Marketing Performance and Modern Day Management

With marketing performance management moving to the front burner, especially for best-in-class marketers (those marketers earning top marks from the C-Suite for the ability to measure Marketing value, impact and contribution), the role of Marketing Ops is expanding.

Companies with marketing ops in place were twice as likely (11% vs. 5%) to be high-performing companies—i.e., they report having highly effective and efficient marketing.

The 2014 VisionEdge Marketing/ITSMA study found that the role of Marketing Ops now includes the following (in no particular order):

• Performance measurement and reporting
• Campaign analysis and reporting
• Technology and automation and pipeline management
• Budgeting and planning; financial governance and reporting
• Data management
• Workflow process development and documentation
• Project management
• Strategic planning
• Organization benchmarking and assessments
• Customer, market, competitive intelligence, research, and insights
• Analytics and predictive modeling
• Talent and skills development

Best-in-class (BIC) marketers can be characterized as value creators because their primary focus is on using data to make market, customer, and product/service decisions that create value for customers and shareholders. Accordingly, the following are top roles for marketing ops function among the value creators, in priority order:

1. Customer, market, competitive intelligence, research, and insights
2. Analytics and predictive modeling
3. Data management
4. Campaign analysis and reporting
5. Budgeting and planning; financial governance and reporting
6. Organization benchmarking and assessments

Source: 2014 VisionEdge Marketing/ITSMA MPM Study

The emphasis on intelligence, insights, analytics, modeling, and data management makes sense, considering the focus on value creation. With the pressure increasing on Marketing to measure its value and contribution, Marketing Ops is the logical entity to champion and orchestrate the six A's of marketing performance management: alignment, accountability, analytics, automation, alliances and assessment.

To join these BIC marketers, focus on the following:

1. Alignment
2. Accountability
3. Analytics
4. Automation
5. Alliances
6. Assessment

The role of Marketing Ops is expanding, especially within marketing organizations serving as value creators. Within these organizations, the marketing ops function is moving beyond campaign automation and financial governance to facilitate alignment, accountability, and agility.

Marketing Ops enables more effective Marketing by developing and managing the processes for setting performance expectations, monitoring progress, and measuring results. By creating or expanding the marketing ops role and skill set to include performance targeting skills and process and technology optimization, as well as strategic capabilities to drive change, Marketing can reach the next step on its performance management journey.