5 Ways to Elevate Your In-House Marketing Operations Team

After working in the agency setting for two years and reflecting on my previous experiences as a Marketo consultant and leader in various companies, I often find myself thinking about what I could have done differently.

Here are five key insights I’ve gained from my time in an agency and what I wish I implemented in my in-house roles, specifically related to Marketo:

#1 – Start with an audit

Begin with a comprehensive audit of your Marketo instance and the MarTech tools integrated within it. There are abundant resources available on how to approach a Marketo audit. 

Use your first 30 days in an in-house role as an opportunity to step back and gain a fresh perspective. Conducting audits helps identify any gaps in your setup. Ensure that essential foundational Marketo programs are in place and functioning effectively, such as:

• Data Management (including Data Normalization)
• Consent Management, Program Templates (with email being a must-have, and others depending on your marketing activities)
• Audience Segmentation
• Lifecycle.

Audits provide a clear roadmap for the future. Developing a roadmap should be your top priority when entering a new in-house role. Not only does it assist in prioritizing your time and efforts, but it also offers visibility to your team and the organization at large. 

I highly recommend documenting your roadmap on a single slide, along with a tentative timeline. This roadmap will become invaluable for setting boundaries when new projects arise. While the roadmap should remain flexible, it helps you justify trade-offs between business priorities and emerging requests.

#2 – Quantify and measure your effort

It’s not a common practice for in-house teams to quantify and track the effort spent on marketing operations initiatives. Personally, I was initially apprehensive about logging all my time when I joined an agency. However, I eventually found it empowering. 

Tracking your effort helps:

• Set expectations with your teammates, leaders, and other teams that approach you with new projects.
• Measure your progress when you need to showcase what your team has accomplished.
• Initiate a discussion with your leader and manager regarding the resources at your disposal and the requirements for your team – and act as a reality check.

When estimating effort, consider adding 50% to 100% to your initial estimate. We all suffer from the planning fallacy bias – hence our tendency to underestimate the actual level of effort required.

In your estimation, include the following components:

• Discovery and gathering of business and technical requirements, including meetings with different stakeholders.
• Documentation of both business and technical requirements, as well as the solution itself.
• Build or implementation of the solution.
• Testing (QA) of the solution.
• Backfilling, if necessary.
• Deployment.

Furthermore, I recommend tracking the effort you actually spend on projects. By doing so, you can demonstrate to your leadership team that every project and request has a cost, including changes in requirements. 

Many marketing leaders lack a MarTech background and may not fully grasp the effort involved in seemingly simple requests. Educating them on these costs can potentially lead to increased resources or improved efficiency for your marketing operations team.

# 3 – Leverage documentation as the foundation of your marketing operations practice

I understand that when you’re constantly putting out fires, finding time to document can be challenging. However, it’s important to acknowledge that a lack of documentation and testing often leads to troubleshooting tasks at the most inconvenient times, catching us off guard. 

Your documentation should include:

• Business and technical requirements: These may change over time and modifications to requirements can impact the architected solution. This section should be reviewed and approved by your leadership, especially if conflicting or complex requirements arise that necessitate additional time, an extended timeline, or additional resources.
• The solution: Whether you start with sketches on paper, a whiteboard, or jump straight into building within your instance, always document the finalized solution. If you have a marketing operations team, have someone peer review it for a fresh set of eyes. If you’re the sole marketing operations member, revisit the documentation at a later date to spot any issues.
• Limitations: Document any system limitations for historical purposes. These limitations may have influenced your decision to choose one solution over another.

# 4 – Don’t skip QA (Quality Assurance)

Since joining an agency, I’ve realized the power of QA. Visual QA allows you to ensure that the build aligns with the architected solution, while functional QA helps uncover any loopholes or issues within the order of operations. 

Create a comprehensive list of use cases to test and during this process, you may even identify use cases that were previously overlooked but could affect your build. For each use case, describe the expected results.

On your marketing operations team, consider taking turns and having peers perform QA for each other. If you’re the sole marketing operations member on your marketing team, enlist a teammate’s help or perform the QA yourself.

#5 – Treat your team members as allies

Marketing operations professionals are the backbone of Marketing and Revenue teams, and in centralized operational models, they often shoulder significant responsibility with limited resources. Despite facing an often overwhelming number of requests, which may divert your time from strategic needs and the company’s overall objectives, you should view your marketing team members as allies. 

Consider the following:

• Provide team members with the appropriate access levels. Marketo can be intimidating for non-technical individuals, so restrict their access to only what they need to perform their tasks efficiently.
• Once they have the necessary access and permissions, offer training to empower them to work autonomously while maintaining control. If your team is expanding, record all training sessions to facilitate onboarding for new members, making it a requirement for them to watch the training.
• If your marketing team is rapidly growing across different locations consider transitioning to a slightly decentralized model, particularly for campaign execution. Ask yourself if every team member truly needs access to Marketo for campaign execution.
  • If not, explore platforms like Jeto, which enables a hybrid centralized/decentralized model within a defined framework. This approach grants your team the freedom to set up their own campaigns while adhering to established guidelines, striking a balance between control and flexibility.

By implementing these practices, you can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing operations team, leading you to ultimately drive better results for the entire organization.