August 26, 2024 • 45 mins
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Can marketing operations truly be considered a part of traditional marketing, or does it stand as its own unique discipline? Join us in this thought-provoking episode of OpsCast as we explore this question from multiple angles, diving into the essential roles and responsibilities that define marketing operations. Hear from Mike Rizzo as he delves into the origins of this contentious debate, intended more to spark conversation than controversy, and listen to Michael Hartmann and Naomi Liu as they share their differing viewpoints on the operational focus and technological intersections of marketing ops.
In this episode, we dissect the distinct roles within marketing operations and sales operations, highlighting the unique skill sets required for each. By drawing on personal experiences and real-world examples from LinkedIn discussions, we unpack the challenges faced by marketing ops professionals and explore the intriguing possibility of career transitions between marketing ops and field marketing. We highlight the importance of early collaboration and proactive communication to improve efficiency and effectiveness within marketing teams, stressing the need for marketing ops to be seen as a strategic, rather than just supportive, function.
Finally, the conversation shifts to the necessity of clear role definitions and effective communication of achievements within marketing operations. We underscore the strategic value that marketing ops brings to go-to-market planning and emphasize the vital role of celebrating successes to ensure recognition from senior leadership. As we look ahead to the upcoming Mops-Apalooza event, we share our excitement about the discussions that will further illuminate the critical role of marketing operations in today's data-driven landscape. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of the evolving field of marketing operations and why it deserves recognition as a cornerstone of modern marketing strategy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to another episode of OpsCast
brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by the
Mobepros.
I'm your host today, joined bymy counterparts, my amigos Naomi
, liu, the three amigos thethree amigos episode.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We don't need no stinking badges.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Did we get that reference?
No, no, no, no, all right, I'mold, thanks.
I'm seeing all these posts onlike not LinkedIn social media
stuff about movies that came outwhen I was like in high school
and it's like depressing andlike awesome at the same time
because there were great moviesback then, but anyway, so there
(00:39):
you go, that's fun, yeah, yeah,like some kind of wonderful.
If you haven't seen that movie,go see it.
It's great.
Probably should.
Yeah, okay, so we are gatheredhere today because Mike kicked
off like this firestorm of likeonline chatter, including like
(01:03):
people getting together to talkabout it in like live sessions
and things like that, and Iyou'll have to correct me if I
get it wrong, mike, but I thinkthe question was simply is
marketing ops marketing right?
I think I think that was thegist of the question.
There was a little more contextfor it and you can provide more
.
But and I and when I, when Isaw it, I was like kind of
eye-rolled.
(01:23):
Honestly I was.
I was like here he goes again,right, just trying to be
provocative, like I don'tactually get the question.
So like, am I about right?
Is that what it was?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
No, I wasn't trying to be provocative.
I really don't like to stir upthe pot.
To be honest with you, I don'tlike controversy has it been
controversial?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I don't feel like it's been controversial?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
no, it's actually been.
It's.
It's been nice that people haverecognized that the post was
not me putting a stake in theground.
It was more just like it was astatement and a someone.
Tell me what their thoughts areon this, because I've talked
about it a lot with like markcirkin and a number of others
before right when, when we firstgot the community going, uh,
mark was like, do marketing opspeople view themselves as
(02:10):
marketers?
And I was like I think some doand I think some don't.
Uh, and, and that was two years, two plus years ago now Um, and
and that statement, uh, that Iposted, it was, it was, it was
literally a five-word post thathas now I don't know if it's
gone viral, but it's definitelygone a number of places.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Uh, I'd say that's been like at least in our world,
right?
That's pretty viral, right?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
yeah, I think many, many people yeah, there's been a
minimum of six that I'm awareof that have, like, put their
own thoughts out into the worldabout it, which is which is
great, um, but the post was um,is marketing ops or marketing
ops isn't marketing periodthoughts, and that was it.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
And was that you also stating your stance as well?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
No, no, it wasn't.
Um, and it was something thatwas said out loud.
Um, in in a discussion that Iwas a part of, uh, sometime in
the last like three or four,like three or four weeks roughly
, and um, and so I, just on awhim, I was like, well, let's
see what happens.
(03:20):
I did, I could never haveimagined that it would turn into
what it's turned into now.
So, yeah, um, it's been reallyreally interesting to see
people's take on that.
But I don't know, like hartman,you I rolled, you're like, is
that even a question?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
yeah, I mean, I think I like, I seriously, I was like
I don't, like I really justlike I don't get the point of
the question.
At the same time, I was like Idon't think there's really it's
not a binary, there's not asimple answer to that question.
It's one of those ones that inmy mind, it's the kind of thing.
It requires nuance and, yes, Ithink a lot of the time I think
(04:02):
of marketing, ops as beingmarketing.
I think of myself as being morein marketing than in in
technology, I guess, for lack ofa better term, but um, uh, on
the other hand, I also think ofmyself as an ops and change and
like kind of in the in, in themiddle of a lot of different
things, which is part of why Ilike those kinds of roles.
(04:26):
But I just didn't like, I waslike this is not the kind of
question you go yes or no, andand I, and I think it was
phrased that way, and so there'sa part of me that is both
surprised and not surprisedabout the reaction, cause I
think the way it was set up andit's been, I truthfully I
haven't really kept up with the,the, the reactions in detail.
(04:47):
So if either of you have anyinsights and I this is where I
should have done a little moreresearch on my own, like pulled
up some of those posts but likeI don't know what, the kind of
the if there's a you know one ortwo or three sort of consistent
themes that people are in termsof the way that that gets
answered, that are, you know,the majority, or if there's just
(05:09):
a lot of different views yeah,yeah, there's been.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
There's been a lot, naomi.
What are your thoughts?
I think, I think you texted me.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yes, I texted you right away, actually yeah, naomi
, not wanting to put her, youknow, put a stake in the ground
publicly no, I think she just no, she just likes to like
immediately, like go straight tome and just be like exactly, I
mean just go straight to thesource or I'm like no, I, I, I
do not feel that, uh, marketingops is marketing, because, you
(05:45):
know, I feel that we are muchmore concerned with how
marketing gets done than what isbeing said, and that might be
an unpopular opinion or peoplemay resonate with that, and I do
feel that it believe that I dofeel, or I believe that a lot of
it can depend on two thingswhere someone is in their
(06:06):
marketing ops career and if theywork, have traditionally worked
for maybe an organization thathas had less resources, so they
are doing and wearing multiplehats, and that line between ops
and marketing gets blurred right.
So not only are you demand gen,but you're also copywriting or
working with the agencies tofigure out.
(06:28):
You know cadences aroundmarketing and go to market
campaigns and what does thatlook like and the strategy.
Then those lines can becomeblurred.
But I think someone had said inthe comments on your post, mike
, that you know is sales ops,sales, yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I asked that question as a follow up.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, sales ops is not and I believe I texted that
to you too before I went andread a lot of the comments and
the folks that I work with insales ops.
You could not convince them tothen go and try and sell to a
customer Like it's completelydifferent.
So why is marketing ops anydifference?
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, those are my two cents.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, no I love it, canadian sense to Canadian sense
.
Well, we don't actually havesense anymore because we got rid
of the pennies, so it rounds upto five, I guess.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh well, those are your, those are your two nickels
.
Um, no, I, I mean I I've sharedthis now a couple of times and
and follow up, uh, eitherresponses to to folks or or just
reposting it again, um, in adifferent way.
I'm not convinced one way orthe other and I think I think
(07:43):
that is because of the nuance ofwhere the role sits in, in a
sort of life cycle of both thepractitioner and the company.
Um, I think my audience hasgrown on LinkedIn, so I feel
comfortable that I get to seenow a broader range of responses
(08:04):
from industry verticals andsizes of organizations.
People have worked at largerand smaller organizations.
I think that wouldn't have beentrue three, um, three, four or
five years ago when I was reallyI'm just, I come, as a lot of
our listeners know, I come fromthe startup world, so marketing
ops is like very much a planfrom me.
(08:27):
I'm very much a marketer in inthe startup lands.
Uh, because you know, yeah, youhave to wear lots of hats and
you're sort of, uh, you're allplaying on a team and trying to
figure out how to go to marketand come up with campaigns and
strategies and all that otherstuff.
Um, and then I think there'sdefinitely opportunity in upper,
(08:48):
larger organizations, uh sortof up market that you start to
fall away a little bit from fromlike marketing quote, unquote
from the.
You know, as I do my air quotesthere from the perspective of
what would be considered thetraditional definition of
marketing.
And I and I think I postedabout that in a followup comment
(09:08):
too right, like the traditionaldefinition of marketing,
marketing ops doesn't fit that.
Right, and those that mean thatthe definition of marketing,
marketing ops doesn't fit thatRight, and it doesn't mean that
the definition of marketingshouldn't adapt and change
because modern marketing hasevolved.
You know, to Mark Serkin'spoint, like modern marketing
can't be done pretty muchwithout any form of technology
these days and therefore theargument is marketing ops is
(09:29):
marketing, it's a core componentof it.
You just can't go to marketanymore and I in fact support
that at the same time.
Right, like I wrote a post acouple of weeks back that said
if you are an enterprisego-to-market executive and you
don't understand just the bareminimum level of the art of the
possible with the tools you'reusing, you shouldn't be in your
(09:52):
job.
Like it doesn't mean you haveto know how to integrate them,
run data, object orientation.
You don't have to know the insand outs of exactly how the tool
works and functions, but youshould know the art of the
possible with the tool and thefact that it can integrate with
other things and it can get datafrom other places so you can
ask better questions and get thehelp that you need from the
technology.
And so I agree right, like toan extent I agree to your point,
(10:17):
naomi.
No, I don't think sales ops issales.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Like.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I don't think you can put somebody in a position to
go from a sales ops role andjust to become a seller.
I think you can go the otherdirection.
You could be a seller and havelearned some things and been
like hey, I actually really likesort of the other parts of this
process better.
I want to help organize thechaos because I'm living the
(10:42):
life Right, but I think if youstarted more in a technical
operations background and you'venever got on a discovery call
or done a contract ornegotiation of any kind, those
are very wildly different skillsets.
You know a contract or anegotiation of any kind.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Those are very wildly different skill sets in my
opinion.
Yeah, but I mean I'll disagreewith you on the point that I
don't think it would be ascommon.
At the same time, I think it isdefinitely possible, because
I'm a big believer that a lot ofpeople can be.
you know, if they have the rightenvironment, the right kind of
coaching or teaching or whatever, and then their own desire to
(11:17):
learn, they could learn theseother skills.
It's not all that muchdifferent to me than someone who
wants to be an individualcontributor, moving to a manager
role, which requires acompletely different set of
skill sets to be effective atthat, and I truly believe that
that is a learnable thing.
It doesn't mean it's easy ornatural even, but it's doable.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, so that's my way.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know that that can be said of pretty much
anything.
Right, like all things aredoable, right, you can learn.
You can learn new skills.
It might not be the naturalpath, but you can.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You could do it but you can, you could do it right,
yeah, and so what's interestingso interesting to me and like,
the timing of when this came out.
So we're recording this right inthe middle of august of 2024,
so just for references, likethis post came out what a week
ago or something that startedall up right around that time I
recorded an episode for with alischwinke on one of her podcasts
(12:13):
and the genesis of thatactually was me kind of riffing
with her online about like I getreally like I see a lot of
people in marketing ops andmarketing whining, I guess is
the best way to put it rightabout their peers in other teams
(12:33):
.
So if you're marketing ops,you're whining about marketing
or you're worrying about salesops and marketers whining about
sales, people in sdr like, andit really, it really rubs me the
wrong way because I think, yes,there's probably some valid
things where it's frustrating,but whining about it, I don't
think, solves the problem.
(12:53):
And so when you, when you askthat question like the other
part that was going through mybrain when it was- like I was in
the middle of like.
We didn't end up.
That's not how the trajectoryof the podcast episode went.
We kind of went.
It was part of it.
Right, this idea of likeunderstanding what other people
do is an important, valuableskill to understand.
If you're in marketing, youdon't understand how you
actually make money as a companyand how your team sell and what
(13:17):
the interactions are reallylike with their prospects and
customers.
You should learn those things.
You should try to do that, andthat will make you a better
marketer.
It will make you a bettermarketing person.
It will just give you a betterframework for understanding what
is important to do when, and soit feeds into being able to
make the trade-off decisionsthat come inevitably with any
role, especially, I think, theseops roles.
(13:38):
So like for me, this idea oflike adding another thing that
is potentially driving a wedgebetween marketing and marketing
ops, like just it.
I think that's my my if I'mhonest about my reaction like
that part is like I'm gettingthis like.
I really don't like that.
It's even a question yeah, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
That's why I asked for thoughts.
It's good, yeah I don't know so.
So here's the other thing, likewould would you consider this
truth?
Marketing ops?
I'm going to try to find thewords for it because I don't
(14:18):
have it like written down orwell thought out.
So forgive me, listeners, butI'm asking the two of you would
you say that it's a truestatement that marketing ops is
not well defined and runs therisk of taking on work that they
shouldn't take on?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yes, I think that traditionally, that has always
been a point, a topic ofconversation, right.
What functions roll up undermarketing operations?
I think it's the word marketingthat throws a bit of a um.
That is the wild card there.
(15:04):
Right, and I've kind of I'vesaid this before in in other
podcasts and in other sessionsthat I actually don't like the
word marketing and marketingoperations, because there's a
lot of things that a marketingops team does that is outside of
marketing.
A lot of it is around analytics, a lot of it is around data
(15:28):
hygiene, data privacy laws.
We also support internalprocesses.
You can also do things likeemployee onboarding, internal it
notices, back office stuff workreally heavily with sales
operations.
I almost think that the wordmarketing pigeonholes the
(15:50):
function and what it should be.
I don't know, is it a revenueops?
Is it a business ops?
Is it, you know, x Y, z it's.
I feel like that word gives ita.
It influences how people thinkabout the role, right?
So you think marketing, youthink demand gen, you think
content creation, you thinklanding pages, forums, emails,
(16:12):
events and all of that stuff.
Right, we are the underlyingsupport layer.
But you know, I, you know, andbefore we started recording this
.
I was thinking like if therewas a, for example, if there was
someone who worked in marketingops and a role came up and it
was for something like you know,field marketer, right?
So you're doing field marketing, you're running events, you're
coordinating, you know, openhouses for your company, you're
(16:35):
coordinating specific outreach,working with agencies to do
Google ads, paid ads, all ofthat stuff Is that something
that a traditional marketing opsperson would apply for?
And vice versa, somebody whodoes field marketing?
Would they try to get intomarketing ops, maybe, if that's
what the direction that theywanted to go?
But if your career trajectoryis traditional marketing,
there's not a lot of overlapthere.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I think it's interesting.
You bring a point up that Ihadn't thought about by having
the word marketing.
So field marketing marketing isafter field right, exactly.
Whereas marketing ops is before, and it almost.
I think what you're saying isthat, whether intentional or not
, it makes it feel like it'ssubordinate to other parts of
(17:17):
marketing as opposed to a, anequal component.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I don't know you have like content marketing, event
marketing, field marketing,those are all very clear.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Right Yep.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
This is why I asked the question the way that I did
it, because as a community Imean you name it Daryl Alfonso,
jess Cow, naomi, michael,courtney McCara, sarah McNamara,
right, we've all talked abouthow you need to be seen as
(17:56):
strategic, you need to be seenas a critical sort of important
sort of lifeblood of a companyand all of these things, and
we've often articulated in manyways, sometimes very directly,
that it needs to have more of asort of definition.
And that was a lot of whatstarted in this community, like
(18:16):
a lot of our conversations rightat the beginning of this Mo
pros journey, and what we'vebecome was around this idea of
like, well, what the fuck ismarketing us?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, I mean it's like one of our best episodes we
ever did.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, right, and it's because people are trying to
define the role.
Now, at the same time, you'vegot all the thought leaders
Stephen Stouffer, sarah McNamara, everybody else, myself
included.
We're also, at the same time,saying, well, it is kind of
marketing and it's like are yougrasping at the desire to want
(18:53):
to feel noticed, at the desireto want to feel noticed?
Are you grasping at the desireto want to feel a part of
something that's an importantfactor in an organization?
Like, what is it that's makingyou think that you want to go
against creating betterdefinition and solidifying what
marketing ops is and the valueto an organization by diluting
it, to say that it is justbroadly marketing value to an
(19:14):
organization by diluting it, tosay that it is just broadly
marketing.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
So I have a thought on that and I feel right it's
when you're talking about roles,right?
So I think strategy versusexecution, right?
So traditional marketing, fieldmarketing they're often
involved in setting things likethe strategy, defining target
audiences, creating content,knowing what resonates with the
customers, right?
(19:42):
Marketing ops, it's more aboutthe execution and I think those
of us who have worked in ops fora significant amount of time,
at some point you will have agripe or a complaint about oh,
why didn't the team bring us inearlier?
Why did they define?
this entire campaign and thengive it to us to build.
Like you know, architects, likethe architects, are building
(20:02):
these plans but then us, as thebuilders, we're looking at them
like this doesn't make sense, orwe can't do this, we don't have
the tools to do this, or youknow, we're missing this piece
of the puzzle and going back tothem and saying, hey, like we
actually can't do this.
And you know, that's one of thethings that bothers me a lot,
because I never want to say likeI will try to find ways to
(20:22):
creatively implement somethingthat a business partner or
stakeholder wants to do before Iwill say, yeah, we can't do
this.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And you should have invited us into the conversation
earlier and we could havesteered the direction in a
different path or told you rightfrom the beginning that this
isn't going to work Right, andthat could be also one of the
reasons.
It's like we want to beinvolved but we also don't, if
that makes sense.
Like we want to be involved inthe conversation but we also
(20:53):
don't want to be responsible fordefining the messaging, for
example.
Well, this gets back to my.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
This is where I was saying like this, this it makes
it easier to whine and complainabout those other teams when
you're not involved with thatstuff up front.
You know, and I think that'strue, and I and I think this is
where your opportunity should beor what you should be doing if
you need to find opportunitieslike that, where you get those
(21:21):
requests and they're late andmaybe you go through some heroic
stuff and you get them close towhat they wanted to achieve
from a go-to-market activitystandpoint or tactic or whatever
it is achieve from ago-to-market activity standpoint
or tactic or whatever it is andthen you have to take that
opportunity to go back and sayhere's what I think if it
(21:47):
brought me in at this point, wecould have helped you go faster.
We could have tried to buildsomething more robust or
whatever you want to call it,and I think there's.
So, rather than justcomplaining or whining about it,
I would encourage people totake those opportunities, to not
point fingers.
Right, there's, there's a wayto do this that you have to like
, learn to do and talk about.
Here's how I think we couldhave done this better if we had
(22:08):
worked together.
I mean the other part for methat I see is a challenge for
most marketing ops folks isbecause maybe you brought up
things like data quality andefficiency and things like this,
like those are things that arethey have.
They have at least twochallenges right they're hard to
quantify in terms of theirimpact and then the secondly,
(22:31):
they're not highly visible on aregular basis.
Now some of the symptoms ofthem, like, if you have poor
data quality, you get to thispoint where I'm trying to build
a segmentation to target for anaudience and I can't do it.
It takes me a week to do itbecause our data is crap.
And if we had done the work upfront to try to get our data
consistent and clean so that wecould reliably just like here's
(22:53):
our segment, it's done in hours,kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
There's, there's the work up front piece, and then
there's what Naomi was saying,right, right.
So tell me what you want to tryto be able to target so I can
set you up.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I do think it's quantifiable in the sense that
you know a lot of the systemsthat are holding these data is
it's not just an open end offree-for-all that you can just
store millions and bajillions ofrecords, right?
So there are.
You know, a lot of them arebased on how many records you
have in your system, likeMarketo, right, and in terms of
quality, if you are emailing toa list and your deliverability
(23:28):
rate or your opens or click rateis in the garbage, if you clean
up that list and are like, okay, well, we're just going to
remove people that are obviouslybouncing, look malformed, they
haven't opted in or haven'tengaged and done anything with
us in the last 12 months, Likethose, I think those things are
already quantifiable.
It just really depends on whatyou're looking at.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So the quantifiable part, I think, is maybe easier.
I think the visibility part isharder, because you know the ceo
, the cmo, the other c-suite,like other departments sales
when an email goes out or an adgets out or web, the landing
page is like that's highlyvisible, like people know it,
they see it.
They don't see the stuff behindit that made it happen and then
(24:10):
.
But is it because?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
you're not telling them.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Right.
So if you tell them, so, ifyou're going through these
heroics and getting annoyed andpissed off, that should be your
signal that you are part of theproblem.
You're enabling that abilityand you're undermining your own
perception of you or your teamas being potentially strategic
(24:34):
partners.
But it also requires you tounderstand what they're trying
to achieve.
Right, how does the companymake money?
How do we?
How do we?
What helps us win clients orcustomers?
What doesn't?
Right and understanding, likebeing able to then provide
feedback on data.
This is where you should have astrength and that you have
access to data.
(24:54):
When we do this kind of email tothis kind of audience, it's
shit, right.
But when we do it this way which, by the way, is an easier way
like, say, go from highlydesigned to text-based right,
with a sense from just anexample that has been true for
me everywhere I've been for thelast 10, 15 years right, do,
simple, text-based email and ittends to perform better in like
(25:15):
all measurable things,text-based email, and it tends
to perform better in like allmeasurable things, right, right
and like.
That's the kind of input you canprovide because, by the way,
doing that is way easier thanbuilding out a highly designed
email and I get like branding isimportant and like so there's a
, there's a balance, and that'smy point, like it's not a simple
a or b, it's there's nuance andthat, and I think you need to
(25:37):
like try to build that abilityto discern what is there doing,
what's going to be mostimpactful for this particular
business, and how can I providevalue back to the organization
to help steer the strategy tothe point where I eventually get
pulled in earlier and earn theright to that.
Like.
Just assuming you should havethe right to do that is, I think
, setting yourself up for justbeing frustrated a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, and so off my soapbox now.
No, it's great, this is allgreat.
Um, so I think you know, justjust kind of going back into
this idea of like what?
What are we grasping at Right?
I'm not.
I'm not saying that we'regrasping at air, grasping at
straws or anything like that.
I think there are importantthings that Steven and Sarah and
(26:21):
these other folks are sayingthat it is marketing, that it's
a part of marketing, that itshould be seen as strategic and
all this other stuff.
I totally agree with all ofthose sentiments.
But I think there's thedefinition of your roles and
responsibilities need to beclear enough that an
organization at the top board,executive and everybody else can
(26:43):
understand your strategic valueto the process of go to market.
And I think it's perfectly okayfor you to be involved in a
conversation at an earlier partof the planning phase, not to be
seen as the strategist who'sgoing to come up with the plan,
but to be seen as an advisor tosay here, let me show you what
(27:05):
we have in terms of the art ofthe possible.
I want to hear from you what itis that you're trying to do,
because I can either enable itor find the way to enable that
with things that we don't havein place today.
But you have to.
I don't think have to is astrong word.
I think we are.
(27:26):
I'll just speak from my ownexperience.
Actually, I found it a bitstressful to be speaking up
about potential impacts to theorganization's go-to-market plan
, because my job wasn't to bethe go-to-market strategist at
(27:46):
Mavenlink, for example.
I wasn't the person coming upwith demand gen campaigns.
That was not my responsibility.
Sure, I had ideas that I couldhave offered up.
And my boss at the time saidyou have ideas, you should speak
up.
Right, you should speak up more.
And it's this interestingbalance that we have visibility
(28:07):
into this whole funnel, right,we sort of have an idea of
what's working and what's not.
And when I said earlier, youdon't need the extra work, right
?
Sometimes you don't want toraise your hand and say, oh, I
have this idea for ago-to-market whatever, whatever,
right, like you don'tnecessarily want to do that,
(28:27):
because you're like, I have abacklog the size of Texas.
You know, I don't want tobecome the person that now needs
to lead the charge on strategy,right, but I do want to be the
person that can help enable usto go faster, support the vision
and build the ecosystem for youto get visibility into what's
working and what's not.
Do I have to make a decisionmyself on what's working or
(28:50):
what's not?
I can give you my opinion.
I've laid out the foundation foryou to collect the data and
analyze it.
I can analyze it, too, with you, but as a strategist for those
that keep touting that we aremarketing and we should be seen
as strategic and all this otherstuff I think it's one coin and
(29:12):
you're one side of that coin andyou have to be sort of careful
about.
Well, how far away from whatwe're all fighting hard to
figure out, which is thedefinition of marketing
operations, how far away fromthat do you want to get to
becoming this other type of role?
Right, and that's why I askedthe question, because at the end
(29:33):
of the day, it's aboutprotecting the role so that it
doesn't get lost in the mix ofwell, can't Jane do what Mike
does?
Yeah, I mean, they're allmarketing right.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
So you're getting to something where, like, I just
steamrolled right over Naomi, uhwhere she made a point, uh, as
I was on my rant about alsomaking sure that we talk about
what we do.
So I think that's an importantthing and, naomi, I think you do
a good job of that.
I always am impressed at howyou do that.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, I mean, I often will get comments from folks
who are looking for a little bitof mentorship around.
How do they communicate theirachievements to senior
leadership or those who arereally making the decisions and
having visibility?
And you know a lot of thecomplaints are around.
Hey, you know, my boss, or myboss's boss, or the company,
(30:32):
doesn't really know what I doand it's frustrating and I'm
unable to vocalize all of theachievements that we've done
without, you know, eyes glassingover or whatnot, and just like
data, stuff is just not a sexytopic to talk about.
They just assume that thingswere et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera, Right, and part of it.
And I want to go back to.
I want to go back to somethingthat I said earlier, which is,
(30:55):
you know, if you've worked inmarketing ops for any amount of
time, you know there might havebeen thoughts that come through
your mind that are like, well, Ican't read their mind Right,
and you could be speaking ofpeople that you are, you know,
collaborating with your businesspartners, your stakeholders.
We can't read minds Right.
The assumption is that we can,but we cannot, and the same goes
(31:16):
for the people that need tohave that visibility they can't
read our minds.
So if there's something like,wow, I just used I don't know
Ringlead to merge 20,000duplicate contacts and now I've
cleaned up our database and nowwe are, you know, 15% below our
allocated contract maximum, asopposed to almost hitting the
(31:37):
max, those types of thingsshould be communicated, and it
doesn't have to be this formalpresentation.
It never has to be.
I just am a huge believer of sayit when it happens.
If you have a success, howeversmall it may be, there's no
issue to communicate that out,Whether it be a quick one-liner
email, a Slack message, a Teamsmessage, or if you want to send
(31:59):
it to a wider audience.
I'm always and you want it tobe quick create a chatter group
on Salesforce, right, If you'rea Salesforce user, and just
blast it in there, right.
I do not feel that people inmarketing ops and it could just
be, I don't know what it is LikeI I've been guilty of it too
Earlier in my career is like wedon't want to celebrate these
(32:20):
successes and then later on downthe line we then say well,
nobody knows what we do.
Well, we didn't also tellanybody.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Well, and I think it's, it's interesting.
Um, cause we don't?
I think you're right Cause wedon't celebrate our success?
Successes because there's thisthread.
I've already used the termheroics.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Right, I think we enjoy being the hero and getting
something over the line andenabling it, but not, and it
didn't, and just assuming peoplewill recognize that it was
heroics, not just the normallike this is what, how it should
work every time I feel like Ialmost feel like the better
something works, the harder itis to get that recognition,
(32:59):
because we live in a systemwhere we expect it to work, we
expect it to function the wayit's supposed to function and we
don't pay attention to itunless something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, I'm with you, especially as a leader, I try to
share even small wins, likethings that my team would do
right.
Look at this, and this is whatit but it's.
I tried to do it in as much asI could in a context that would
resonate with the audience.
I was sending it to right.
This was the impact that'sgoing to help or impact your
team or your group's ability.
(33:31):
Just one little thing you saidthat, like all this data stuff
is not sexy.
I said I was pitching the ideathat we needed to allocate some
team resources towards datacleansing.
On a thing I said until I toldmy boss at the time I was like
this is not sexy stuff, but it'slike it's gonna pay dividends
down the road.
She's like no, it's sexy stuff.
I was like yes, yes I thinkit's just.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
I'm just saying, like the audience, not right, yeah,
but I like so my is like I.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So I think this is the other part right.
I think we make.
You were kind of hinting atthis, naomi.
I think we make assumptionsabout, well, that we can't read
their minds, but it's like alsoassuming that they may or may
not believe that I didn't thinkshe would believe that it was
sexy or useful, but she did.
Would believe that it was sexyor useful, but she did.
(34:20):
And so I thought I had a muchbigger challenge ahead of me,
trying to convince that this ishow we should allocate resources
and like, just like, just goingout there and just putting it
out there.
It invalidated my assumption,which was, in this case, was a
good thing, yeah, right.
So I think that's the otherthing is like be willing to, to
(34:41):
talk about what you do or whatyour ideas are, and you may get
shot down.
It doesn't mean you're going toget everything you want.
I mean that's unlikely for justabout anybody, but you don't
get a chance if you don't try.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, I think I think what's?
I think what's fun about, youknow and the word opportunity
came up in this discussionearlier like this, this
discussion has brought up a lotof opportunity, and I think our
opportunity is to go, uh, usethe sort of unique skills that
(35:18):
we all seem to have in thismarketing operations role to do
exactly what the two of you aretalking about right Communicate,
share the art of the possiblein a way that doesn't say you
want to necessarily own thestrategy, but really just say,
(35:38):
hey, I want everybody to seewhat I can see, because I know
I've had multiple firsthandexperiences where I've been
working with a VP ofcommunications who has a couple
of ideas and I was like, oh,yeah, we could do this.
And they went, whoa, really, Ihad no idea, right, if literally
all we did was like act as Idon't know, our own little AEs
(36:04):
internally for the products thatwe have, just to say, hey, I'm
going to demo what our tools cando, someone else, come up with
some ideas.
Let me show you what the art ofthe possible looks like within
our stack today and if you'vegot questions about whether or
not we can do something afterthis.
I'll tell you if it's doablenow or if we need to build in
some other infrastructure to beable to do something different.
(36:25):
Right, whether that'scollecting new data or hitting a
new market, or whatever.
It is right.
But it's like I think youropportunity in the role of the
marketing department, uh, and,and really the rest of the
organization on Coda market, isto say I want to show all of the
(36:45):
organization the art of thepossible and try to bring you as
far along into my world as Ican so that you know as much of
the limitations that we're upagainst as possible without
having to be an expert.
Right, and?
And and I think I think thatthat's a really, really unique
opportunity for us to to seizein this idea of, like, defining
(37:08):
the role of marketing operationsand trying to protect it a
little bit so that it doesn'tget handed a bunch of stuff and
suddenly you're not likeaccidentally stepping into a
totally new world of of rolesand responsibilities that
perhaps you didn't intend to gointo, and then it creates
clarity for the rest of theorganization on.
(37:29):
I need that type of person bymy side, cause I can't possibly
know every single thing that wehave at our fingertips to go to
market.
I want them right next to me.
Whether that's a CMO or a VP ordirector of demand gen, it
doesn't matter, right?
I think?
I think that's a beautiful likerelationship and synergy that
(37:50):
you can have in partnership withyour marketing organization.
Does that make you a marketer?
Marketing organization Doesthat make you a marketer?
Maybe, but I think marketingoperations needs to continue to
fight for what its value is, anda lot of that to your point,
both of you is aboutcommunication and then
(38:10):
definition as well.
Right, I just don't want it toget lost in the throes of yeah,
that's just marketing.
Yeah, so I don't know, I have alot more that I want to say on
it, but I'm sort of like holdingcause.
We're going to do a sessionnext week in an open forum.
I hope the two of you can join.
Uh, this episode will probablygo live a couple of days before
that actually happens.
(38:30):
Um, and then at Mopsapalooza,I'll probably share a bit more
as I round out my thoughts fromthe rest of the community, you
know, on sort of absorbing whatI'm hearing from everybody and
saying like, hey, like this iskind of what I, what I think and
what, what maybe we all couldget behind.
So I'll share more about that.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
I'm thinking like celebrity deathmatch at
Mopsapalooza.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, I think we will do a debate.
I think we're probably going tobring in Amber Selins, stephen
Stouffer, find a couple more.
We might just put a couple offolks on stage and just do a
discussion about it.
So it should be fun, but Idon't know.
I'm excited for what's beenhappening in this conversation
(39:21):
so far and I think getting achance to just sit down with the
two of you and talk about it islike again opened up, you know,
more, more opportunity for usto try to figure out the way
forward.
You know, hartman, you startedwith I rolled my eyes and now
you're like well, okay, I kindof see what you're saying, you
know.
So it's good, right, nice,maybe.
(39:43):
Maybe you're still thinking I'mrolling my eyes.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I want someone in sales ops to ask is sales ops
sales and should they get?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
commissioned.
Yeah, yeah, that would be aninteresting one.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Someone will do it.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Sales leaders would be like F.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
no, you didn't help me Close that deal.
You know how hard I've worked.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
You called me out that my pipeline was bullshit,
right.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Instead, you saw that I was sandbagging it.
I was keeping a couple of dealsto myself and then, last minute
, yeah, anyway, interestingstuff.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
I think you're right.
Yes, I did.
You did have an eye roll moment, for sure.
At the same time, I do thinkit's been interesting that it's
taken off like it has and thatit's spawning these other
conversations.
So I think it's a good thing,said like speak up, talk about
(40:48):
things you're doing and why itmatters in the context of the,
the business and, uh, helping to, to try to get people to bridge
across these teams, to to, tobe able to share the art of the
possible and, you know, learnfrom each other and understand
how your business works.
I think that would be a win,right?
Whether or not that helpsdefine what is marketing ops.
(41:11):
That could be a byproduct.
To me, it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah, yeah.
I think what's exciting aboutall of this for me, as we kind
of round out this episode, is Ithink it's giving me a little
bit more clarity on what itcould mean to be a certified
marketing operationsprofessional, because a lot of
the inputs from people, uh, arepointing to very clear signals
(41:40):
about what matters in this role.
And then, um, and then beyondthat, the thing that I've been
saying, probably on repeatlately, definitely for at least
the last year, is um, there, Idon't believe today there is
(42:01):
anybody that is trusted to buildthe go-to-market tech stack of
the future.
Right, like I don't.
I don't think it's a CTO and Idon't think it's a CIO.
Like if, if a CEO was liketrying to figure out how to
build the tech stack that I needto be able to bring products
and services to market.
It's this mishmash of, well,I've got salespeople all buying
(42:23):
tools and marketing peoplebuying tools and all this stuff.
And as we move into this worldof a data-first, data first,
data warehouse sort of centricmodel, which we're starting to
see more of like, whoseresponsibility is it to be?
That chief marketing architect,that chief martech right
architect person?
(42:43):
I think marketing operations isis absolutely the best suited
to be able to slide in and beseen as that strategic architect
for how you go to market withmodern marketing tools and sales
tools and all that stuff.
And so a lot of this for me isabout like, don't get it lost in
(43:07):
just the mix of marketing.
Don't get it lost in just themix of marketing.
Start realizing how criticalthese types of people are to an
organization, because if it'sjust in the middle of marketing,
we will continue to see therounds of layoffs and then
suddenly organizations go, ohshit, I don't know how any of
this stuff works.
And now we've got to start overand blow it all up, right?
(43:28):
So that's, that's kind of whereI think I'll leave it for now.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, I think, yeah, this has been an interesting
conversation.
It didn't go, I think, the wayI even expected this
conversation to go, so, but nota bad thing, it's like, but it's
, um, I always learn a littlebit something talking to you too
, so thank you, it's fun.
Yeah, it's fun.
All right, are we done?
(43:54):
Are we done with this topic forfor now, at least for today,
until next week, and then?
Speaker 3 (43:59):
tomorrow, cause you know Tao and uptempo and uh
whatever, the huddle is hostinga session, so I'll be on that.
Yeah, I probably won't speakvery much on it, I'll be honest,
because I just want everybodyelse to speak.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, so by the time this gets out there, it will
have been like last week orsomething.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Or so, so it wouldn't matter anyway.
Well good, well, always funwhen we get together.
As I said, I always enjoy that.
It's kind of how this allstarted, so it's like old times
Anyway.
So thank you for bringing thatidea and putting it out there
for the community, mike.
Thanks, naomi, for all yourinsights.
I always learn from you.
(44:36):
That's great.
Thanks to the community and toall of our listeners who are out
there, naomi, mike or me,through LinkedIn or through the
marketingopscom Slack or email,if you have it.
(44:58):
Until next time, we'll talk toyou later.
Bye, bye, everybody, byeeveryone.
Hello and welcome to another episode of OpsCast
brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by the
Mobepros.
I'm your host today, joined bymy counterparts, my amigos Naomi
, liu, the three amigos thethree amigos episode.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We don't need no stinking badges.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Did we get that reference?
No, no, no, no, all right, I'mold, thanks.
I'm seeing all these posts onlike not LinkedIn social media
stuff about movies that came outwhen I was like in high school
and it's like depressing andlike awesome at the same time
because there were great moviesback then, but anyway, so there
(00:39):
you go, that's fun, yeah, yeah,like some kind of wonderful.
If you haven't seen that movie,go see it.
It's great.
Probably should.
Yeah, okay, so we are gatheredhere today because Mike kicked
off like this firestorm of likeonline chatter, including like
(01:03):
people getting together to talkabout it in like live sessions
and things like that, and Iyou'll have to correct me if I
get it wrong, mike, but I thinkthe question was simply is
marketing ops marketing right?
I think I think that was thegist of the question.
There was a little more contextfor it and you can provide more
.
But and I and when I, when Isaw it, I was like kind of
eye-rolled.
(01:23):
Honestly I was.
I was like here he goes again,right, just trying to be
provocative, like I don'tactually get the question.
So like, am I about right?
Is that what it was?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
No, I wasn't trying to be provocative.
I really don't like to stir upthe pot.
To be honest with you, I don'tlike controversy has it been
controversial?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I don't feel like it's been controversial?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
no, it's actually been.
It's.
It's been nice that people haverecognized that the post was
not me putting a stake in theground.
It was more just like it was astatement and a someone.
Tell me what their thoughts areon this, because I've talked
about it a lot with like markcirkin and a number of others
before right when, when we firstgot the community going, uh,
mark was like, do marketing opspeople view themselves as
(02:10):
marketers?
And I was like I think some doand I think some don't.
Uh, and, and that was two years, two plus years ago now Um, and
and that statement, uh, that Iposted, it was, it was, it was
literally a five-word post thathas now I don't know if it's
gone viral, but it's definitelygone a number of places.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Uh, I'd say that's been like at least in our world,
right?
That's pretty viral, right?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
yeah, I think many, many people yeah, there's been a
minimum of six that I'm awareof that have, like, put their
own thoughts out into the worldabout it, which is which is
great, um, but the post was um,is marketing ops or marketing
ops isn't marketing periodthoughts, and that was it.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
And was that you also stating your stance as well?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
No, no, it wasn't.
Um, and it was something thatwas said out loud.
Um, in in a discussion that Iwas a part of, uh, sometime in
the last like three or four,like three or four weeks roughly
, and um, and so I, just on awhim, I was like, well, let's
see what happens.
(03:20):
I did, I could never haveimagined that it would turn into
what it's turned into now.
So, yeah, um, it's been reallyreally interesting to see
people's take on that.
But I don't know, like hartman,you I rolled, you're like, is
that even a question?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
yeah, I mean, I think I like, I seriously, I was like
I don't, like I really justlike I don't get the point of
the question.
At the same time, I was like Idon't think there's really it's
not a binary, there's not asimple answer to that question.
It's one of those ones that inmy mind, it's the kind of thing.
It requires nuance and, yes, Ithink a lot of the time I think
(04:02):
of marketing, ops as beingmarketing.
I think of myself as being morein marketing than in in
technology, I guess, for lack ofa better term, but um, uh, on
the other hand, I also think ofmyself as an ops and change and
like kind of in the in, in themiddle of a lot of different
things, which is part of why Ilike those kinds of roles.
(04:26):
But I just didn't like, I waslike this is not the kind of
question you go yes or no, andand I, and I think it was
phrased that way, and so there'sa part of me that is both
surprised and not surprisedabout the reaction, cause I
think the way it was set up andit's been, I truthfully I
haven't really kept up with the,the, the reactions in detail.
(04:47):
So if either of you have anyinsights and I this is where I
should have done a little moreresearch on my own, like pulled
up some of those posts but likeI don't know what, the kind of
the if there's a you know one ortwo or three sort of consistent
themes that people are in termsof the way that that gets
answered, that are, you know,the majority, or if there's just
(05:09):
a lot of different views yeah,yeah, there's been.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
There's been a lot, naomi.
What are your thoughts?
I think, I think you texted me.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yes, I texted you right away, actually yeah, naomi
, not wanting to put her, youknow, put a stake in the ground
publicly no, I think she just no, she just likes to like
immediately, like go straight tome and just be like exactly, I
mean just go straight to thesource or I'm like no, I, I, I
do not feel that, uh, marketingops is marketing, because, you
(05:45):
know, I feel that we are muchmore concerned with how
marketing gets done than what isbeing said, and that might be
an unpopular opinion or peoplemay resonate with that, and I do
feel that it believe that I dofeel, or I believe that a lot of
it can depend on two thingswhere someone is in their
(06:06):
marketing ops career and if theywork, have traditionally worked
for maybe an organization thathas had less resources, so they
are doing and wearing multiplehats, and that line between ops
and marketing gets blurred right.
So not only are you demand gen,but you're also copywriting or
working with the agencies tofigure out.
(06:28):
You know cadences aroundmarketing and go to market
campaigns and what does thatlook like and the strategy.
Then those lines can becomeblurred.
But I think someone had said inthe comments on your post, mike
, that you know is sales ops,sales, yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I asked that question as a follow up.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, sales ops is not and I believe I texted that
to you too before I went andread a lot of the comments and
the folks that I work with insales ops.
You could not convince them tothen go and try and sell to a
customer Like it's completelydifferent.
So why is marketing ops anydifference?
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, those are my two cents.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, no I love it, canadian sense to Canadian sense
.
Well, we don't actually havesense anymore because we got rid
of the pennies, so it rounds upto five, I guess.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh well, those are your, those are your two nickels
.
Um, no, I, I mean I I've sharedthis now a couple of times and
and follow up, uh, eitherresponses to to folks or or just
reposting it again, um, in adifferent way.
I'm not convinced one way orthe other and I think I think
(07:43):
that is because of the nuance ofwhere the role sits in, in a
sort of life cycle of both thepractitioner and the company.
Um, I think my audience hasgrown on LinkedIn, so I feel
comfortable that I get to seenow a broader range of responses
(08:04):
from industry verticals andsizes of organizations.
People have worked at largerand smaller organizations.
I think that wouldn't have beentrue three, um, three, four or
five years ago when I was reallyI'm just, I come, as a lot of
our listeners know, I come fromthe startup world, so marketing
ops is like very much a planfrom me.
(08:27):
I'm very much a marketer in inthe startup lands.
Uh, because you know, yeah, youhave to wear lots of hats and
you're sort of, uh, you're allplaying on a team and trying to
figure out how to go to marketand come up with campaigns and
strategies and all that otherstuff.
Um, and then I think there'sdefinitely opportunity in upper,
(08:48):
larger organizations, uh sortof up market that you start to
fall away a little bit from fromlike marketing quote, unquote
from the.
You know, as I do my air quotesthere from the perspective of
what would be considered thetraditional definition of
marketing.
And I and I think I postedabout that in a followup comment
(09:08):
too right, like the traditionaldefinition of marketing,
marketing ops doesn't fit that.
Right, and those that mean thatthe definition of marketing,
marketing ops doesn't fit thatRight, and it doesn't mean that
the definition of marketingshouldn't adapt and change
because modern marketing hasevolved.
You know, to Mark Serkin'spoint, like modern marketing
can't be done pretty muchwithout any form of technology
these days and therefore theargument is marketing ops is
(09:29):
marketing, it's a core componentof it.
You just can't go to marketanymore and I in fact support
that at the same time.
Right, like I wrote a post acouple of weeks back that said
if you are an enterprisego-to-market executive and you
don't understand just the bareminimum level of the art of the
possible with the tools you'reusing, you shouldn't be in your
(09:52):
job.
Like it doesn't mean you haveto know how to integrate them,
run data, object orientation.
You don't have to know the insand outs of exactly how the tool
works and functions, but youshould know the art of the
possible with the tool and thefact that it can integrate with
other things and it can get datafrom other places so you can
ask better questions and get thehelp that you need from the
technology.
And so I agree right, like toan extent I agree to your point,
(10:17):
naomi.
No, I don't think sales ops issales.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Like.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I don't think you can put somebody in a position to
go from a sales ops role andjust to become a seller.
I think you can go the otherdirection.
You could be a seller and havelearned some things and been
like hey, I actually really likesort of the other parts of this
process better.
I want to help organize thechaos because I'm living the
(10:42):
life Right, but I think if youstarted more in a technical
operations background and you'venever got on a discovery call
or done a contract ornegotiation of any kind, those
are very wildly different skillsets.
You know a contract or anegotiation of any kind.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Those are very wildly different skill sets in my
opinion.
Yeah, but I mean I'll disagreewith you on the point that I
don't think it would be ascommon.
At the same time, I think it isdefinitely possible, because
I'm a big believer that a lot ofpeople can be.
you know, if they have the rightenvironment, the right kind of
coaching or teaching or whatever, and then their own desire to
(11:17):
learn, they could learn theseother skills.
It's not all that muchdifferent to me than someone who
wants to be an individualcontributor, moving to a manager
role, which requires acompletely different set of
skill sets to be effective atthat, and I truly believe that
that is a learnable thing.
It doesn't mean it's easy ornatural even, but it's doable.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, so that's my way.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know that that can be said of pretty much
anything.
Right, like all things aredoable, right, you can learn.
You can learn new skills.
It might not be the naturalpath, but you can.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You could do it but you can, you could do it right,
yeah, and so what's interestingso interesting to me and like,
the timing of when this came out.
So we're recording this right inthe middle of august of 2024,
so just for references, likethis post came out what a week
ago or something that startedall up right around that time I
recorded an episode for with alischwinke on one of her podcasts
(12:13):
and the genesis of thatactually was me kind of riffing
with her online about like I getreally like I see a lot of
people in marketing ops andmarketing whining, I guess is
the best way to put it rightabout their peers in other teams
(12:33):
.
So if you're marketing ops,you're whining about marketing
or you're worrying about salesops and marketers whining about
sales, people in sdr like, andit really, it really rubs me the
wrong way because I think, yes,there's probably some valid
things where it's frustrating,but whining about it, I don't
think, solves the problem.
(12:53):
And so when you, when you askthat question like the other
part that was going through mybrain when it was- like I was in
the middle of like.
We didn't end up.
That's not how the trajectoryof the podcast episode went.
We kind of went.
It was part of it.
Right, this idea of likeunderstanding what other people
do is an important, valuableskill to understand.
If you're in marketing, youdon't understand how you
actually make money as a companyand how your team sell and what
(13:17):
the interactions are reallylike with their prospects and
customers.
You should learn those things.
You should try to do that, andthat will make you a better
marketer.
It will make you a bettermarketing person.
It will just give you a betterframework for understanding what
is important to do when, and soit feeds into being able to
make the trade-off decisionsthat come inevitably with any
role, especially, I think, theseops roles.
(13:38):
So like for me, this idea oflike adding another thing that
is potentially driving a wedgebetween marketing and marketing
ops, like just it.
I think that's my my if I'mhonest about my reaction like
that part is like I'm gettingthis like.
I really don't like that.
It's even a question yeah, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
That's why I asked for thoughts.
It's good, yeah I don't know so.
So here's the other thing, likewould would you consider this
truth?
Marketing ops?
I'm going to try to find thewords for it because I don't
(14:18):
have it like written down orwell thought out.
So forgive me, listeners, butI'm asking the two of you would
you say that it's a truestatement that marketing ops is
not well defined and runs therisk of taking on work that they
shouldn't take on?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yes, I think that traditionally, that has always
been a point, a topic ofconversation, right.
What functions roll up undermarketing operations?
I think it's the word marketingthat throws a bit of a um.
That is the wild card there.
(15:04):
Right, and I've kind of I'vesaid this before in in other
podcasts and in other sessionsthat I actually don't like the
word marketing and marketingoperations, because there's a
lot of things that a marketingops team does that is outside of
marketing.
A lot of it is around analytics, a lot of it is around data
(15:28):
hygiene, data privacy laws.
We also support internalprocesses.
You can also do things likeemployee onboarding, internal it
notices, back office stuff workreally heavily with sales
operations.
I almost think that the wordmarketing pigeonholes the
(15:50):
function and what it should be.
I don't know, is it a revenueops?
Is it a business ops?
Is it, you know, x Y, z it's.
I feel like that word gives ita.
It influences how people thinkabout the role, right?
So you think marketing, youthink demand gen, you think
content creation, you thinklanding pages, forums, emails,
(16:12):
events and all of that stuff.
Right, we are the underlyingsupport layer.
But you know, I, you know, andbefore we started recording this
.
I was thinking like if therewas a, for example, if there was
someone who worked in marketingops and a role came up and it
was for something like you know,field marketer, right?
So you're doing field marketing, you're running events, you're
coordinating, you know, openhouses for your company, you're
(16:35):
coordinating specific outreach,working with agencies to do
Google ads, paid ads, all ofthat stuff Is that something
that a traditional marketing opsperson would apply for?
And vice versa, somebody whodoes field marketing?
Would they try to get intomarketing ops, maybe, if that's
what the direction that theywanted to go?
But if your career trajectoryis traditional marketing,
there's not a lot of overlapthere.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I think it's interesting.
You bring a point up that Ihadn't thought about by having
the word marketing.
So field marketing marketing isafter field right, exactly.
Whereas marketing ops is before, and it almost.
I think what you're saying isthat, whether intentional or not
, it makes it feel like it'ssubordinate to other parts of
(17:17):
marketing as opposed to a, anequal component.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I don't know you have like content marketing, event
marketing, field marketing,those are all very clear.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Right Yep.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
This is why I asked the question the way that I did
it, because as a community Imean you name it Daryl Alfonso,
jess Cow, naomi, michael,courtney McCara, sarah McNamara,
right, we've all talked abouthow you need to be seen as
(17:56):
strategic, you need to be seenas a critical sort of important
sort of lifeblood of a companyand all of these things, and
we've often articulated in manyways, sometimes very directly,
that it needs to have more of asort of definition.
And that was a lot of whatstarted in this community, like
(18:16):
a lot of our conversations rightat the beginning of this Mo
pros journey, and what we'vebecome was around this idea of
like, well, what the fuck ismarketing us?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, I mean it's like one of our best episodes we
ever did.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, right, and it's because people are trying to
define the role.
Now, at the same time, you'vegot all the thought leaders
Stephen Stouffer, sarah McNamara, everybody else, myself
included.
We're also, at the same time,saying, well, it is kind of
marketing and it's like are yougrasping at the desire to want
(18:53):
to feel noticed, at the desireto want to feel noticed?
Are you grasping at the desireto want to feel a part of
something that's an importantfactor in an organization?
Like, what is it that's makingyou think that you want to go
against creating betterdefinition and solidifying what
marketing ops is and the valueto an organization by diluting
it, to say that it is justbroadly marketing value to an
(19:14):
organization by diluting it, tosay that it is just broadly
marketing.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
So I have a thought on that and I feel right it's
when you're talking about roles,right?
So I think strategy versusexecution, right?
So traditional marketing, fieldmarketing they're often
involved in setting things likethe strategy, defining target
audiences, creating content,knowing what resonates with the
customers, right?
(19:42):
Marketing ops, it's more aboutthe execution and I think those
of us who have worked in ops fora significant amount of time,
at some point you will have agripe or a complaint about oh,
why didn't the team bring us inearlier?
Why did they define?
this entire campaign and thengive it to us to build.
Like you know, architects, likethe architects, are building
(20:02):
these plans but then us, as thebuilders, we're looking at them
like this doesn't make sense, orwe can't do this, we don't have
the tools to do this, or youknow, we're missing this piece
of the puzzle and going back tothem and saying, hey, like we
actually can't do this.
And you know, that's one of thethings that bothers me a lot,
because I never want to say likeI will try to find ways to
(20:22):
creatively implement somethingthat a business partner or
stakeholder wants to do before Iwill say, yeah, we can't do
this.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And you should have invited us into the conversation
earlier and we could havesteered the direction in a
different path or told you rightfrom the beginning that this
isn't going to work Right, andthat could be also one of the
reasons.
It's like we want to beinvolved but we also don't, if
that makes sense.
Like we want to be involved inthe conversation but we also
(20:53):
don't want to be responsible fordefining the messaging, for
example.
Well, this gets back to my.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
This is where I was saying like this, this it makes
it easier to whine and complainabout those other teams when
you're not involved with thatstuff up front.
You know, and I think that'strue, and I and I think this is
where your opportunity should beor what you should be doing if
you need to find opportunitieslike that, where you get those
(21:21):
requests and they're late andmaybe you go through some heroic
stuff and you get them close towhat they wanted to achieve
from a go-to-market activitystandpoint or tactic or whatever
it is achieve from ago-to-market activity standpoint
or tactic or whatever it is andthen you have to take that
opportunity to go back and sayhere's what I think if it
(21:47):
brought me in at this point, wecould have helped you go faster.
We could have tried to buildsomething more robust or
whatever you want to call it,and I think there's.
So, rather than justcomplaining or whining about it,
I would encourage people totake those opportunities, to not
point fingers.
Right, there's, there's a wayto do this that you have to like
, learn to do and talk about.
Here's how I think we couldhave done this better if we had
(22:08):
worked together.
I mean the other part for methat I see is a challenge for
most marketing ops folks isbecause maybe you brought up
things like data quality andefficiency and things like this,
like those are things that arethey have.
They have at least twochallenges right they're hard to
quantify in terms of theirimpact and then the secondly,
(22:31):
they're not highly visible on aregular basis.
Now some of the symptoms ofthem, like, if you have poor
data quality, you get to thispoint where I'm trying to build
a segmentation to target for anaudience and I can't do it.
It takes me a week to do itbecause our data is crap.
And if we had done the work upfront to try to get our data
consistent and clean so that wecould reliably just like here's
(22:53):
our segment, it's done in hours,kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
There's, there's the work up front piece, and then
there's what Naomi was saying,right, right.
So tell me what you want to tryto be able to target so I can
set you up.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I do think it's quantifiable in the sense that
you know a lot of the systemsthat are holding these data is
it's not just an open end offree-for-all that you can just
store millions and bajillions ofrecords, right?
So there are.
You know, a lot of them arebased on how many records you
have in your system, likeMarketo, right, and in terms of
quality, if you are emailing toa list and your deliverability
(23:28):
rate or your opens or click rateis in the garbage, if you clean
up that list and are like, okay, well, we're just going to
remove people that are obviouslybouncing, look malformed, they
haven't opted in or haven'tengaged and done anything with
us in the last 12 months, Likethose, I think those things are
already quantifiable.
It just really depends on whatyou're looking at.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So the quantifiable part, I think, is maybe easier.
I think the visibility part isharder, because you know the ceo
, the cmo, the other c-suite,like other departments sales
when an email goes out or an adgets out or web, the landing
page is like that's highlyvisible, like people know it,
they see it.
They don't see the stuff behindit that made it happen and then
(24:10):
.
But is it because?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
you're not telling them.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Right.
So if you tell them, so, ifyou're going through these
heroics and getting annoyed andpissed off, that should be your
signal that you are part of theproblem.
You're enabling that abilityand you're undermining your own
perception of you or your teamas being potentially strategic
(24:34):
partners.
But it also requires you tounderstand what they're trying
to achieve.
Right, how does the companymake money?
How do we?
How do we?
What helps us win clients orcustomers?
What doesn't?
Right and understanding, likebeing able to then provide
feedback on data.
This is where you should have astrength and that you have
access to data.
(24:54):
When we do this kind of email tothis kind of audience, it's
shit, right.
But when we do it this way which, by the way, is an easier way
like, say, go from highlydesigned to text-based right,
with a sense from just anexample that has been true for
me everywhere I've been for thelast 10, 15 years right, do,
simple, text-based email and ittends to perform better in like
(25:15):
all measurable things,text-based email, and it tends
to perform better in like allmeasurable things, right, right
and like.
That's the kind of input you canprovide because, by the way,
doing that is way easier thanbuilding out a highly designed
email and I get like branding isimportant and like so there's a
, there's a balance, and that'smy point, like it's not a simple
a or b, it's there's nuance andthat, and I think you need to
(25:37):
like try to build that abilityto discern what is there doing,
what's going to be mostimpactful for this particular
business, and how can I providevalue back to the organization
to help steer the strategy tothe point where I eventually get
pulled in earlier and earn theright to that.
Like.
Just assuming you should havethe right to do that is, I think
, setting yourself up for justbeing frustrated a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, and so off my soapbox now.
No, it's great, this is allgreat.
Um, so I think you know, justjust kind of going back into
this idea of like what?
What are we grasping at Right?
I'm not.
I'm not saying that we'regrasping at air, grasping at
straws or anything like that.
I think there are importantthings that Steven and Sarah and
(26:21):
these other folks are sayingthat it is marketing, that it's
a part of marketing, that itshould be seen as strategic and
all this other stuff.
I totally agree with all ofthose sentiments.
But I think there's thedefinition of your roles and
responsibilities need to beclear enough that an
organization at the top board,executive and everybody else can
(26:43):
understand your strategic valueto the process of go to market.
And I think it's perfectly okayfor you to be involved in a
conversation at an earlier partof the planning phase, not to be
seen as the strategist who'sgoing to come up with the plan,
but to be seen as an advisor tosay here, let me show you what
(27:05):
we have in terms of the art ofthe possible.
I want to hear from you what itis that you're trying to do,
because I can either enable itor find the way to enable that
with things that we don't havein place today.
But you have to.
I don't think have to is astrong word.
I think we are.
(27:26):
I'll just speak from my ownexperience.
Actually, I found it a bitstressful to be speaking up
about potential impacts to theorganization's go-to-market plan
, because my job wasn't to bethe go-to-market strategist at
(27:46):
Mavenlink, for example.
I wasn't the person coming upwith demand gen campaigns.
That was not my responsibility.
Sure, I had ideas that I couldhave offered up.
And my boss at the time saidyou have ideas, you should speak
up.
Right, you should speak up more.
And it's this interestingbalance that we have visibility
(28:07):
into this whole funnel, right,we sort of have an idea of
what's working and what's not.
And when I said earlier, youdon't need the extra work, right
?
Sometimes you don't want toraise your hand and say, oh, I
have this idea for ago-to-market whatever, whatever,
right, like you don'tnecessarily want to do that,
(28:27):
because you're like, I have abacklog the size of Texas.
You know, I don't want tobecome the person that now needs
to lead the charge on strategy,right, but I do want to be the
person that can help enable usto go faster, support the vision
and build the ecosystem for youto get visibility into what's
working and what's not.
Do I have to make a decisionmyself on what's working or
(28:50):
what's not?
I can give you my opinion.
I've laid out the foundation foryou to collect the data and
analyze it.
I can analyze it, too, with you, but as a strategist for those
that keep touting that we aremarketing and we should be seen
as strategic and all this otherstuff I think it's one coin and
(29:12):
you're one side of that coin andyou have to be sort of careful
about.
Well, how far away from whatwe're all fighting hard to
figure out, which is thedefinition of marketing
operations, how far away fromthat do you want to get to
becoming this other type of role?
Right, and that's why I askedthe question, because at the end
(29:33):
of the day, it's aboutprotecting the role so that it
doesn't get lost in the mix ofwell, can't Jane do what Mike
does?
Yeah, I mean, they're allmarketing right.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
So you're getting to something where, like, I just
steamrolled right over Naomi, uhwhere she made a point, uh, as
I was on my rant about alsomaking sure that we talk about
what we do.
So I think that's an importantthing and, naomi, I think you do
a good job of that.
I always am impressed at howyou do that.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, I mean, I often will get comments from folks
who are looking for a little bitof mentorship around.
How do they communicate theirachievements to senior
leadership or those who arereally making the decisions and
having visibility?
And you know a lot of thecomplaints are around.
Hey, you know, my boss, or myboss's boss, or the company,
(30:32):
doesn't really know what I doand it's frustrating and I'm
unable to vocalize all of theachievements that we've done
without, you know, eyes glassingover or whatnot, and just like
data, stuff is just not a sexytopic to talk about.
They just assume that thingswere et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera, Right, and part of it.
And I want to go back to.
I want to go back to somethingthat I said earlier, which is,
(30:55):
you know, if you've worked inmarketing ops for any amount of
time, you know there might havebeen thoughts that come through
your mind that are like, well, Ican't read their mind Right,
and you could be speaking ofpeople that you are, you know,
collaborating with your businesspartners, your stakeholders.
We can't read minds Right.
The assumption is that we can,but we cannot, and the same goes
(31:16):
for the people that need tohave that visibility they can't
read our minds.
So if there's something like,wow, I just used I don't know
Ringlead to merge 20,000duplicate contacts and now I've
cleaned up our database and nowwe are, you know, 15% below our
allocated contract maximum, asopposed to almost hitting the
(31:37):
max, those types of thingsshould be communicated, and it
doesn't have to be this formalpresentation.
It never has to be.
I just am a huge believer of sayit when it happens.
If you have a success, howeversmall it may be, there's no
issue to communicate that out,Whether it be a quick one-liner
email, a Slack message, a Teamsmessage, or if you want to send
(31:59):
it to a wider audience.
I'm always and you want it tobe quick create a chatter group
on Salesforce, right, If you'rea Salesforce user, and just
blast it in there, right.
I do not feel that people inmarketing ops and it could just
be, I don't know what it is LikeI I've been guilty of it too
Earlier in my career is like wedon't want to celebrate these
(32:20):
successes and then later on downthe line we then say well,
nobody knows what we do.
Well, we didn't also tellanybody.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Well, and I think it's, it's interesting.
Um, cause we don't?
I think you're right Cause wedon't celebrate our success?
Successes because there's thisthread.
I've already used the termheroics.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Right, I think we enjoy being the hero and getting
something over the line andenabling it, but not, and it
didn't, and just assuming peoplewill recognize that it was
heroics, not just the normallike this is what, how it should
work every time I feel like Ialmost feel like the better
something works, the harder itis to get that recognition,
(32:59):
because we live in a systemwhere we expect it to work, we
expect it to function the wayit's supposed to function and we
don't pay attention to itunless something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, I'm with you, especially as a leader, I try to
share even small wins, likethings that my team would do
right.
Look at this, and this is whatit but it's.
I tried to do it in as much asI could in a context that would
resonate with the audience.
I was sending it to right.
This was the impact that'sgoing to help or impact your
team or your group's ability.
(33:31):
Just one little thing you saidthat, like all this data stuff
is not sexy.
I said I was pitching the ideathat we needed to allocate some
team resources towards datacleansing.
On a thing I said until I toldmy boss at the time I was like
this is not sexy stuff, but it'slike it's gonna pay dividends
down the road.
She's like no, it's sexy stuff.
I was like yes, yes I thinkit's just.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
I'm just saying, like the audience, not right, yeah,
but I like so my is like I.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So I think this is the other part right.
I think we make.
You were kind of hinting atthis, naomi.
I think we make assumptionsabout, well, that we can't read
their minds, but it's like alsoassuming that they may or may
not believe that I didn't thinkshe would believe that it was
sexy or useful, but she did.
Would believe that it was sexyor useful, but she did.
(34:20):
And so I thought I had a muchbigger challenge ahead of me,
trying to convince that this ishow we should allocate resources
and like, just like, just goingout there and just putting it
out there.
It invalidated my assumption,which was, in this case, was a
good thing, yeah, right.
So I think that's the otherthing is like be willing to, to
(34:41):
talk about what you do or whatyour ideas are, and you may get
shot down.
It doesn't mean you're going toget everything you want.
I mean that's unlikely for justabout anybody, but you don't
get a chance if you don't try.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, I think I think what's?
I think what's fun about, youknow and the word opportunity
came up in this discussionearlier like this, this
discussion has brought up a lotof opportunity, and I think our
opportunity is to go, uh, usethe sort of unique skills that
(35:18):
we all seem to have in thismarketing operations role to do
exactly what the two of you aretalking about right Communicate,
share the art of the possiblein a way that doesn't say you
want to necessarily own thestrategy, but really just say,
(35:38):
hey, I want everybody to seewhat I can see, because I know
I've had multiple firsthandexperiences where I've been
working with a VP ofcommunications who has a couple
of ideas and I was like, oh,yeah, we could do this.
And they went, whoa, really, Ihad no idea, right, if literally
all we did was like act as Idon't know, our own little AEs
(36:04):
internally for the products thatwe have, just to say, hey, I'm
going to demo what our tools cando, someone else, come up with
some ideas.
Let me show you what the art ofthe possible looks like within
our stack today and if you'vegot questions about whether or
not we can do something afterthis.
I'll tell you if it's doablenow or if we need to build in
some other infrastructure to beable to do something different.
(36:25):
Right, whether that'scollecting new data or hitting a
new market, or whatever.
It is right.
But it's like I think youropportunity in the role of the
marketing department, uh, and,and really the rest of the
organization on Coda market, isto say I want to show all of the
(36:45):
organization the art of thepossible and try to bring you as
far along into my world as Ican so that you know as much of
the limitations that we're upagainst as possible without
having to be an expert.
Right, and?
And and I think I think thatthat's a really, really unique
opportunity for us to to seizein this idea of, like, defining
(37:08):
the role of marketing operationsand trying to protect it a
little bit so that it doesn'tget handed a bunch of stuff and
suddenly you're not likeaccidentally stepping into a
totally new world of of rolesand responsibilities that
perhaps you didn't intend to gointo, and then it creates
clarity for the rest of theorganization on.
(37:29):
I need that type of person bymy side, cause I can't possibly
know every single thing that wehave at our fingertips to go to
market.
I want them right next to me.
Whether that's a CMO or a VP ordirector of demand gen, it
doesn't matter, right?
I think?
I think that's a beautiful likerelationship and synergy that
(37:50):
you can have in partnership withyour marketing organization.
Does that make you a marketer?
Marketing organization Doesthat make you a marketer?
Maybe, but I think marketingoperations needs to continue to
fight for what its value is, anda lot of that to your point,
both of you is aboutcommunication and then
(38:10):
definition as well.
Right, I just don't want it toget lost in the throes of yeah,
that's just marketing.
Yeah, so I don't know, I have alot more that I want to say on
it, but I'm sort of like holdingcause.
We're going to do a sessionnext week in an open forum.
I hope the two of you can join.
Uh, this episode will probablygo live a couple of days before
that actually happens.
(38:30):
Um, and then at Mopsapalooza,I'll probably share a bit more
as I round out my thoughts fromthe rest of the community, you
know, on sort of absorbing whatI'm hearing from everybody and
saying like, hey, like this iskind of what I, what I think and
what, what maybe we all couldget behind.
So I'll share more about that.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
I'm thinking like celebrity deathmatch at
Mopsapalooza.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, I think we will do a debate.
I think we're probably going tobring in Amber Selins, stephen
Stouffer, find a couple more.
We might just put a couple offolks on stage and just do a
discussion about it.
So it should be fun, but Idon't know.
I'm excited for what's beenhappening in this conversation
(39:21):
so far and I think getting achance to just sit down with the
two of you and talk about it islike again opened up, you know,
more, more opportunity for usto try to figure out the way
forward.
You know, hartman, you startedwith I rolled my eyes and now
you're like well, okay, I kindof see what you're saying, you
know.
So it's good, right, nice,maybe.
(39:43):
Maybe you're still thinking I'mrolling my eyes.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I want someone in sales ops to ask is sales ops
sales and should they get?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
commissioned.
Yeah, yeah, that would be aninteresting one.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Someone will do it.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Sales leaders would be like F.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
no, you didn't help me Close that deal.
You know how hard I've worked.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
You called me out that my pipeline was bullshit,
right.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Instead, you saw that I was sandbagging it.
I was keeping a couple of dealsto myself and then, last minute
, yeah, anyway, interestingstuff.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
I think you're right.
Yes, I did.
You did have an eye roll moment, for sure.
At the same time, I do thinkit's been interesting that it's
taken off like it has and thatit's spawning these other
conversations.
So I think it's a good thing,said like speak up, talk about
(40:48):
things you're doing and why itmatters in the context of the,
the business and, uh, helping to, to try to get people to bridge
across these teams, to to, tobe able to share the art of the
possible and, you know, learnfrom each other and understand
how your business works.
I think that would be a win,right?
Whether or not that helpsdefine what is marketing ops.
(41:11):
That could be a byproduct.
To me, it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah, yeah.
I think what's exciting aboutall of this for me, as we kind
of round out this episode, is Ithink it's giving me a little
bit more clarity on what itcould mean to be a certified
marketing operationsprofessional, because a lot of
the inputs from people, uh, arepointing to very clear signals
(41:40):
about what matters in this role.
And then, um, and then beyondthat, the thing that I've been
saying, probably on repeatlately, definitely for at least
the last year, is um, there, Idon't believe today there is
(42:01):
anybody that is trusted to buildthe go-to-market tech stack of
the future.
Right, like I don't.
I don't think it's a CTO and Idon't think it's a CIO.
Like if, if a CEO was liketrying to figure out how to
build the tech stack that I needto be able to bring products
and services to market.
It's this mishmash of, well,I've got salespeople all buying
(42:23):
tools and marketing peoplebuying tools and all this stuff.
And as we move into this worldof a data-first, data first,
data warehouse sort of centricmodel, which we're starting to
see more of like, whoseresponsibility is it to be?
That chief marketing architect,that chief martech right
architect person?
(42:43):
I think marketing operations isis absolutely the best suited
to be able to slide in and beseen as that strategic architect
for how you go to market withmodern marketing tools and sales
tools and all that stuff.
And so a lot of this for me isabout like, don't get it lost in
(43:07):
just the mix of marketing.
Don't get it lost in just themix of marketing.
Start realizing how criticalthese types of people are to an
organization, because if it'sjust in the middle of marketing,
we will continue to see therounds of layoffs and then
suddenly organizations go, ohshit, I don't know how any of
this stuff works.
And now we've got to start overand blow it all up, right?
(43:28):
So that's, that's kind of whereI think I'll leave it for now.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, I think, yeah, this has been an interesting
conversation.
It didn't go, I think, the wayI even expected this
conversation to go, so, but nota bad thing, it's like, but it's
, um, I always learn a littlebit something talking to you too
, so thank you, it's fun.
Yeah, it's fun.
All right, are we done?
(43:54):
Are we done with this topic forfor now, at least for today,
until next week, and then?
Speaker 3 (43:59):
tomorrow, cause you know Tao and uptempo and uh
whatever, the huddle is hostinga session, so I'll be on that.
Yeah, I probably won't speakvery much on it, I'll be honest,
because I just want everybodyelse to speak.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, so by the time this gets out there, it will
have been like last week orsomething.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Or so, so it wouldn't matter anyway.
Well good, well, always funwhen we get together.
As I said, I always enjoy that.
It's kind of how this allstarted, so it's like old times
Anyway.
So thank you for bringing thatidea and putting it out there
for the community, mike.
Thanks, naomi, for all yourinsights.
I always learn from you.
(44:36):
That's great.
Thanks to the community and toall of our listeners who are out
there, naomi, mike or me,through LinkedIn or through the
marketingopscom Slack or email,if you have it.
(44:58):
Until next time, we'll talk toyou later.
Bye, bye, everybody, byeeveryone.
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