What are the most important trends in Marketing Operations today?

Marketing Operations is the unsung hero of marketing, merging creativity with discipline to drive business results. It orchestrates campaigns, prioritizes data-driven decisions, and measures effectiveness to ensure strategic alignment. This function is critical for operational excellence, leveraging technology for efficiency and ensuring compliance. By harmonizing creativity and strategy, Marketing Operations transforms marketing from a mere art form into a science, fostering cross-functional collaboration and propelling companies to market leadership through measurable success.

Marketing Operations is a constantly evolving field, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends is crucial for success. In today's fast-paced digital landscape, there are several key trends that are shaping the future of Marketing Operations. One of the most important trends is the increasing focus on data-driven decision making. With the abundance of data available, marketers now have access to valuable insights that can inform their strategies and drive better results. This trend has led to the rise of marketing analytics and the use of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data and make more informed decisions.

I agree, Data analysts/ experts are a must for MO. Not only for data hygiene but can give MOs and marketers a perspective on their data and the sooner we know and do something about it the better would be our marketing strategy.

You'll receive pushback for every validation you add and every change you make. It's important to remember: "No ideas but in things." Take their frustration and apply it to a more concrete example of what this validation or what this bit of data will allow them specifically to track or do better. Unfortunately—MOPs role typically involves aligning people just as much as pipelines.

Governance can be seen as a dirty word. It can be wrongly interpreted as prohibitive and unnecessary. Yet, it is the ONLY way for business to accurately measure, report on and manage their marketing efforts effectively. It comes in two forms, system and user governance. The system part is easier to achieve, and can include: form field consistency, data ingestion templates and programmatic de-duplication. The user part is more challenging, as we need to define use cases and then apply permission sets. However, people naturally resist “being restricted”. The key is in semantically re-branding user governance as “reducing the noise” in platforms. It can thus be seen as simplifying experiences, rather than taking something away.

Automation and integration should have a point - they are a means to an end, not the end themselves. The goal should always be to scale something that is already working. Marketing Operations teams tend to jump straight to the automation piece without first walking through a process manually. This manual execution helps iron out the issues and helps you understand if it even achieves the desired purpose. Blindly automating without this information is not a scalable approach. Once you do know that something is working, however, automation can significantly accelerate the positive outcomes of the process.

Using an all-in-one or a full suite solution like HubSpot helps a lot when trying to consolidate your marketing technology and streamlining all your integrations into one big platform. You get CRM, marketing automation tools and now even CMS through one single platform.

Customer experience has to be at the core of everything a Marketing Ops team does. Many teams get caught up in building sophisticated processes and over-engineered workflows because they like doing those things. Other teams support batch and blast emails and repeated webinars because it's the way things have always been done. As the data stewards for the Marketing team, the Marketing Operators need to surface data that informs an intelligent conversation around the ideal customer experience. It's not a one-size-fits-all all type of an approach.

Skill development is the way to better prepare not only the people but also companies in pivoting quickly effiencetly in Marketing Ops. Many MO professionals are in industries where change is needed to keep up with consumers and technology. Investing in employees skills will help with income generation from clients, client strategy, and even attrition among FTE's.

In my experience, this is one of the areas where most Operations pros and teams are lagging behind. These teams are so busy that it's difficult for them to find the time to engage in formal learning opportunities. Some even feel guilty not working in order to attend a webinar or complete a certification. We need to shift this mindset - a team that isn't growing and improving isn't going to be prepared or enabled to support the needs of a Marketing team over the next couple of years. Marketing Operators need to step up and take control of their career direction by being intentional and consistent about learning.

This is among the most pressing issue faced in some orgs. When there's no carrot or stick to do things the right way—things won't be done the right way. The key to alignment is the rallying of disparate teams towards a united vision. MOPs and RevOps have the unique ability to do this having their hands in so many cookie jars. Thus, if you're getting into MOPs or RevOps for that matter, prepare to be a constant cheerleader.

Everything in this article is pretty spot on. However, I feel right now more than ever we are in the phase of marketing ops where we are tasked with "more with less". I hate using that phrase but it's what most people use. More with less doesn't need to allude to a burnt out MOps professional. To me it means identifying real impact in the tools, processes, and systems we work in. Don't settle for anything but necessary. If you have evaluated a new platform and it won't benefit the majority of users don't get it. Don't add an additional piece to your already full plate. Use your time wisely. Don't or try not to as frequently as possible from going down the rabit hole of random projects. Create a roadmap and make it well known in your org

I think the most important trend in marketing operations is the emergence of retail media networks. Retailers are now sharing/monetizing their treasure trove of first party data insights to develop micro targeted segmentation opportunities for brands. For instance, Amazon now has a distinct advantage of advertising powerhouses like Facebook or Google. They have an advantage because they know what consumers search for, what ads they were exposed to, AND what consumers actually bought. Because they have purchase history, Amazon can generate powerful closed loop reporting that directly show the efficacy of advertisements and marketing promotions at an individual level. It is mass-customized marketing that instantly provides feedback.