AntiConLX DialUp with Scott Brinker & Darrell Alfonso

With Keynote speakers: Scott Brinker & Darrell Alfonso

Two of the industry's leading experts in martech and marketing operations shared valuable insights and career advice at our Online AMA on 29th June 2022.

 

Psst down here...

On 29th June, Scott Brinker and Darrell Alfonso joined us for an online AMA on the latest talent trends and insights in martech and marketing ops.

It's hard to imagine two speakers better placed to share insights to help drive your career forward than these two industry legends.

Scott Brinker, the "Godfather of Martech," is the author of chiefmartec.com, VP of Platform Ecosystems at Hubspot and creator of the “Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic." Darrell is the Global Marketing Operations Leader at Amazon Web Services, marketing ops influencer, and The Essentials of Marketing Operations course instructor.

Watch the on-demand session recording to hear their career advice and take on the latest trends in martech and marketing operations, including:
  • The evolution of the marketing technologist role
  • The impact of emerging technologies on the marketing ops function
  • Practical advice for MOPs to keep upgrading their skills, knowledge & network
  • The martech trends driving marketing transformation in the 2020s
  • How organizations should respond to the ‘evergreen skills gap’ in martech and marketing ops
  • The most important skills for future CMOs

Video transcript

Carlos Doughty 0:18
Welcome everybody joining us today. So this is a very, very special anti con LXA dial up.

I was gonna have my brilliant joke of three martec Nerds walk into a bar and here they are mega deciphered. It's just very quick intros on my side. If you're not familiar with me, I'm the founder of what was the Masek Alliance and it's now Aleksei. Also of course instructor and just sort of live and breathe all things martech and sales tech.

As to these two chaps Darrell and Scott, I'm sure people watching know who they are but two of the most influential, if not the most influential people in Mar tech and marketing ops. Welcome Scott Walker, Darrell.

Scott Brinker 1:03
Great to be here with you guys.

Darrell Alfonso 1:06
Excited Yeah, super excited.

Carlos Doughty 1:08
And this one's particularly special. I think. If you jump into Google and go, marketing operations, what you'll see immediately after is what people are really interested in is the role of the profession, the career the salary earnings, and that's what we're here to chat about. So today we want to dig into the latest talent trends in Mar tech and marketing ops. I think for anybody that is even remotely more tech ish, you'll probably know that it's a particularly good time to be in this space. If you're just in marketing, then you probably might be on the hunt for an amazing martec or Marketing operations professional and as everything we're going to dig into now in the build up to this fantastic events. We had literally 104 questions, I think, and clearly we don't have time find room for 104 questions. Sadly, Darryl and Scott have other things in their life to do but we will try and rattle through as many questions as possible.

And those that we run out of time for in a bit of a write up on this session. We'll try and dig into some of those tips. But on that note, let's get down to business. So I'm going to jump straight into some of the questions we've got. But you're also welcome to find some new ones at us. Let's kick things off on your side though, Darryl. And where better to start with the evolution of the space. If we rewind a little bit, and we said, hey, marketing ops five years ago, how do you think it sort of evolved and change what sort of different today about Mar tech and marketing operations function versus sort of way back when five years ago?

Darrell Alfonso 2:42
Yeah, that's a good question. I think that between now and five years ago, I think one of the big differences is just the recognition and the more formal definition of the role. I think that that because of the great work by Scott and by yourself, you know, the role of marketing technologist has really, I think, come to fruition today, and we're seeing just like you mentioned, the high demand for this type of talent and then this type of skill set.

I think that what's really interesting that I've been seeing really often now is, you know, just how different that role is, depending on the type of organisation that you're in, and you know, and the industry, for example.

I think one thing that that all of marketing technologists and marketing operations people have in common is that they're builders, I think at the enterprise level, or mega enterprise, if you will, that really looks like building and shaping internal products for marketers to use to create great experiences for the customers. And that's very much how we think about it at AWS, you know, they're almost like the pseudo product managers, you know, building these these these products and these processes for marketers. Now, at the other side, I think what's what's going on outside of the mega enterprise is marketing technologists are building in the same way but they're connecting this plethora. of marketing tech to service the, you know, variety of needs that their unique organisations have. So I think that that's, that's a super cool thing. And especially, especially in tech, it's really key. Because I think that the iterations or the the versions of the technology stack are, you know, just so many and so colourful and so different. So So I think that that's, that's where the marketing technologist role is now is very much this builder stage. And what that builder looks like highly depends on the type of organisation that you're in.

Carlos Doughty 5:06
Thank you. One word that jumped out to me as you were saying that was it's a real profession. And I think, yeah, I think we've all got a lot to thank Scott for. I don't know how many years over a decade I'm sure is the actual number, but you can tell me better Scott. Yeah, I think certainly that the role is really understood as a real profession, I think. I'm sure if we could put out some stats on how many marketing technologists or martech ish type people existed, you know, five or 10 years ago to now we'd see an exponential growth number.

Scott Brinker 5:38
Yeah, I think one way to think about it is you know, it's like a classic adoption curve is in the early early days, we had the innovators and the pioneers. And if I think back to just over five years ago, we had the early adopters, I mean, a lot of them people who, you know, attended these conferences and engaged in our community. They were fantastic like they were very mature in what they were doing in their organisations, but it was still a relatively small percentage of total organisations out there that have that sort of talent and have this capability recognise. I kind of feel like now over this past five years we've gone from we've we've crossed the chasm, and then we've gone from early adopters of, you know, marketing, tech powered marketing operations. And that's something that's probably more of the early majority, I still think probably globally like well over half of the organisations out there don't have this capability either well defined.

Yeah, it's clearly become a mainstream profession. And I will also double down on the way Darryl frame that as builders, the transition to as I think back to 10 years ago in a lot of marketing operations was quite frankly, reporting. You know, like, okay, we can be the ones with the spreadsheets on the board. So super valuable. It's still probably a big part of marketing operations today. But this ability to go from simply reporting reality, to actually shaping reality is a really a huge transition.

Carlos Doughty 7:17
Darnell spoke in the past and he described this sort of lovely transition from being back office from this and this kind of support administration. Structure, type focus through clear revenue generation, and it's the heart of sort of marketing itself.

Darrell Alfonso 7:37
Yeah, I think, you know, the way they think about it, and I can't, I can't remember if I came up with this or someone else, I feel I still feel like so.

But I look at marketing operations and as as the pit crew, and you know, the go to market function or marketing for sales as the race car or the race car driver. And, you know, they're very much a team and the, you know, at each iteration or each at each sort of period, the racecar has to stop and the pit crew has to change all the wheels, refuel, check the instrumentation, I'll talk to the driver and find out what what he or she needs.

And if it all run the end result is that the car goes faster and then the organisation wins. And that's how I really look at it. And conversely, without the pit crew, the car will start to burnout. And I really love that example. Because it emphasises first that you need both you to actually win in the long run.

But, but the the key part with great manof stations, the crew, you can go back and that's the way that the leading organisations are really looking at marketing operations. It's definitely not I think, you know, I think I think it's definitely less and we're still in the early stages, you know, I talked to I talked to operations professional in a really large tech company. The other day, and she, you know, only budgeting and planning doesn't actually touch market marketing.

So, I think it's still in the early stages. I think it really depends, you know, very similar to what's going to the maturity curve I think we're a little bit bubble and on constitute, you know, can we work tech, and we love tech, and we think everybody thinks like us, but I don't I think just at the beginning that that means it's

Carlos Doughty 10:09
on that point as well. Another question here. We will definitely blank puece of paper What role would you have in your marketing team?

thinking there about the cops Foundation, or actually, I think it's also interesting. I mean, one of the things in the UK in Europe is your marketing technology, so your marketing operations, maybe the CRM, or you're just a text editing manager. I'd love to hear what you thought of those things and roles and you're starting

Scott Brinker 10:47
I mean, it is a pretty broad spectrum. There was an analyst once for like a decade or so for the reference. martechs the Island of Misfit Toys. It's long time it was basically

marketing wanted to do like, Oh, yeah. Can somebody get that report? Can somebody map out the budget spreadsheet and actually, almost kind of, you know, not it's just the total of all things that can be within.

Yeah, like an order of magnitude. And I think it's fair to Yes. Ops team are capable as all the pieces under that label. Going to look at this Yeah, I think I swore to myself. Some people process technology, I think catbird seat to be able to learn how that triangle functions in an organisation. So, you know, there's the tech stack. More importantly, there's the process. We run. And I'll talk about that, too, because it kind of surprises and also, I mean, not just barely below. So yeah, as you get into budget, that that's, you know, but I think everything from like sort of 3d printing sort of work within the marketing organisation, how do we keep track of that? Um, I think a really big part around which is marketers in their ability for the ageing process of marketing ops provides cleaner head here is actually the model I use for things like somebody that we're connecting, marketing or does need more than not just connecting, but you know, establishing the

Unknown Speaker 13:11
poles like they they are the same share it just contains but in our workflow, on top, which tremendous amount of money on the inside the marketing organisation Do you think fancy

Scott Brinker 13:32
software tools will present some internal marketers but I also you know, had to play with finally on top of that fine line, right, like this is kind of a governance like managing everything like I say to being an interface with the serum. It's huge

Unknown Speaker 14:00
governance fit the event. People don't want to do

Scott Brinker 14:08
Yeah, it's, it's a responsibility. I think, if you given marketing ops person you know, they've got pieces of

Unknown Speaker 14:19
that. Lucky if you're in the noise is really defined very clearly. Like resources and tax.

Carlos Doughty 14:33
That's a great point. For me. It's difficult.

Unknown Speaker 14:37
So there's a demand to supply

Carlos Doughty 14:42
helping companies best navigate through this I see and hear a lot. Love to get your thoughts on.

Unknown Speaker 14:54
Yeah, I think I think first excellence is there's no need for

Darrell Alfonso 15:06
depending on singular business unit business. And then similarly, in products versus multiple products and services that you offer. Think of, you know, let's say, let's say you have a pizza place, and you have to think about all the means
to provide customers at that magnitude compared to 20 Different pizza locations, which means sometimes, it comes to those two separate scenarios. We see a lot of what marketing applications
at the enterprise level, large scale up what have you, you know, businesses, I think, I think, is really, really good. That being said, I think I think that is the executive operation for me, and when I'm in my writing that is, I think, influence and impact us in you know, in sort of an initiative to explain what you have a lot of days, maybe traditional, traditional marketing and are maybe unaware of and all of the steps you need to take someone someone needs to and a big thing that I've been doing and that my team has been doing education. So I think it's the my, my short last point.  marketing spot, both calls for what we're doing on time, sometimes that means stop doing. problem, but yeah. My thoughts on that.

Carlos Doughty 17:53
Switching gears slightly. Scott, I think this is a really difficult finds. I think you haven't. I just think we're gonna be talking about sort of the breakthrough. Technical Marketing ops. advice do you have to help balance independence between identity

Scott Brinker 18:21
Yeah, it is a marketing it is. Yeah. You know, so for like the digital revolution yeah, there's between these teams, that you know, marketing wants to do it's it that's missing in many ways for tech. The end of it. Marketing organisations have perhaps not the great, greatest starting point you know, but overall, what Jason does and CIO CIOs are ultimately here, I think that's marketing ops and market tech. They're definitely reaching with it. Where eventually yes it if they were able to say hey, let's meet your needs and requirements might be in compliance and giving to you you're not wanting to be in the middle, you know. Formation platform. Thing is, is our tech like motors. Got a head of marketing faster than the rent. Often is, this has changed I mean, going through this digital transformation, one of the most different what's happening here these tech stocks trading more shares than physical. And so where are they typing right now is primarily the the advancement of course, that Amazon Redshift and all these other cloud infrastructure but you know, there's this whole world of data ops, which is depth and some religions say, We're in university states. More value like marketing to benefit by reading data. When things aren't safe for business where there's some sort of space available to buy some products super excited to sell is early majority of this slot at these more sophisticated or mazes more than equally now the world keeps evolving around us. So that's really instant. You've got these switches, T DataLink. And ties everything and then we are one on the same sort of next and the other stuff is is probably the beautiful thing. Is that the sort of the enablement and empowerment well

Carlos Doughty 22:32
am I right in saying you're so great movement in the data from salutely always made?

Scott Brinker 22:41
Sense and today's trends, the same features can be enabled. Ideally, the route is from a panic or something where I'm saying like sometimes lovely diagrams, right? Yeah. Just realise are generally speaking. Right? I mean, this is translation and yet not all day there was something very specific sent into Slack. I think you know, when, or you know, having that centralised but to your point, I think trying to achieve out of that is the ability is empowerment. Tools are individuals to be able to do their particular work. Experiments or programmes they see again, hopefully, right. Like that trade off between companies, sure. But very much under the fullest. Don't want this tiny group of folks in you know, in marketing off and increasingly their mission to be able to do more sell face

Carlos Doughty 24:44
to face you're about to squat the four pieces that's for another day. All right. One more. Let's go back to Darrell. What practical advice what advice do you have for Marketing ops professionsal? And I love the fact that start date go for it five by five spots, but you won't miss August. 2016 has been around for a little bit from both the people who have us today

Darrell Alfonso 25:40
Yeah, and it means a lot. So daily that's an interesting that's an interim isn't it? So I'll I think that that through your working day is one of the tasks and when when, like podcasts like this The through almost because you know one of the one that's and and see for your skin I often are like a vendor and the United as what they said, Hey, what's up? You know, when I was in marketing automation for example, I certainly true so I would say that that's that's my want to

look but at the same time it

because I do think that you're using I think that that sort of point where you can further and resource I think it's a daily

practice of getting better.

Carlos Doughty 27:47
The pushers are another plug for you. And in general of course.

Why don't we every single day percent I suppose. Fro this one your way but feel free to try and

I love this question.

Will this CMOs be chief marketing officer

it's gonna go on the moon. Is that somebody that are fresh cmo change well, it means Chief Marketing.

Scott Brinker 28:21
Yeah, that's a great. One of the challenges over so what is under cmo this mean you know we were joking earlier about I mean, like everything that was the responsibilities

went in Yeah, right. That happens you know, in branding it's just on top of that, tonne of other digital capabilities

you know the way in which we looked at

that and we're talking rent all this data that reveals no, and I think that for me one party to be all this it's really hard, you know, the roles Oh is increased on

this piece of it you know, Team of Teams leaders are a fantastic person even we create brand demands a

general structure in place. Brands around customer care about right? Team for all much more than I think yes money you know future generation cm CMOS know a few C MCs from real advantage around sales marketing ops leader become the interest of marketing or that they're going to be very much at this

Carlos Doughty 30:53
point not so yeah, because I mean, ultimately trust me. You need more depth, more risk. If you really are truly a leader doing it every day those people operations and marketing.

Clearly if we want to take a data point got this clearly one in four conversations

there's there's two metrics at the very beginning here as professionals timeless margin we've got to add Masek and we're gonna we're gonna run out to learn oh what's your world the marketing operations for this you see Yeah.

Darrell Alfonso 32:20
This one I think is a really interesting question. Some exciting developments around marketing but there's also a scarcity but we don't really think about it okay. There's almost do what the march all of the data there are forms. Part of what builds patients and marketing technologists missing package that that's also handled Are you know you have plant tissue and make the data the same way because you no need to take it are the things that I see and obstacles will get most of how often, you know and all of my career and mastering marketing automation together today faces in so many different ways. And one of you know, leaders I was that all of them are platforms that'll take care of it. You know, that's the part that I worry I got platforms that can say for me was just a few clicks takes away from density. They go to good ones and to study that kind of stuff. You can grow what you think's my main point is but I also worked under standing the beta is something that we have to be careful over

Carlos Doughty 35:34
Google's AI bot

conversation Yeah, that's getting it together

and this one comes from me.

So we tend to have one split. keep upgrading. We try and do is we sort of lean into the we think of the great that the so there was kind of there was kind of visible from the

in the 90s when people were saying things it's going nowhere there are a few spreading open our time machines broke. She's like that's the point five years time.

Masek managers will wish we paid more

some web free in hindsight, we are forced to now moment that's a fun, fun question. So I'll bet I don't know where the answer lies to your new age in the world. It's just I mean if you're trying marketing you know you'd be like,

Scott Brinker 37:50
Oh, okay, Sorry for dragging Oh My Goodness me. 15 knots like, you know, and so it's worse. You know, don't get me wrong. I actually think it's something that is just evolving. And I think the best thing at this point is to basically, as you know, about a dog that can adapt to change. How do we think proper way

possible that you're going you know, how do you have a system a lot of

new things as you go through it. And even look, people saw that programme and embedding that or that because I think that was able to adapt to change no matter what, five years I'm in the way that we're chatting about to the rest of the organisation particularly over emphasise, let's go to leverage this data infrastructure marketing team does something different you know in finance or so on.

Carlos Doughty 40:00
Changes admissions. What's going on everyone else? I would say those marketing officers collaborate. Very proud of a real team. That's all the time. Thank you. That's a hell of a lot of time. Thank you. Really interesting session. Thank you both.