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​Marketing Operations is a Hot Marketing Hire as Projects Multiply

Marketing Operations

As Marketing departments undertake major initiatives and ensuing projects multiply, Marketing leaders are looking to make a strategic marketing hire to manage marketing operations.

The Core competency of the Marketing Operations role is to serve as part air traffic controller, efficiency expert, technology whisperer, data driver, communications facilitator, bean counter, and collaboration inspirer. Another title for this role might be the Wizard of Marketing Moving Parts.

Marketing Ops = Special Ops

So, what does the Marketing Operations role do and why is this a critical marketing hire for increasingly digital and tech enabled teams? Unlike specialized marketing hires, the Marketing Ops role takes an overarching approach to help the entire team achieve their project goals by keeping the marketing engine stoked and running. They are driven by two questions: “how can these initiatives best grow the company’s brand?”, and “how do these initiatives deliver the best brand experience for the customer?” By coordinating across the entire department and functional areas outside of the marketing department (like IT and Finance), the Marketing Operations role brings together the goals and work of others to meet those mission statements. Let’s take a closer look.

 

Uniting cross-functional teams to achieve marketing goals

The Marketing Operations role usually reports into the CMO or VP of Marketing and has visibility to all the vertical marketing sub teams that ladder up to the organization’s Marketing leader, such as Digital, Social, Creative, Content, Analytics, PR, and more. In addition to securing supporting resources, processes, tools, and funds to enable their Marketing colleagues, the Marketing Operations role fosters key relationships outside the Marketing department. Depending on the organization, this might include working with Sales, Product Development, Customer Service, IT, and Accounting/Finance.

Tech-savvy, data-enabled, results-accountable

The Marketing Operations professional searches out the best tools and techniques to accomplish the initiatives the team undertakes. As companies continue to digitally evolve, this requires researching technology and working with the internal IT department to secure and implement emerging tools (while working with Finance to keep budgets in line). And with data at the heart of most Marketing decisions, the Marketing Operations role also considers how to collect, clean, and transform data into insights that inform strategy. This includes identifying external data sources as well as data tools. Marketing Operations professionals are also process managers, continually evaluating how things get done and whether there are better approaches to take. They are driven by metrics that prove marketing investments of time and money are well spent.

Skills to look for in Marketing Operations hires

Marketing Operations professionals have become some of today's most sought after marketing hires. Highly effective Marketing Operations hires are extremely detail oriented and have a talent for process evaluation and engineering. They are systematic and key performance indicator obsessed, and are extremely motivated by organizing, prioritizing, and facilitating project workflows. Excellent verbal and written communicators, their interpersonal skills are exceptional as they bring together cross-functional colleagues and rally them around a common goal. They are hard and soft tech savvy, and are impressively social media fluent, with a firm grasp on existing marketing and project management tools and emerging ones to deliver strategic marketing initiatives.

If you’re considering hiring Marketing Operations talent, reach out to one of our expert marketing recruiters today. They can help you secure the right person to take your Marketing mission from impossible to delivered.