Plumbers play an essential role in building construction: They’re responsible for a key piece of critical infrastructure. In an emergency — a pipe bursts or a sewer backs up — you want an expert who can quickly troubleshoot and fix the issue. An architect, on the other hand, addresses the big picture. They’re more strategic and visionary, looking at all the systems and integrations to craft elegant solutions.
In the current state of marketing operations (MOPs), most teams are playing the role of the plumber: Stuck in siloed, tactical execution mode. They’re running campaigns, tracking the numbers and focused on vanity metrics.
Most don’t see the big picture — how their work drives revenue — and if they do, they’re not able to communicate it to key stakeholders. Only 18% of marketing operations professionals (MOPs) say they have a seat at the table with company leaders, and less than 40% even have a seat within the marketing department.
This tactical focus results in a loss of strategic influence and erodes MOPs’ value to the organization. Only 60% of MOPs say they’re somewhat or heavily involved in planning and managing the marketing budget. If their own department doesn’t value their input, why should the rest of the organization?
By relying on disconnected metrics like clicks, reach, likes or engagement, they struggle to demonstrate revenue impact, and as a result, often face budget constraints and have difficulty securing the resources and staff they need to innovate and drive value.
The Architect’s Approach
Despite the emphasis on data analytics, marketing is still as much an art as it is a science, and to prove its value, MOPs have to be able to connect their efforts to revenue outcomes. It’s not just about figuring out what works to drive engagement; they also need to look at what doesn’t and making calculated decisions to redirect those resources on more effective programs.
This requires MOPs to take an entrepreneurial approach by looking at what matters to the business and design programs with big picture goals in mind. That includes building measurement frameworks that matter to the CFO. Just as an architect prioritizes traffic flow, operational efficiency and sustainability — not fixing the broken faucet — MOPs must focus on the business goals and proactively identify opportunities to achieve them rather than being reactive and troubleshooting.
Making The Transition
The first step in becoming an architect is to start with the desired business outcomes and work backward. Right now, despite claiming that their top priority is to support revenue operations, two-thirds of MOPs are still using project completion metrics to show their impact on the business.
Instead, MOPs need to create revenue attribution models that show how their strategies translate to sales. The model — whether it’s first touch, last touch or multitouch — doesn’t matter, so long as MOPs are on the same page with sales and finance. The key is to prove the impact on the business by telling the story in a way the business understands.
While working in higher education marketing, I convinced the CFO to give me a budget for a student recruitment calling program, where we would reach out to prospective students by phone. It wasn’t cheap, so he was understandably reluctant. But through enrollment data tracking, I was able to prove that the program delivered a 4.5X ROI — those students we called, mostly late deciders, enrolled at 4.5X higher rate than those we didn’t. It was a watershed moment — the CFO immediately understood the impact, and it garnered us more budget to continue the calling program.
Understand The Fundamentals Of Marketing
Ultimately, it comes down to marketing fundamentals: Telling the right story to the right audience. The job of MOPs is to focus those tactics internally. Know your audience, what they need to hear to convince them to buy in and deliver on those promises.
Again, this goes both ways: You also need to be able to prove that marketing is doing the right thing. Marketers frequently make assumptions about their audience during the go-to-market process, yet they rarely go back and test if those hypotheses are correct. MOPs can play a critical role in helping refine the target persona and ideal customer profile by showing what didn’t work as much as what did.
In addition to better targeting and segmenting audiences, this approach can help you determine when you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. Figuring out how not to lose momentum is as valuable as building it in the first place.
Retained Relevance = Success
One of the greatest risks MOPs face is becoming relegated to a cost center, much like IT has experienced over the years. No one congratulates IT when the email works as it should and the laptops don’t crash. Instead, IT is considered a cost of doing business and hardly garners a second thought until something breaks.
MOPs are at risk of the same fate unless we can retain relevance through innovation, strategy and proof of revenue impact. It’s only by being an architect instead of a plumber that we can provide strategic input, earn C-suite respect and justify continued investment.
Eric Hollebone is the President & Chief Operating Officer of DemandLab, a global B2B digital marketing consultancy. He oversees the optimization of day-to-day operations and the smooth delivery of all client work. As COO, he works closely with the CEO and executive leadership team to plan and manage the company’s operational policies and develop and help implement a plan to attain the agency’s short and long-term financial and operational goals.