Marketing Operations at Work

I Swear I Haven't Been on Vacation This Month!

Judging from the drop in my posts since the end of June, I wouldn't hold it against you if you assumed I was vacationing all month. Truth is, I do need a vacation, but I swear I haven't had one yet!

If you don't believe me, check out my Twitter activity. I've been very active there.

Lots of exciting things are going on behind the scenes, which I look forward to sharing with you in greater detail soon.

But, in the meantime, here's a high-level overview, so you don't think I've been a slacker all month (<:}.

First, we're migrating this blog from Typepad to Wordpress so Marketing Operations at Work can be more integrated with our website and we can better practice what we preach.

Second, my Marketing Operations class for UCSC Extension is going to be offered online this Winter! That means those of you interested in your Marketing Operations professional development will be able to get easy, self-paced access to my course whether you are in Silicon Valley, UK, China or India! The university has assigned a team of instructional designers to work with me to build the course for online.  Too cool!

Third, as you may have noticed, we've been collecting data for our Marketing Operations Best Practices Benchmarking Study. We've had a great response; about 150 companies completed the online survey. Though we've recently closed the online survey, you still have the opportunity to participate in our in-depth interviews by phone or in person. We expect to be conducting these interviews through August, so let me know if you are interested in being a part of the process. There's a free final benchmarking study report in it for qualified participants.

Fourth, the Marketing Operations Future Forum on LinkedIn, which is vested with co-creating the future of the Marketing Operations field, now has more than 300 members and reads like a who's who in Marketing Operations in enterprises, solution providers and consulting companies. The major work of this forum is to develop a common body of knowledge for our evolving field, which we can develop into an educational curriculum and, ultimately, a certification program. We are actively collecting content (written, audio, video, slides) you'd like to contribute to the effort in exchange for attribution.

So now that I've finally posted something for July, I feel a little better. Stay tuned for more details on these announcements and even more exciting news ahead.

Gary

Marketing Operations? In IT??

Today the newest member of the Marketing Operations Partners team is penning a post for us. Many of you may know Michael Dortch from his work as an industry analyst for Aberdeen Group and Robert Frances Group. The old-timers amongst us may even recall his journalism days with CMP publications NetGuide and Communications Week. Michael is uniquely qualified to write about the opportunity for Marketing Operations and IT to align for the greater good, so enjoy the first of what I'm sure will be many great posts – Gary

by Michael Dortch

Should IT be embracing Marketing Operations? Should MO be embracing IT?

Sure!

At its heart, Marketing Operations is about bringing some adult supervision to some of the most highly personal, visceral, and therefore non-standardized activities conducted by any business -- not to mention some of the most business-critical. To succeed, therefore, Marketing Operations professionals must do a lot of successful marketing, selling, and evangelizing to multiple constituencies within their own organizations, if their efforts are to show any benefits to the enterprise's external relationships with customers, partners, and prospects.

Oddly enough, highly parallel challenges face every IT department that's striving to be truly business-driven and to supply truly effective business tools and solutions. What's more, almost every business action, decision, and transaction is enabled or supported by some kind of IT. And at many enterprises I've known, the IT departments actually have the most experience in formalizing, documenting, maintaining, and refining key processes and practices.

All of this means that Marketing Operations professional and evangelists should forge good working relationships with IT decision-makers at their enterprises at the earliest possible opportunity. The combination of the two can and should lead to many new opportunities to "IT-enable" efforts at increasing profitability, customer and partner satisfaction, "return on marketing" and IT ROI.

At the very least, it will make for conversation over meals or drinks refreshingly different...

Silos are not exclusive to organizations

When we think of silos (the information kind, not the structures for storing bulk materials) , the first thing we think about are the companies we work in. Especially if they are large operations.

But we all have seen examples of the silo effect outside the corporation: in our government systems, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, even in our families.

As a relatively young discipline, the Marketing Operations (MO) profession suffers from the same silo effect  that enterprises do. One of the reasons for creating the Marketing Operations Future Forum, which is focused on co-creating the future of the Marketing Operations field, is to enroll and align MO practitioners to address this challenge – in an integrated, synchronized manner.

Point marketing automation solutions. Superstar or paratrooper individual contribution. A dispirit approach to addressing customer needs – whether we are employees, solution providers or independent consultants. The maturity of the MO field has a lot to do with this. But so does the cowboy-like belief that we – or our solutions – can be all things to all people. A scarcity view of the world and a lack of insight into what we – or our solutions – are really good at underlies the problem.

We need to unlearn this lone wolf type of behavior. If we don't, we contribute to buyer confusion (if everyone says they are competent at everything, who do you hire or buy from?). We hurt our reputations and ability to attract the type of work we are best at. And we block a potential good match between buyers and sellers.

We're got to get over this fear that there isn't enough to go around and focus on aligning together to grow the pie. We need to think abundance. This field of Marketing Operations has tremendous potential, which will only be realized if we align with one another, trust the process and one another, and each contribute our unique gift to make this field a powerful force that mobilizes our companies and clients to act, rather than find yet another excuse to stay paralyzed.

Would love to hear others' comments on this crucial topic.

If you really want to do something to help build a bridge between the silos, join the Marketing Operations Future Forum.

Gary

Marketing 2.0 Author in San Francisco This Week

Bernie Borges of Find and Convert, author of the upcoming book, Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap Between Seller and Buyer on the Social Web, will be in San Francisco this week at the Inbound Marketing Summit. Bernie is a great guy and has encyclopedic knowledge on all things Web 2.0. He's so smart that he actually had the vision to include a chapter on Marketing Operations, contributed by yours truly, in his book.

Bernie and I are getting together for lunch in the City on Thursday. But I have no desire to hog him. If you're interested in joining us over lunch, let me know and I'll forward location and time details.

Gary

Co-creation Dialogue Spurs Marketing Operations Future Forum

Approximately 25 leaders from Silicon Valley-based corporations, marketing automation solution providers, marketing and project management consulting firms, and academia met in San Francisco on April 23 to pave the path for the future of the Marketing Operations field. The initial output from the effort was the establishment of the Marketing Operations Future Forum, which will act as a steering committee on moving forward with agreed-upon industry initiatives.

Dave Hutchinson, chair of the Project Management Institute Marketing & Sales SIG, which sponsored the luncheon, opened by discussing the synergy between Project Management and Marketing Operations. Then, I shared my vision of where we are and where we could be by professionalizing our field. Here's the key areas I covered:

• MO field still defining itself
• Major stakeholder, CMO role, also struggling with definition
• Opportunity to develop the profession
  • Standardization, certification track, training & development model
  • Grow the pie
  • Have more impact in enterprise
• Opportunity to practice what we preach
  • Better alignment & collaboration
  • Better integration of talent and technology supply chain
  • Clearer path for customers to find and get help
• Key question: As a profession, are we breaking or perpetuating silos with current MO?

Some of the topics the group discussed included:

• The need for training and development model that is international and crosses geographies
• The desire to create an MO Conference that creates energy and professional development.
• The possibility of making content developed by the Marketing Operations Cross Company Alliance available through this effort to facilitate Marketing Operations education and, possibly, certification. MOCCA co-founder and steering committee member, Larissa DeCarlo of Marketing Transformation Services, was in attendance.
• The possible establishment of a Marketing Operations Institute, which would potentially be started by offering online certification in Marketing Operations.
• The possible development of a Google KNOL with a special section on Marketing Operations.
• Alignment and potential

Overall, the discussion was lively and productive, and, indicative of the interest in this topic, nearly 50 people have joined the Marketing Operations Future Forum LinkedIn Group within 24 hours of being established.

Gary