“The Rise of Marketing Operations”

Darrell Alfonso spills on success in your work, your team and your career at #MarTechFest Dial Up Series 2.

Marketing Operations (or MOPs) is all the buzz, and when there’s an acronym involved in martech, you know we’re not playing.

To role of a Marketing Operations Manager is at every touch point when it comes to the go-to-market team. From sales, to marketing, to finance, customer success and customer experience, you better believe MOPs are at the heart of it.

Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations Manager at Amazon Web Services, takes us through why now is the time for Marketing Operations professionals, how to pick your modern marketing team, priorities and how to market your value inside and outside of your organisation in his latest sesh at #MarTechFest Dial up Series 2.

Let’s take a peek at the agenda:

1. Marketing Operations – why it’s the best place to be today
2. MOPs Functions – what you should be doing
3. Your Work – getting stuff done to make impact
4. Your Team – growing your team’s influence
5. Your Career – how to stand out in today’s crowded marketplace

If the string of words Marketing Operations is new to you, you’re going to want to put down that cheese sandwich and cancel your afternoon call, because you’ve got some reading to do.

According to our good friend, Darrell, Marketing Operations are the people of the future, they’re artists who have mastered the delicate craft of getting $h!t done. As we mentioned, they’re big players in the G2M (go-to-market) game from helping to drive revenue, increasing customer engagement and generating a more efficient ROI – to name just a few. Sounding like the kinda guys and gals you want swinging for your team? Yep. We thought so.

And just in case it’s not crystal clear as to why our beloved MOPs are positioned to be the future marketing leaders, Darrell rounds this up rather nicely for us too:

• MOPs hold the keys to the data
• MOPs are results orientated
• MOPs are cross-functional
• MOPs are strategic advisors

Making an impact with your work

The reality is, everyone has too much to do and struggles to get it all done, let alone at a standard you want to shout about. So here are a few ways Darrell suggests to make sure you deliver the big things that count.

• The impact analysis: Draw an axis with 4 quadrants to measure the impact and importance of your responsibilities. Consider which tasks will have a high impact on the business with low effort to carry out and ensure you focus your efforts here. Equally, it’s just as useful to recognise which tasks are of low impact and high effort and reduce your efforts here.
• Focus on business-critical dashboards: When generating reports and graphs, always ask yourself how people are reading and comparing your reports to ensure they remain effective.
• When planning your MOPs roadmap, split your priorities 50/50 between fortification and revenue. Fortification should include the management of system performance, marketing compliance, process efficiencies and training. Revenue should include the management of programme performance, sales acceleration, improved targeting and agile reporting.

Making an impact with your team

The beauty of Marketing Operations is that it’s not a one-man or woman band. Just as your team relies on you, you can rely on your team. If they receive the right training that is. Darrell suggests that building out all of the training modalities is essential for your team to achieve success.

The modalities look a little something like this:

• Documents (e.g. how to guides)
• Classroom (e.g. live learning)
• Videos (e.g. tutorials)
• On demand (e.g. self-service courses)
• Shadow (e.g. 1 on 1 time with a peer)

How to stand out in your career

It’s a competitive world out there, and we don’t need to remind you why this is true now more than ever. (As you read this from your make-shift home office *cough* COVID *cough*).

But this doesn’t take away from the fact that everyone still has a million and one things to get through throughout the day, so it can seem almost impossible to find the extra time to stand out from the crowd.

Here are Darrell’s top tips:

Do less then obsess

We’re not talking clock off at 3 and then binge the latest Netflix series you can’t stop thinking about. This just means you need to focus in on fewer things and knock them out of the park when you do. Pick the two things that will have the biggest impact to your organisation and put your efforts there.

Redesign your work

Break down your work into 3 categories:

• Time – how can you redesign your day?
• Activities – how can you change what you work on?
• Efficiencies – can you improve project and program management?

Passion and purpose

Again, we’re looking at another balancing act. At work you’re always going to focus on business impact – where you deliver the most important results, and perception – managing how your boss and colleagues view you and your work.

But to support these purposes, you need to infuse some passion. Look for where you can include your interests so you can do more of what you enjoy, actively seek new learning opportunities to drive innovation, and surround yourself with great people to make the job worth it.

Standing out from the crowd is easier said than done. It can take years of hard work and dedication before you reach the pay-off. but to put it in a nutshell, there are no wiser words than “if you want to stand out, do what other people aren’t willing to do.” Darrell, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

To catch Darrell’s full presentation and more sessions exploring the rise of Marketing Operations, grab your pass to #MarTechFest Dial Up Series 2.