By Lynn Hunsaker, President and CEO, and Gary Katz, Chief Strategy Officer, Marketing Operations Partners
Value creation is the ultimate measure of success in business – value to customers, stakeholders, partners, employees and the broader community. In the quest to be the best, you must follow profits – or better yet, be the only one creating value (money, capability and opportunity).
The marketing operations manager plays a role that can facilitate value creation across the entire marketing organization. Here are the seven secrets to success:
1. Know who controls the budget
It's a fact that you get more done when you listen to the person who australia phone number data approves the finances. When it comes to marketing, customers come first. If your marketing doesn't match the content, timelines, and methods that the customer prefers, nothing makes much sense.
Always start by asking yourself WHO . This applies not only to messaging, but also to your strategic plans, tactics, process designs, people, tools, performance measurement – in short, everything your marketing department does. This analysis and management of stakeholder needs is also known as an ecosystem .
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2. Set your marketing manager up for success
According to the ecosystem view, the next layer in the hierarchy is business objectives. Your marketing manager will be successful to the extent that the management team perceives high engagement and sees contributions to their strategic objectives.
This is the WHY of the marketing organization. You can set things up so that the marketing team and management are working in the same direction by using a technique called cascading objectives. It is the logical starting point for all marketing planning and performance monitoring. This approach is the foundation of your marketing strategy .
3. Be a strategic facilitator
Someone has to ensure that the strategy is implemented and that's you. Be the person who enables the marketing team's success. Standards and oversight to help marketers achieve business goals are the WHAT of your role.
It's not about bureaucracy, but about connecting the dots between strategy and execution, to people, diverse data, and interdependent processes. It's also known as governance or guidance .
4. Formalize the methods according to your preferences
Procedures and process diagrams go a long way toward speeding up needs such as employee onboarding, minimizing duplication of resources and work across multiple locations and lines of business, and maintaining know-how when key employees leave the company.
This is the HOW to achieve the why and the what for the who. The working methods of all members of the marketing department consist of processes .
5. Remember: what gets measured, gets done
Help all marketing subfunctions select metrics that monitor early signals in their work. Metrics typically focus on the extreme ends of the spectrum: click-through rates (activity) and revenue (outcome). Don't confuse process outcomes with early signals. These are junctures in a group's work that indicate possible rework or elimination of work, or possible positive outcomes and performance.
This is the THEN WHAT of everything the marketing team does. By monitoring early signals before stakeholders can see results and performance, marketers have the ability to make adjustments that are efficient and effective. The measure of progress is often referred to as metrics .
6. Don't let accelerators become implosors
Technology is supposed to help speed up all processes. Select technology because of the who, why, how, what and then what. When technology is selected without knowledge, or without a good understanding of the background, technology often spoils the strategy.
Rushing to technology prematurely often requires people and processes to move in ways that are not sustainable. Conversations revolve around what the technology needs, rather than what is needed to take advantage of strategic opportunities. Make smart technology decisions to ensure strategic marketing impact .
7. Make sure the cart goes behind the oxen
The combination of processes, metrics, and technology forms the marketing infrastructure—the vehicle that will get us from point A to point Z. This is the means for all the moving parts to work as they should. Remember that the who, why, and how—the ecosystem, strategy, and direction—inform the necessary characteristics of the infrastructure.