What Does a Marketing Operations Manager Do? 

What does a marketing manager do?

A marketing operations manager oversees and optimizes the processes, technology, and data that drive successful marketing campaigns.

In this video, WebFX Director of Marketing Operations Dan Shaffer explains what it means to be a marketing operations manager.

Transcript:

What does a marketing operations manager do? Well, if you Google it, you might find a lot of conflicting information and unnecessarily complicated job descriptions. In fact, marketing operations job descriptions may be very different depending on the company you work for — or want to work for.

This introduction isn’t helping, is it? It gets better, I promise.

The basis of marketing operations, also known as marketing ops, are data and technology. These two elements have become extremely important in marketing today, and it takes people with a lot of knowledge and patience — or maybe a data-driven agency partner — to manage them.

Let’s dive a little deeper.

What is marketing operations?

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary…I’m just kidding.

Think about your marketing as if it’s a fast food restaurant serving up delicious leads. In your restaurant there are people making food, prepping orders, and serving it to customers.

But all those people rely on extremely efficient processes and high tech tools to work together so they can keep the food coming. Cash registers, fryers, ice cream machines and grills all have to be put in place and running well in order to keep your customers happy. I mean really, what kind of chaos would ensue if the drive-through window stopped opening?

Okay, you would probably find a way to deal with the situation, but it wouldn’t be ideal.

Marketing operations does exactly this with a marketing team’s essential tools and systems.

You want potential customers to move through the marketing funnel “drive through” as seamlessly as possible.

You want your team to build campaigns as efficiently as possible.

You want to generate leads as cost effective as possible.

In plain terms, marketing operations focuses on how to streamline and enhance your marketing efforts so that your marketing team operates at peak performance.

Now, we come back to our original question.

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What does a marketing operations manager do?

A marketing ops manager spends their days working on ways to keep the marketing team moving forward. They’re in charge of various technologies that are needed for your marketing strategy: Platforms for email marketing, marketing automation, user testing, analytics, advertising and project management are all within the ops manager’s umbrella of things to maintain and continue to make better.

These tools are marketing technology, or martech.

When you have multiple tools that work together, they become a martech stack. If you’ve got a lot of those and they all need to talk to each other, it might be time for a marketing ops manager.

A marketing operations manager also serves as a bridge between marketing data and different teams or individuals who need that data. For example, they may work with your sales team to ensure your lead generating efforts are sending the right things to your sales team. The sales team may be a bit upset if you are sending them leads that are missing crucial details for them to do their best work!

Your marketing ops manager will maintain your martech stack and constantly look for ways to enhance your marketing processes with the data they gather.

Now, the marketing operations skills don’t end there. Someone in this role may be responsible for training other team members so that they’re up to speed on the latest tools or strategies. They may also dive into testing new software or take part in using these tools to build reports on various marketing activities.

Because they have so much going on, marketing ops managers need great organizational skills. They work with many internal and external stakeholders, so the ability to communicate well is also crucial in this role.

If marketing operations sounds like a lot, that’s because it can be. Data, technology, and efficiency fuel your digital strategies, which makes this position critical to your marketing team.

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