve been given and they don’t just take what they have and just move on.”

Beyond having some technical ability and an interest in making processes more efficient, Rebecca looks for certain soft skills in marketing operations candidates:

“I would be looking for a level of curiosity. Not just taking something at face value they should be willing to ask questions. Collaboration is absolutely key. One of the key roles for marketing ops is to broker relationships with other departments within the business.”

How operations can help align sales and marketing

While small companies might have operations teams with roles across sales and marketing, this isn’t the optimum system as your company grows. Bekkah explained that at some point in an organisation’s growth, it becomes beneficial to have separate marketing operations and sales operations teams, using the analogy of a bicycle as to how they work together to more forward:

“The one wheel can’t go forward if the other one’s trying to go backwards. Sales ops and marketing ops overlap a lot because whatever we’re creating on the front end, from a marketing ops perspective, directly impacts the sales operations team. So, it’s really trying to find a way to blend the two, which is why I think that the analogy of a bicycle is the best because sales ops has its own sort of initiatives and goals that they’re trying to get through and marketing ops needs to be able to funnel those and marry them.”

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Bekkah also emphasised that regular meetings between teams, as well as identifying what both sales and marketing need, together, helps make better decisions in areas like tech. As an example, she spoke about how this strategy had benefited her in the past:

“I worked very closely with the sales ops team. We had weekly meetings where we discussed what was coming down from the sales side, any initiatives that they wanted, and then looking at it from the marketing side and all the global campaigns that we were running. And, ultimately, we identified about two or three gaps in our technology. We were able to go in and get a contract with those technologies and plug them into our CRM, which helped our sales reps but then also met the needs of marketing because they wanted to grow the database and they wanted to expand. The sales team needed to be able to quickly identify contacts that they wanted to bring in but we didn’t want them to bring in contacts we already had in our data set.”

Process—Developing, Improving and Setting Priorities

Developing and Improving Processes

Every one of the webinar attendees said that a lack of an effective and defined process was holding them back from making marketing operations reach its full potential. So, how do you go about putting processes in place or improving on the ones that are already there?

For Rebecca, whose company consults with organisations on how to drive peak performance results across the marketing operations stack, says that even for companies that have done some work on their marketing operations, none are perfect.

“In my experience, I think marketing and sales processes always have room for improvement. We start with a conversation with the leaders of those organisations, understanding from their perspective what’s working and what’s not. Then we often encourage those leaders to gather feedback from their teams and then map out where the gaps are. Once you’ve got those gaps identified, then it’s a case of going through that list prioritising it. I think that’s where having this strategy and a holistic view of both the marketing and the sales operations team allows you to look at it and say, ‘Okay, if we do these things, in this order, we’ll be further along than if we do them in a different order.’ I think that is a key part of redefining and optimising both sales and marketing processes.”

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From her point of view, Bekkah says that having a structure is helpful, but it needs to be pliable.

“With regards to the process, we have a structure. But we don’t ever just have a solid, set in stone, process. We have a playbook we developed to help us communicate out to those other teams so that they have a point of reference. But the other thing is, we have to be changing it constantly and refreshing it. So, it’s a living document that enables us to start a point of conversation and say, ‘Okay, here are the basic steps that you need to do now. how we get point five to point one can evolve, depending on the business requirements, on the time that you’ve submitted the request, to the time that it needs to be delivered.’ So there’s a lot of gray that exists.”

Project management

When asked if project management is a part of marketing operations, Bekkah emphatically agreed.

“Yes, it’s 100% part of it. Whether we like it or not, we have to project manage our ourselves, we have to manage the deployment of the technology, the implementation of it. Project management does come hand in hand with marketing operations. You can have a specific role on your team and it just makes things go a lot smoother. Whether you’re working with a business analyst inside the system tools group

where they’re looking at it from a more technical backend perspective, versus someone that’s just trying to make sure that you have clear dates to meet deliverables that need to be met, taking notes, summarising the notes and passing out an agenda ahead of time. Those are all project management components in my mind.”

Future Priorities

Looking ahead to the coming year, what should marketers focus on? Rebecca advises that it all depends on the organisation but generally,

“Thinking about the maturity of your own marketing operations, your organisation’s maturity in terms of revenue generation, across marketing and sales and then taking a real hard look at the strategy that you have set from leadership coming down and then aligning to that.”

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Technology—Key Pitfalls to Avoid

A webinar attendee asked what the biggest mistakes organisations make when procuring new martech. In response, Rebecca cited the issue of choosing technology that does not fit with what the organisation is trying to accomplish:

“It comes back to, what’s your strategy? What’s your approach to your marketing? What is your business trying to do for your customers? What’s the experience that you’re trying to create? Because if you are adding martech to your stack that is maybe not as aligned as it could be, that’s just a distraction for everybody. Not only marketing ops, but it could be a distraction for the wider marketing team, possibly even into the sales org as well.”

Bekkah adds that another pitfall organisations make is trying to do too much all at once:

“You have to be able to try to meter the rollout. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Set a clear set of objectives and then make sure that you can obtain those and then have a phase two and then have a phase three and a phase four...I think it causes a lot of internal pressure that if one little lever get pulled at the right time and not everything lines up, then you’re going to miss your mark. You just don’t want to have that as a potential failure.”

Data—Managing Volume

Dealing With Data

There is a lot of data out there. So, how does marketing operations leverage this data without being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it? Agreeing that the abundance of data can be difficult, Rebecca advises consulting with marketing and sales leadership to nail down what the key initiatives are for the next quarter or next year.

“I always recommend starting with something small, maybe a pilot approach. Don’t try and go in with a big bang because then you can control the scope a little bit more. It’s not quite so overwhelming, not only for marketing ops, but also for other stakeholders that might be involved. You’re also able to ensure that you can really communicate clearly to all of the stakeholders about what the results are.”

Delving even deeper, a piece of advice from Bekkah is that, before collecting data, it’s important to question the accuracy of the requested data points to make sure it’s really helping to drive leads or ROI.

“I would recommend when you look at your lead scoring process, identifying what’s most valuable from a marketing perspective and what’s equally as valued from a sales perspective, and then ensuring that the data coming in as well as the data getting updated or refresh is consistent. So, beyond just managing the data in this volume, being able to just do a quick sanity check to evaluate what is sales adding value or placing value on? Does that actually align with what we’re seeing in the database?”

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Final takeawaysWhen asked to share some parting takeaways that attendees could take back to their offices and help move their marketing operations teams forward, Bekkah suggests having clear documentation of your processes:

“Go back and look at your technology stack and map that out. Map it to your sales process, identify where you have those gaps. If you’ve got processes that seem to be holding you back, then look at your technology stack, make sure you’ve got clear documentation surrounding how those processes work, what makes them work, and make sure that you have those shared with the team. Having things documented and making sure that we have something that we can then prove to other people, this is our process, this is what we do. If something goes wrong, we know exactly where it broke down, because we weren’t able to do x, y and z.”

Additionally, Bekkah encourages attendees to communicate with other groups within their organisation, making sure to communicate with them on a regular basis because marketing operations can help with all facets of a business.

On the other hand, Rebecca looks at the different roles within the team and the questions they should be asking themselves in order to help marketing operations run smoother.

“If you’re a marketing ops leader, take a hard look at, do you have the skills that are going to help your team to really excel in their roles? Are you setting a good example in terms of continuing development and growing your commercial skills and brokering relationships with other departments?”

“If you’re a marketing ops professional, so you’re in a role where you’re supporting a leader, I think it’s been thinking through and helping them. How can you best show the value of marketing operations? How can you best help those leaders to really be able to empirically give value to marketing?”

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Insight50 Checklist: B2B Marketing Operations—Using People, Process, Tech and Data to Maximise RevenueTo save you time, we’ve put together the key takeaways from our Insight50 session into the following checklist to help you reignite your marketing efforts.

Sign up for the webinar on-demand to hear more.

People

Hire knowledgeable staff: people that do not just possess working technical knowledge but are also able to identify problems, interested in efficiency, can collaborate with others and who are able to deal with the daily changes the job experiences.

Work together with the sales operations team. This includes having regular meetings between teams.

Keep lines of communication open across other teams in the company.

Process

Your processes are not set in stone, make sure it’s a living document that is updated and refreshed over time.

When putting processes in place, gather feedback from various teams within your organisation to help identify any gaps in the process.

Share clear documentation of processes with your team.

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Technology

Map your technology stack to your sales processes and identify where there are gaps.

Make sure your martech aligns with your strategy and the experience you are trying to create.

Avoid technology pitfalls by rolling things out slowly. It’s not necessary to do everything at once.

Data

Try a pilot approach when it comes to dealing with using data. This helps avoid getting overwhelmed by an abundance of data.

Check the data you are collecting is refreshed and of use to both sales and marketing. Focus on this to avoid being distracted.

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