It’s time to move beyond advice like “become a better communicator” and use language that makes this actionable for everyone. Below are five key skills to help you tackle the challenges of a rapidly evolving industry.

1. Become a strategist, not a firefighter

Developing effective marketing leadership skills begins with learning to think and plan strategically. Part of this requires stepping past the reactionary day-to-day and taking proactive action for the sake of the business. 

This is a challenge in many environments if the marketing function has been understaffed or underresourced, leaving the team to merely react to the items. However, at some point, this shifts. It’s critical to see the potential for fires before they even start. 

Marketing leaders must hone their ability to address complex problems and make informed decisions. That also means considering factors beyond simple financial implications, including:

• Implementing new technology.
• Mitigating risks of business processes across the organization.
• Simply communicating about the MQL to SQL process between teams. 

Becoming a strategist means having the ability to do the following:

Analyzing business fundamentals

Call it “first principles” or whatever you want, but examine the core drivers of your business and be willing to challenge the status quo based on what you find. Rather than jumping on each new martech tool, consider the cascading effects of each new technology across your business.

Staying ahead of marketplace trends

Keep a close eye on emerging trends and anticipate their impact on your team’s work over the next 12 to 24 months. Proactively communicate this anticipated impact to your team. When your team is prepared and empowered, you can spend less time putting out fires.

Shift focus to long-term planning

Develop the capacity to pull yourself out of the weeds and move towards more of a planner/advisor role. For instance, these days, you might be asking, “How will our organization use AI? What are the implications? Drawbacks? Ethical concerns?” 

Dig deeper: Rethinking the marketing planning process for an agile world

2. Interpret and showcase data correctly

For better or worse, leaders can create a powerful effect on behavior by carefully choosing what to measure and what metrics they expect employees to use. To excel in marketing ops, you must possess a strong understanding of marketing analytics, be excellent at discerning valuable insights and communicate those findings in an impactful and concise manner.

Organizations differ in how they define data-driven, though Forrester sums it up nicely: “A data-driven organization identifies the insights it needs data to inform. It effectively manages that data and empowers its team to use it.” 

While data should help drive decisions, you must balance that with speed. In our organization, we often say, “Companies grow at the rate of decision-making.” You can accelerate your organization’s growth by optimizing the speed at which you gain insights from your data and empowering your team to leverage those insights.

But it’s hard to create any growth if you don’t know which metrics matter

Great leaders recognize the fluff of vanity metrics, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore them. Instead, understand the relationships between lead and lag measures and make sure your team understands.

People in your organization will have different opinions on which metrics matter and how to interpret them

Empathy and understanding are key. Strike a balance if you need to because different stakeholders will care about different KPIs. Some may give extra attention to lead measures, but these measures can still illustrate progress, even when bottom-line results are not yet apparent. It’s all about learning to tell a compelling story with the data in situations like these. 

Are you getting the most from your stack? Take the 2023 MarTech Replacement Survey

3. Practice empathetic change management

Change management becomes important when implementing new processes, tools or technologies — which, in the case of marketing, can be frequent.

Whether you’re adopting ChatGPT for SEO or trying to get the sales team to use HubSpot sequences, your goal is to ensure a smooth transition, minimizing disruption to your team. To achieve this, consider a few tips:

Education and buy-in

Practice empathy for those asked to make shifts and make sure they feel heard in their concerns. By securing their support (rather than just asserting your correctness), you can minimize foot-dragging and/or burnout.

Tailor your message

Just as in marketing a product or service, tailor your message to each specific group within your organization according to what’s important to them. Remember that people learn differently.

For example, create visual roadmaps illustrating anticipated workflow improvements and time savings when introducing a new project management tool.

Small wins

Focus on finding small wins that support the vision, whether they serve as a step in the right direction or simply as a morale boost to sustain motivation.

For instance, when transitioning to a new marketing automation platform, celebrate the first successful email campaign sent using the new tool, showcasing its benefits and boosting team morale.

4. Communicate and collaborate as a team

People tend to either retroactively realize they needed better communication or they’re the type to have meetings for the sake of meetings. But just like group projects in high school, you don’t want to be caught doing all the work or carrying the load alone. 

Effective cross-functional collaboration is key to aligning marketing efforts with other business functions, but better collaboration doesn’t mean more meetings (which could have been emails). It’s about asking the right questions and fostering free-flowing communication.

Create standardized processes across teams

For every decision, ask yourself: do we know the criteria we’re using to make those decisions? Start by identifying inconsistencies across functions. Pay attention to differences in response to the same questions. 

For example, receiving the same request from different departments in different ways may indicate a need to streamline communication and establish clearer guidelines.

Or you might find different teams have different webinar processes. This could mean that teams have different reasons for ignoring a standardized approach, have distinct processes or are unaware of shared resources like a documentation library. 

Identifying and addressing these discrepancies will lead to more effective cross-functional collaboration and a stronger, more cohesive company.

Don’t jump straight into the deep end with communication

It’s great to keep everyone on the same page and establish clear communication channels within/across teams. Sharing insights and best practices between departments can be hugely helpful too.

But avoid overdoing it in communication. Going from zero to 100 to compensate for communication lapses can be overwhelming, causing your team to tune things out and creating white noise. Leaders need to gauge effectiveness and pivot as necessary. 

5. Be flexible yet structured where it matters

Just as a goldfish grows to fit the size of its bowl, our tasks expand to fill the time we allow them to. Agile project management can help you efficiently allocate resources and adapt to changing priorities, ensuring you deliver timely results.

Clear communication

As with improving cross-functional collaboration, you must establish a decision-making framework to prioritize tasks effectively. Work on communicating goals clearly. 

Dig deeper: How to use decision intelligence to tackle complex business challenges

Efficient resource allocation

Adopt an agile mindset when handling technology transitions. Be prepared to back up your current tools, move to new ones and notify your company about changes in tool usage. Balance time and resources to manage these transitions smoothly since sunsetting old tools bring its own workload.

Adapt to changing priorities 

Ask better questions to understand priority and impact. Develop a plan that is flexible enough to avoid falling apart at the first sign of change. 

Deliver results on time (and don’t hide it)

People may forget when you deliver on time, but they will remember when you’re late. Don’t forget to remind and celebrate your team’s successes externally.

Staying agile is key

By implementing agile project management, you’ll be better equipped to handle the dynamic nature of marketing operations, ensuring that you can adapt and deliver results efficiently.

Excelling as a marketing ops leader requires a unique blend of skills. By nurturing these skills, you’ll be better positioned to tackle the challenges of a rapidly evolving industry. It may seem like tired advice, but remember that continuous learning and adaptability are crucial to staying ahead in marketing, so embrace the challenge.

Dig deeper: Agile marketing: What it is and why marketers should care

The post 5 critical leadership skills every marketing ops pro needs appeared first on MarTech.

Far too many MOps folks are left feeling exhausted and stretched thin. The marketing operations talent shortage leaves businesses to wrangle the three-pronged problem of hiring, training and retaining skilled professionals.

The situation has put a strain on management resources and forced a lot of seasoned marketers back to completing entry-level tasks, especially in areas like content production — rather than strategic planning or performance optimization.

Burnout and turnover

“Without a source of new talent, MOps teams are becoming top-heavy,” according to Demandbase. “The ideal MOps team is structured like a pyramid. A concentrated number of experienced practitioners focus on strategic initiatives and are supported by more junior team members who are responsible for day-to-day operations and execution. But we found that junior-level employees are outnumbered in the average MOps team, leaving higher-level team members to pick up the slack.”

With such a huge part of the marketing operations role being the tasks and projects inside of the ops function, it’s difficult to find time to get the strategic work done. 

As a result, senior and mid-level staff are either bored doing work that’s too easy or trying to balance this work with larger strategic responsibilities. This has led to burnout and high turnover, leaving companies stuck hiring and training replacements instead of driving the company’s marketing vision forward.

MarTech first discussed the shortage in 2022, and the problem hasn’t gone anywhere since then. It may have gotten worse as ops leaders are supposed to continue to do their jobs while also figuring out the role of new tech. 

Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence is poised as the shining knight in digital armor, ready to face the talent shortage head-on and help companies overcome these challenges. 

But how exactly can AI improve the marketing ops talent problem? And should we entertain that?

Use AI to stay focused on strategy — not busywork

AI technologies like ChatGPT are making significant progress in addressing the MOps talent shortage. By automating repetitive or straightforward tasks, AI can reduce the workload for higher-level marketing operations professionals. 

This frees their time and energy to focus on more strategic and higher-level tasks, ultimately leading to a more efficient and effective marketing team.

Jessica, a MOps professional at a large technology company, enjoys finding technology that can help her bring more value to her work and the company. 

She mentions she’s been using tools like Rev, a sales development platform, to help find look-a-like target accounts to seed lists. 

“It is a great tool to help you really focus and prioritize your CRM data. It continues to monitor your pipeline / funnel and the AI adapts and changes the algorithm as new deals enter and leave the sales cycle. It goes deeper than just firmographic details like industry, company size etc and looks at custom filters that matter to your ICP and not just the general information.”

She also points out tools like Regie.ai with custom personalization in outreach to prospects, helping the productivity of sales reps. It ties in things like hobbies or a prospect’s use case creatively. There are many more to list, but the ability to designate time to find and test the applications is important.

It’s not about being tool-heavy but more about identifying good places to bring AI to level up the strategy and execution of functions inside sales and marketing operations. Companies are seeing the value of an integrated system because it’s easier to define workflows, automate processes and identify bottlenecks with everything connected.

Dig deeper: AI in marketing: 7 areas where it shines and struggles

Where AI can play a key role in marketing operations

With the sheer number of tools on the market, it may be helpful to navigate this wild west landscape more from the perspective of task categories and where we can “delegate work” to an AI team member.

Process mapping

With the right combination of AI tools, you can develop processes that are efficient, organized and scalable. This can start with something as simple as using ChatGPT to turn meeting notes or transcripts into an itemized checklist of tasks. 

Ultimately, you should be able to take an inbound request and turn it around in a 24-hour timeline without creating additional work, panic, or rush among your team.

Planning

From forecasting and budget allocation to campaign optimization and targeting, AI can increasingly automate the button-pushing associated with these tasks.

Data flow

Disconnected systems are so 2019. You will fall behind if you’re not automating the data flow through your company. 

From CRM, email and social metrics to cleaning and updating customer data along with automating reporting and visualization — nobody should be doing these things manually anymore.

Code outlines

Don’t have a large dev team? Marketing operations professionals with development expertise can use ChatGPT (or tools like GitHub Copilot or Ghostwriter) to quickly write up the initial project code before handing it off to a dev to finish.

Data extraction

Have a bunch of text or a CSV you’d normally want to hand off to someone for simple tasks? Use ChatGPT to pull out names, dates and keywords or to answer questions based on the source text.

Faster content marketing

From social scheduling tools like Hootsuite or HubSpot to writing tools like ChatGPT, AI can reduce a ton of legwork for creating and distributing content. 

You shouldn’t have ChatGPT write your whole blog post or landing page, but you can quickly draft the bare bones using your expertise.

Personalization

Whether it’s customer support or lead generation, using large language models like ChatGPT to build custom chatbots for your business can lighten the load. 

These bots have been limited in the past. Still, newer options allow businesses to teach the bot everything from brand guidelines to customer profile data, creating a personal conversation that can get passed off to a team member when needed.

Summarizing research and briefs

While ChatGPT can’t reliably give you factual responses yet, you can paste text from articles, research, or white papers, then have it summarize the findings, implications and potential course of action based on that information.

On top of this list, keep an eye on the latest tools to help provide better resource allocation for marketing managers, stronger predictive modeling for strategists and easier sentiment analysis for marketing analysts.

Dig deeper: 5 AI writing assistants in action

Balancing AI and human expertise

With more AI tech, marketing operations has the opportunity to evolve from simple reporting teams and spreadsheet warriors to full-fledged technology strategists who help shape marketing and sales technology vision in the long term.

But automating away all the “laborer” tasks won’t replace your need for an architect. Execution without strategic design is a great way to build a house that collapses at the first sign of wind.

With everyone else using AI, what sets you apart in this tech race will be your frameworks and processes for using it effectively. Once these standards are established, it becomes easier to communicate to your team when to lean on AI and when you need humans involved.

Meanwhile, if you lean too heavily on AI in the wrong ways, you risk making many costly mistakes that damage customer trust.

To strike a better balance, companies should help their current MOps teams learn to work more effectively with AI in all its forms, so they can harness its potential while maintaining the strategic human judgment that sets great marketing apart.

The post How AI can help address the marketing ops talent shortage appeared first on MarTech.

As marketers, we need to get more out of our martech stack, whether through consolidation or more strategic use of existing tools. Finding areas for improvement isn’t new, so why all the fuss now? 

Why your martech stack ROI is worse than it should be

In the last three years, my company has conducted over 500 calls with HubSpot customers about their platform setup, spend and optimization. We’ve identified some of the most common martech stack issues — from underutilized capabilities to redundant spending.

The result? The average company is wasting 35% of their budget on cloud and SaaS tools.

Reason 1: You don’t know what you don’t know 

Unfortunately, this overlap is unintentional and may stem from a product purchased to solve a specific problem at a certain point. If you’re not an expert in your company’s martech stack, you won’t know how to use existing tools to boost results or maximize new functionality that could replace apps you no longer need.

Unfamiliarity with stack capabilities leads to redundant tools and inefficient workflows. To keep up, you must continually read product updates, beta launches and more to learn how your martech stack functionality is expanding. 

In early March, HubSpot announced a new tool that leverages AI functionality within their platform, useful for portal research, market research, writing copy and more. This brings together additional content creation and research tools you might only find with other vendors.

Dig deeper: Marketers making less use of martech’s expanding capabilities 

Reason 2: It seems too expensive to upgrade

Upgrading to a more functional version of your stack can seem expensive, but the sticker price is rarely set in stone, especially for enterprise deals. It’s worth exploring options or negotiating a better deal with your vendor. (You might be paying for features you’ll never have any use for.) 

Remember providers often offer bigger discounts to upgrade your account than to renew it at the current level. If you can identify ways to generate ROI on that upgrade, it could pay for itself and then some. 

For example, in the sales enterprise version of HubSpot, your portal gains automatic enrollment into sequences and team roles. This standardization of information for the sales team, plus the ability to communicate 1-to-1 with leads who may have ghosted or gone silent, could mean huge time savings and more growth opportunities. 

Reason 3: Disorganized buying processes and “grandfathered-in” systems

This reason is often underrated, but it’s important. At larger organizations (and even smaller ones), it’s easy to lose track of all the systems you’re paying for, especially when there isn’t a consistent, organized process for buying new software. 

And when new leaders come into the picture, they might not know the full extent of what tools are being used, or why, so unnecessary costs are less apparent.

Dig deeper: 3 steps to building an effective martech stack

How to get more value out of your martech stack

1. Negotiate your software contracts

This should be a no-brainer, but there are people more skilled at this than others, so companies often leave money on the table. Many software companies are willing to negotiate to keep you as a customer and expand your usage within their platform. 

Consider working with a partner to help you navigate the negotiation process and ensure you get the best deal possible. Partners will have the expertise and relationships to secure better deals.

2. Invest in team training

Knowledge disappears with turnover. Newer team members may not have the same grasp of a system that previous leaders did and, therefore, won’t use it to its fullest extent. This is where training and development can help. Individualized training may also uncover gaps you weren’t even aware of. 

Dig deeper: In this economy CMOs need to spend more on training, not tech

3. Consolidate tools

With the accelerating rate of mergers and acquisitions, larger platforms are buying smaller ones to expand their offerings quickly. Many of the larger tools on the market (such as HubSpot) now offer functionality that does an “okay” job of other things once relegated to specific software.

While not always as sophisticated as leading competitors, a unified system adds convenience and cost savings. For instance, HubSpot Marketing Pro and Marketing Enterprise make it possible to schedule and post social media inside the platform. 

Does it offer all the full functionality you’d get in a Sprout Social or a HootSuite? No. But it might do enough to save money by discontinuing another tool .

Do an audit of your martech stack, looking for areas where you can cut old or poorly functioning tools and eliminate redundant services.

Dig deeper: My stack is bigger than your stack, so what?

4. Cut seats, not just tools

Most SaaS companies charge per “seat” or user, so costs increase with each additional employee on it — even if they’re not using it. Look through your platforms and see where you can downsize the number of users you have.

This seems obvious, but companies of all sizes consistently overlook it. Many mistakenly give seats to employees who don’t need access to the platform’s paid features, driving up costs unnecessarily. They may be set with X number of paid users, and the rest of the employees accessing the system can do so using a view-only free seat. 

Taking a closer look at who needs access to your SaaS tools and platforms can significantly reduce the seats you must pay for. This can result in substantial cost savings without sacrificing functionality or performance.

5. Bring in external resources

While bringing a consultant or external resource reduces in-house hiring and training costs for marketing and sales software, the advantages often go beyond cost savings. 

By leveraging external expertise, you can tap into their deep knowledge of tools and platforms, reducing the risk that you underutilize tools. These folks often have fresh perspectives and can help upskill your existing team, providing training and processes to ensure you’re continually leveraging your investments efficiently.

Lastly, external resources can help with continuity and information transfer. This includes the knowledge you don’t want to lose from employee turnover so that you can ensure consistency in your technology strategy, even as your company restructures or changes.

Dig deeper: 5 tips to boost user adoption of new martech tools

The post 5 tips to get more value from your martech stack appeared first on MarTech.