4 Early Signs Your Marketing Operations Are Turning Ineffective

Gartner surveys observed that 76% of marketers believe their marketing team cannot fully maximize the impact of their initiatives while also being efficient.

Let's try to break this down:

• more than 3 quarters of marketers say that they can either increase the impact of marketing initiatives or make become efficient
• this cites a critical need for a dedicated group of skilled professionals to become the 'efficiency' police
• the group must make sure your marketing team, tools, and processes run smoothly and efficiently
• enter marketing ops

Although your marketing team can survive without marketing operations, it cannot thrive. Without marketing operations, there is a clear compromise on effectiveness and efficiency. This costs your organization time, money, efforts, and other valuable resources. 

So, what happens when your marketing operations themselves become ineffective? In this article, we will look at key symptoms that suggest your marketing operations are turning ineffective, and there is an immediate need for you to revive them.

But before we look into the problems in marketing operations, let us first understand its definition and importance. 

Table of Content

• What are marketing operations?
• 4 Early Signs Your Marketing Operations Are Turning Ineffective and How to Fix Them
• Conclusion

What are marketing operations?

Marketing operations is defined as a function of marketing that enables the smooth running of marketing programs, campaigns, and strategy execution by overseeing the people, processes, and technology in marketing. 

It is the responsibility of the marketing operations team to ensure proper implementation of the marketing strategy by supporting other marketing functions. The operations team enables the adequate functioning of marketing programs and campaigns by building, standardizing, and optimizing marketing systems and processes.  

Here are a few examples of what marketing operations teams do:

• Data management: Lack of data management and cleaning yields chaos. Marketing operations build and implement a process to maintain the quality of data imported into your marketing system. It enables the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and programs.
• Marketing tools and technology: Marketing operations overlook the wear and tear of your marketing tools to ensure there are no bottlenecks in their functioning. For example, your operations team builds processes and guidelines on creating and segment lists on your marketing automation tool. It helps avoid duplication and increases the effectiveness of your marketing team.
• Reporting and analytics: The marketing operations team collects essential data and metrics from your marketing campaigns to build insightful reports and analyses. This analysis is used to emanate intelligent insights that help in your marketing forecasting, planning, and strategy.
• Campaign planning and execution: Marketing operations support marketing campaigns' strategy, planning, and implementation. This includes budgets, calendars, technology infrastructure, project management, and performance review and analysis. 

Marketing operations differ from company to company based on the marketing goals and organizational structure. But the primary role played by your marketing operations team is to remove the roadblocks from marketing functions to enable the smooth running of all marketing people, technology, and processes. 

4 Early Signs Your Marketing Operations Are Turning Ineffective and How to Fix Them

There is no clear indication of whether your marketing operations succeed or fail. But if you can relate to one or more of these symptoms, you need to level up your marketing operations game.

Your marketing tools are disconnected and do not justify the ROI

Have you invested in a marketing automation tool, a CRM tool, a social media tool, an SEO tool, and a content planning tool yet not seen any substantial increase in leads?

The problem here is not your marketing tools but the management and alignment of these tools. It is the role of your marketing operations team to ensure that your tools are in sync. It is a clear indication of an inefficient marketing operations function if they are not. 

Your marketing operations team should ensure that every marketing tool you invest in should be:

• evaluated to make the best fit for your marketing team's requirements
• quipped with a clear set of goals to achieve through its features and capabilities
• supported with standardized processes to use and operate the tool to avoid confusion and duplicity of efforts
• reviewed monthly, quarterly, or annually to analyze its performance, fit to purpose, and output 
• aligned with existing marketing tools to produce collective marketing assets and ROI

Lack of transparency and accountability in the team - everyone is doing their own thing.

Picture this - a marketing email goes out to the database on a federal holiday and expectedly gets below-average open and click rates. You want to rectify why this happened, but there is no clarity on who was responsible for sending this email on a bad day. There are vivid explanations and confusion about ownership when you ask the team.

Does this often happen in your marketing team? This lack of transparency and accountability is not because your team is inefficient but because there are no standardized processes. The absence of standardized processes is another sign of ineffective marketing operations.

Marketing operations are responsible for creating, implementing, and maintaining marketing processes to ensure the smooth functioning of marketing people and campaigns. 

An efficient marketing operations function creates standardized processes and makes sure that they are followed. 

Your database quality is going downhill.

Do these problems sound familiar to you:

• your email marketing reports show higher bounce rates than before
• your sales and customer teams complain about incorrect contact information
• your segmentations are not working
• your contact fields don't match correctly with search functions and automation rules

All of these are serious signs that your data management is not working properly. 

Marketing data is like gold for marketers; it is one of the most important assets of the marketing team. If not managed properly, it can affect every marketing area - email marketing, marketing campaign performance, marketing automation, and sales and marketing alignment.

Your marketing operations team needs to audit your current data management processes and optimize them to ensure data cleanliness and hygiene. If your team does not have the bandwidth, we can help you do it for you. Talk to our process expert today.

It is almost impossible to track your key marketing metrics

When building out your quarterly or annual marketing reports, do you struggle to identify critical metrics?

When simple metrics such as website traffic sources, social media engagements, and content performance are difficult to track, it is time to review your marketing operations setup.

Reports and analytics are one of the primary functions of marketing ops. It is also a critical function that supports marketing planning, strategy, and forecasting. When your marketing operations are not working properly, your reports start dwindling with incorrect figures, causing logical gaps between your analytics and actual marketing performance. 

Your marketing operations team must audit your current reporting process and data tracking tools for better reporting and analytics. This helps you identify the gaps that are causing errors and fill them with optimized procedures. 

Conclusion

Ineffective marketing operations can stifle the growth of your marketing team and your business. It is time to take action and refine your marketing operations and processes and achieve your goals faster. If you need expert advice on streamlining your marketing operations, talk to our team of Processologists.