In the State of the Marketing Operations Professional Report for 2022 by MarketingOps.com, there were a number of interesting findings as it pertains to roles, responsibilities, and the tools that we use in our day to day professional functions. As Revenue Ops (RevOps) or marketing ops professionals, our primary job responsibilities are developing and implementing software and managing systems, followed by designing and managing operational policies and procedures.
Sounds about right, but here’s where it starts to get tricky…
In another set of marketing ops data reported by MadKudu in their Marketing Ops Confessions: How to Navigate the World of Marketing Ops Guide, they analyzed 75 job descriptions for roles in this field and identified the top requested job requirements and responsibilities.
Care to guess what they were?
Communication skills and project management.
Didn’t know that was an undisclosed/implied part of your role?
Seeing as it’s the second-most-in-demand requirement in the field, I wonder… how many marketing ops professionals have project management experience in the first place?
But wait, it gets even more interesting…
Going back to the State of the Marketing Ops 2022 Research, another data point that stood out was the fact that 90% of the 550+ marketers surveyed who are using HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot (by Salesforce)—some of the best marketing automation tools on the market—are choosing to use spreadsheets as their primary project management application.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The team that is tasked with implementing software and managing systems, and has been directly or indirectly tasked with project management, is overwhelmingly using spreadsheets over other tools.
To truly improve the efficiency of marketing teams, we have to do better. Carefully considering who owns the project management function on the marketing team and what tools are necessary to help measure success is a great place to start.
Solid project management requires more than just a series of checklists and tasks. To be effective in their role, marketing ops must be given the tools AND the authority to be able to do their job and do it well. This isn’t anything new.
In my opinion, marketing ops professionals technically could make the best candidates to lead project management efforts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they should. I’ll come back to this point later.
Ever been on a marketing team with an ineffective project manager? Yeah, me too. I’ve noticed that this happens when they’ve never done any form of work themselves or been on a team collaborating on the level of tasks that they are expected to manage.
Without experience:
The list of questions goes on and on.
Without implementation experience or the ability to read between the lines from a strategic perspective, project managers are removed from the working knowledge base they need to effectively plan projects from beginning to end, to know how long specific tasks should take, and to provide valuable feedback they can put into effect.
If those are the gaps, how do we fill them?
This is not to put down project management training or certifications, but to underscore just how extremely important it is to consider the project manager’s past work experience when choosing who handles project management for marketing teams.
Considering how quickly things move and change for marketing teams, it’s critical for project managers to have more than a passing understanding of what goes into completing the various tasks involved in the projects they manage. Unclogging bottlenecks, reducing inefficiencies, helping the marketing team deliver great work, reducing decision fatigue by prioritizing tasks, and updating processes and procedures should be the stuff that project managers for marketing teams have as core competencies and capabilities.
On the flip side of that, if marketing operations professionals are expected to project manage marketing activities, what is expected of them? And what training are they expected to have?
Realistically, since marketing ops professionals are trained to design systems, implement software, and know how to distill and read data, they are most definitely ideal candidates for project management… with or without formal project management training since there’d be less friction and conflicting approaches since they are documenting and optimizing the systems.
But, there’s still a crucial missing piece with regard to the data aspect of project management that marketing operations professionals are missing when they aren’t empowered with the right tools and training. This can be especially true if they are relying on spreadsheets alone to help manage tasks and priorities.
Since we make everything look easy, marketing ops and revops teams often have a hard time getting buy-in from other departments on what to do and in what order. Never-ending requests from all departments can seriously impede the team’s productivity. If we’re regarded as order takers rather than strategic assets, that’s a dynamic that needs to change if we are to be effective and efficient. If we need more resources, a greater headcount, and more clearly defined roles, having project management data to back up our claims can open up a whole world of possibilities.
With solid data and clear communication, you can make your case to the decision-makers. As Sara McNamara (Marketing Operations at Slack) says, “Know the data deeply and translate data to insights… Without an understanding of the data, you’re coming to the table with opinions only.” Not only is this true for marketing operations, but this is also especially true when you throw project management into the mix.
Even with that data, will recommendations and requests from the marketing operations team continue to fall on deaf ears?
In order for anyone to be effective, ESPECIALLY a marketing ops pro that is taking on the challenge of project management, all parties involved need to respect and understand that project managers tend to be given more ability to implement change. Change can range from updating key processes, or even being able to change priorities so that key objectives can be met.
Backed with KPIs and agreed-upon SLAs between marketing and other departments, marketing teams need to be able to be more agile so that they can ultimately be more effective without being encumbered by misinformed judgments of what marketing should be doing from other departments.
The data is there for marketing operations professionals to tap into, we just need to give them the tools and the training to be able to do so.
If your organization decides to nominate a marketing ops pro to manage the team, know this: unless they are expressly directed on the methodology, they will randomly manage tasks in a way that works best for them, which may or may not deliver what the organization or even the team needs. This can cause a lot of friction and needless frustration among team members, so when choosing an application to facilitate project management, be sure to have a project management methodology in mind. Once you’ve narrowed down a methodology, take the time to customize the project management system to suit the organization’s needs. From there, empower the marketing ops pro with the training they will need to enforce and manage it well.
Most companies choose some version of SCRUM/Agile, but in my honest opinion, it isn’t agile enough for marketing teams. It’s great for software and product teams, but marketing teams need something a bit more agile. At our agency, we created our own that is a mashup of the best practices from several different methodologies, mixed with our own secret sauce that has enabled us to get more done with better efficiency.
BTW: Be careful not to implement task management frameworks like Getting Things Done. Those are great for individuals NOT teams.
Without standardization and data controls within the project management application, the data won’t be actionable and can have a negative impact on team/company-wide adoption. Everyone who interacts with the tasks within the application needs to do so in the exact same way. Not recognizing this early on is where organizations fail in terms of trying to leverage technology to support their project management efforts. Along the same vein, every input into the project management system must be standardized, just like we would for a MAP or CRM so that we can pull data and insights from it. Here is a small sampling standard that teams must adhere to when utilizing a project management application:
Want to let the whole team just set up an account, create their own tasks, and figure it out? No! That would be a terrible idea. The only way to maintain data integrity is through the proper training and identification of roles. Before you roll out your chosen application, save yourself the nightmare of messy data before it even starts. Select an “owner” who is trained in the correct way of inputting and handling the tasks within the system. They will be in charge of inputting and handling the tasks in a standard manner similar to what has been laid out (and explained in step 1, above).
Defining project management roles is essential when it comes to keeping everything properly organized. It helps to categorize them in three buckets: implementers, task managers, and stakeholders. Everyone is an implementer. Implementers are people who are assigned tasks and must move them through the proper channels to completion. Easy enough. Task managers are uniquely qualified and trained on how to create tasks, manage tasks, and prepare reporting and data so that stakeholders can then make decisions from it. Stakeholders need different versions of the data in order to make decisions. An example of this may be HR or the CMO so that they can approve additional headcount if the projects required to meet a goal have no chance of getting done without additional resources.
When you have the right project management tools and processes in place, it becomes easy to see who is not performing so that you can address the issues directly, making it easier for you to course-correct them without having to needlessly micromanage. With proper SLAs in place and ongoing reporting, your team can clearly know when they are and are not on track. Informed by real-time data, implementors can see where they need to make changes themselves to align with where things need to be.
That’s right, spreadsheets ain’t gonna cut it. Just because you COULD, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
There’s a reason why we don’t manage CRM data using spreadsheets anymore.
Yeah, it COULD work, but it’s highly inefficient and it takes an incredible amount of time and effort to do basic things and to glean insights that we need from it, so we turn to tools that can give us what we need in a fraction of the time with way less effort.
We know this because that’s what we get paid to do as marketing ops pros… to implement technology to optimize our business. So let’s turn to technology to help empower the efficiency of our teams, shall we?
Regardless of who owns project management, marketing ops teams need the proper tech stack in order to run a more data-driven marketing team (from an efficiency standpoint, of course).
The tech stack needs to be able to:
Sure, a spreadsheet wizard may be able to build this out, but there are plenty of tools out there that can facilitate this.
Here’s our tech stack of choice that you may want to consider:
Project Management – Clickup
Time Tracking – Everhour
Documentation – Guru
Process Mapping – Lucid Chart
I realize that I never really gave a straight answer on this, so here goes…
Since most marketing ops professionals don’t have project management experience, and most project managers lack marketing operations experience, who should do it?
We need to treat the need for an efficient marketing team (or even a marketing ops team for that matter) with the respect that it deserves. If organizations are going to demand efficiency and if teams are expected to do more with less, yet acknowledge the need for project management experience among marketing ops professionals… then it’s time we respect what is needed to do each function equally.
Project management isn’t something to add to the pile of responsibilities of your MOps team, even if they are uniquely qualified to do it. They still need project management training and to be empowered to make changes based on data.
I propose creating a specialty role within your organization for a Marketing Operations Project Manager. For marketing teams in general that don’t have a formal marketing ops function, I’d hire a marketing operations project manager based on the fact that they come with so much implementation knowledge, and they are used to things most marketers hate –like documentation– and can build systems…
So there you have it! Some things to consider for project management for marketing operations teams. For more questions or information on project management for marketing teams, contact me on LinkedIn, and let’s have a chat about it. We have a small invite-only mastermind for agencies and marketing teams to help their teams operate more efficiently while utilizing project management technology.
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