2023: The Breakout Year for Marketing Operations
Marketing Operations can be considered chaotic at the moment. Learn why 2023 will be a break-out year for Marketing Ops.
Marketing Operations has slowly gained prominence in the last few years. However, it can be considered chaotic at the moment. Dr. Debbie Qaqish, partner and chief strategy officer, The Pedowitz Group, believes that 2023 will be a break-out year for Marketing Ops, where there will be order, process, and collaboration.
I bought my first marketing automation system in 2004 and assigned a “technically savvy” member of my marketing team to oversee the implementation, integration, administration and use of the system. What I thought would be some time spent on a limited project became a full-time role as we learned more about the potential of this technology. This was my first marketing operations “team,” and I found out pretty quickly that having this skill in my marketing group was the only way to harness the power of technology to help me deliver on the promise of revenue.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to have had a front-row seat to the rise of marketing operations as an essential element of success for any B2B marketing organization. From part-time, one-person teams that keep systems working to dedicated powerhouse teams of over 50 that are helping to transform business, it’s been a sporadic, frenzied, and unscripted journey.
As we turn the corner and look into 2023, I see a year in which the profession and the function of marketing operations will have a break-out year characterized by a more thoughtful and planned approach. Market forces and the natural evolution of marketing operations play key roles in this change. To share my observations, I’ll use a marketing operations maturity model I created in 2020.
See More: It’s Time to Re-Imagine Marketing Operations
A Marketing Operations Maturity Model
Source: Backroom To Boardroom Book authored by Debbie Qaqish
Since 2015, I have worked with various marketing ops maturity models. This particular one includes the key stages required for marketing operations to become a strategic capability.
Stage 1: Unaware
When I first created this model, we had a percentage of CMOs who were blithely unaware of marketing ops as a function and its value to marketing, the company, and shareholders. If this B2B CMO exists today, they need to be fired.
Stage 2: Efficient and effective
This stage is very much about the technology and ensuring implementations, integrations, administration, and the optimal use of the mar tech stack. It’s about doing things well (efficiency) and doing the right things (effectiveness). This is the foundation that must be solid to successfully move to higher levels of marketing ops maturity that drive a credible business impact, i.e., strategic marketing ops.
A recent report from Insider Intelligence found that by 2024, the martech spend is expected to hit $8.5 billion, up from this year’s $6.5 billion. The sheer number of martech options and the growth as a whole number and a percentage of the budget continue at an upward pace. In other words, technology continues to play an ever-increasing role in marketing. This is nothing new.
What is changing is how marketing is handling this scenario. B2B marketing ops teams have been stewing long enough at this stage of maturity and now have many fundamental lessons learned. Moving into 2023, we will see fewer marketing ops teams being reactive and more becoming proactive. As a result, we will see martech stacks that are more integrated both within marketing and with other core systems. We’ll see more optimization of current systems and a more streamlined and planned martech roadmap. This more professional and measured approach will help marketing achieve ROI in their spending while contributing to company growth.
Stage 3: Get revenue
Make no mistake about it. B2B marketers are responsible for driving revenue and growth. This truth will not change in 2023; it will only become more important. For years as I have worked with marketing and marketing ops teams, I’ve always asked what they are responsible for and what results they are committed to driving. For a long time, marketing, in general, has responded with “revenue,” while the marketing ops team responded with “being more efficient and effective.”
I see big changes in the response from marketing ops in 2023. A recent study of marketing ops professionals found that the top KPI is building a pipeline. I am a big believer in the power of KPIs (especially when tied to compensation) to focus actions, priorities and results. The CMO and parts of marketing have had compensation tied to some kind of revenue results for a while, and it has drastically changed behavior. By adding this revenue-driven KPI specifically to marketing operations, the team will move from the operational and IT mindset to one that is focused on business results that matter. This is a huge pivot point for the marketing ops team in moving away from being “button-pushers” and becoming “strategy drivers.”
Stage 4: Customer centricity
The Customer Centricity stage of marketing ops evolution is characterized by a company-wide pivot to focus on the customer and not the product. Market influences have forced this shift. Recent research indicates that CX is the number one priority for companies increasing their technology spending during 2023, with 65% of companies planning to do so by an average of 24%.
From a practical perspective, all of our clients have some kind of motion or project to become more customer-centric. We also see that the CMO is leaning in and taking accountability for “knowing” the customer and ensuring their ongoing health. A recent report cited that three times as many CMOs will prioritize customer health in 2023.
These motions set up a golden opportunity for marketing ops to shine. As the owners of the systems that track digital behavior and are integrated with other core systems that share customer information, the marketing ops team can create and share customer insights in a 24 x 7 fashion. They can create intimate profiles of customers based on data that can serve all parts of the company — sales, marketing, product development, R&D, executives, etc. In 2023, we will see a groundswell of customer-centric data and insights coming from the marketing ops team that will transform customer knowledge from tribal insights to data-driven decision-making across the organization.
Stage 5: NextGen or RevOps
RevOps is certainly the new buzzword and has multiple meanings in the market. My definition is wide — it’s the re-organization of marketing ops, sales ops and customer ops into a single function, most often reporting to the CRO or the COO. The driver for this re-organization is a company’s desire and need to have one view of the customer supported by coordinated and personalized interactions regardless of which part of the company in which the interaction occurs. It is also a response to a company’s failure to be customer-centric by using existing functional operational silos. Due to the strength of the legacy organization, legacy thinking and legacy fiefdoms, this critical stage occurs mostly in much smaller and more agile companies.
This is where marketing ops has another golden opportunity in 2023. I am seeing the marketing ops team engaging with sales, sales ops, product development and customer service to build a more intentional and collaborative structure around the customer journey. Sometimes this gets expressed as cross-functional playbooks and sometimes as a collaborative center of excellence.
However it gets expressed, I think it is an excellent strategic play that we’ll see more marketing ops teams leading in 2023. As the driving need to “know your customer” reaches unprecedented B2B heights, this might be the single most important contribution from the marketing ops team.
See More: How MarTech-Enabled Marketing Operations Drives New Marketing Structures
A Word on Talent
I can’t complete this article without a few words about the talent crisis we have in marketing operations. We experience this every day in hiring talent to work with our customers and our customer organizations. We have a serious shortage of marketing ops talent at every level and very few ways to intentionally get, keep and grow talent. A recent study highlighted how the talent shortage has also created multiple issues around the escalating cost for talent as well as the strain on management resources in managing the talent gap.
Fortunately, I am seeing several organizations beginning to understand that marketing ops is a profession that needs a multi-tiered curriculum with ongoing training and certifications. Moving into 2023, those companies that can do a better job addressing the talent issue will have a competitive advantage.
In Conclusion
Marketing operations as a unique and dedicated function has been in play for a few years. There have been lessons learned amid ever-changing market forces, careers have been shaped and grown, and technology continued to evolve. We are moving from the days of the “wild, wild west” to one of “founding the town.” We are bringing order, process, and collaboration in a deliberate and planful way. We have a clearly articulated roadmap for the future and understand all the roles in play. In 2023, I see marketing ops taking a giant leap in growing up and evolving from:
- Button pushers to business leaders
- Tech geeks to digital visionaries
- Conducting business in siloes to facilitators/leaders of cross-functional results
I can’t wait to see what happens!
How do you think marketing operations will evolve in 2023? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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