My Marketing Ops Journey with Bethanie Swank

We continued our series of Marketing Ops Stories with Bethanie Swank. Her story is unique in a couple of ways.

First, she started more as a full-stack marketer, and found that she really enjoyed the technology and process orientation found in Marketing Operations. That led her to several different opportunities to be the “team of one” to do all things MOps. 

She also shares with our audience how she has recently gone through the process internally to “pitch” the need for additional Marketing Ops resources. Although the process of hiring was still ongoing at the time of the recording, she shared some tips for how she built the case.

If you are a team of one – or a leader who wants to build the case for additional headcount – you will want to listen to this episode.

Recorded live January 2022.

Hi, I’m Michael Hartmann, I’m Naomi Lou, and I’m Mike Rizzo. And this is ops cast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MO Pros. The number one community for marketing operations. As professionals tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you, but at the MO Pros, I’m Michael Hartmann today. I’m so low. My co-hosts Mike Rizzo named me, Lou are both on available today. So it’s going to be me. So hopefully you’ll still get the benefit of, of. This from our guests. And so once again, we’re continuing our series on marketing ops career journeys.

And so joining us today to talk about her journey into marketing ops, it’s Bethany Swank, who is currently marketing operations manager with Irene technologies. Prior to that role, she held a variety of roles in marketing operations, as well as general marketing, product management, demand, gen, and even sales.

So Bethany, thanks for joining us today. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for inviting me on ops cast is kind of my new favorite podcast had been right now. So I was really excited to join and be able to give some feedback on my. Awesome. Well, we always love getting that feedback, uh, that this is like the podcast is resonating with people.

It’s, it’s a, I tell people all the time, it’s a sort of a passion project and, um, it’s a lot of fun for us. We, I learn all the time. So I’m looking forward to hearing more about your, your story. Um, so just kinda the way we’ve been starting these, like, I think it works well as like, just let you sort of give up.

Your overview of your, your journey in marketing ops and kind of how you move to that from some, especially since you had sort of a variety of different roles before, and just kind of walk us through that and then we’ll see where we go from there. Yeah. Um, so I guess I could kind of start back in college days.

I knew that I was interested in marketing. I was taking a lot of marketing classes and so I switched my major. To marketing management graduated in 2012 and I just was kind of looking for any opportunities to learn more about marketing. So. I actually moved to Denver and joined several different startups.

Um, I worked at a qualitative research company, a branding agency, and in both situations I came in and they didn’t have any marketing department. So they were looking for someone to kind of do it all. Um, and I worked very closely with this. Uh, a branding agency didn’t have a marketing department. They didn’t, it’s like the cobbler cobbler’s kids don’t have any shoes.

Right. Okay. Got it. Yeah, it was really interesting. Um, so worked with them, um, and did kind of a slew of things. You know, email marketing, social media, I attended conferences, um, did event management, PR kind of everything. And I very quickly learned all of the inefficiencies of trying to run marketing without any kind of tools.

Um, so, you know, having to send. Emails out of constant contact and you’re not having any way to nurture people or track what we were doing. Um, so, you know, I had a lot of those pain points and, you know, it was continuing to learn about marketing, but I, I was looking for something to help me actually do everything that I needed to do in a productive way, in a streamlined way.

And I came across Marquetta. Got a demo from them and pitched it to our CEO. And he basically laughed me out of the room. Um, said, there’s no budget for that. Yeah. There’s no budget. We don’t even really have a marketing team, you know, that’s for big companies. Um, and so I kind of took that as a sign to look for those bigger companies, um, or at least to look for companies.

Saw the value. Um, so that was kind of the first piece of my career was just doing all these random marketing functions and wanting to get access to tools to make my life easier. Um, so about six months after that conversation, a past colleague reached out to me and said, Hey, I know you were like crazy about HubSpot and Marketo.

Um, I actually just joined this organization and they have hubs. And they’re looking for a marketing person and they don’t really know how to use the tool. So I was super excited. Um, actually ended up working for them. They were a commercial real estate startup in New York and, um, helped them build out their HubSpot instance kind of learned as I went.

Um, and then I just completely fell in love with marketing. Not. I mean, as soon as I got my hands in the tool, I knew I was not wanting to do anything else, um, from there. So, you know, I build out landing pages and started tracking ROI and setting up nurture campaigns. And I saw the marketing team mature and grow, and we were able to scale it with the platform.

Um, and so it was extremely rewarding and. That’s all I wanted to do ever since then. Um, but unfortunately at that role I was, oh God. Uh, so I just, the, the CEO who left you out of the room, when you talked about Marquetto, did, did you all end up doing anything with any marketing automation platform? You did you do HubSpot or no, nothing?

No, he, he pretty much said no. I left. Yeah. Okay. Crazy. Yeah. I, you know, that, that story, that particular part of your journey reminded me. We, as soon as you were describing it, it wasn’t quite the same scenario, but that’s reminds me of the time when I, I was actually at a conference, uh, we had, uh, at the time, um, Just an email provider.

We didn’t have really marketing automation as at a small comp well, I was, I was running kind of the tech stuff for, um, the Americas, uh, for Japanese based company. Anyway, long story short, I was at a conference do some training and there happened to be a. Somebody from Eloqua, they showed me and I was like, oh my gosh, that’s what we really need.

Um, and I had to go do the PR like pitch it internally, um, to my boss and the person who ran the Americas overall. It was, yeah, I didn’t get laughed out of the room. Right. So that was back before they were part of Oracle and, uh, they were pretty eager to get businesses in kind of small to medium sized businesses.

So, um, I definitely understand that feel for like, having to go build the case for, for why this would, would be beneficial. So, um, kudos to you. Yeah. I mean, it didn’t work, but at least I knew at least I knew in, you know, in my mind that that was the direction I needed to go. Um, and even, you know, even though he laughed me out of the room, I, I felt so confident that that’s what they needed.

You know, it didn’t really change my perspective. I’m curious, because I think a lot of people who come into marketing ops, I mean, there’s, as we’ve learned, right. There’s not really one way at the same time. I would probably say more people come in with a little heavier lean towards the technology kind of components of it.

And then, and then there, and then there’s, a lot of people are then saying, how do I get to be more, uh, into the strategic conversation about marketing and sales and everything else. And, and yours is sort of the opposite of that almost right. You had overall marketing responsibility and something in like that experience led you to, to ops and like just, what do you think?

Like, is there, were there, was there anything in your, maybe your childhood or time in school or whatever? Would have been like, oh, this was an indicator that I probably would, it was meant to be an ops versus general marketing or kind of, I’m just curious about that. Um, I think. As a child, I always loved processes and organizing.

I was kind of that kid that organized their closet and organize their room. I got to teach my own kids first because they’re definitely not that way. But yeah. I love to create processes and, and things like that. I definitely had an analytical mind. I loved math and science, but I also had a lot of, you know, creative.

You know, creative poll too. And I loved, um, the artistic and creative side of, of marketing and that’s what really drew me. But I knew in that role that it was kind of a dynamic role where you’re kind of looking at the numbers, but you’re also coming up with these big ideas. Um, and you have the branding, the design and the messaging and that creative component.

So I loved both pieces of that. And that’s why I went into marketing specifically, but yeah, it is kind of interesting that it, that it came down to technology for me in the end, because I think as a child, I, I never would’ve seen myself specifically in technology. That’s so interesting. Yeah. I thought I was going to be a chemical engineer because my uncle worked at 3m and then I went to school that had chemistry and a variety of engineering programs, but not chemical engineering go figure.

Um, Okay. So one of the things I’ve, um, started noticing, and as we’ve had these conversations is there’s usually maybe some like critical sort of, um, pivot points or, or just snack like times in your career where you’re like, okay, this decision. If I had gone a different way, I might have ended up somewhere else or there are people.

That are part of the journey that you with other mentors or people you work for, or peers that like, you know, do you, can you think of when I say that, right? Are there things that come to mind in terms of people or, or, or scenarios that affected your path? Yeah. I mean, it’s specifically a person. When I worked at Reonomy, which was the commercial real estate SAS company.

Uh, we had some significant data issues. We had different platforms that were siloed. They weren’t connecting and speaking with each other and we had Marquetto and we were trying to figure out how to get this all to work together. And, you know, I’m a baby in marketing ops, so I’m totally in over my head at that point.

So we reached out for a consultant and, um, we came across ginger Wilson. For, uh, I think the company was CRM nerds and we worked with her to help kind of build out the foundation, but then this big tech issue came in, you know, the data issue came in. Um, and you know, I was having this conversation with her and it felt like, you know, I was finally speaking the same language with someone and they were actually understanding me.

Um, but you know, we both, both me and ginger were like, I don’t know how we’re going to deal with this. And she’s like, let me call, let me call my husband and he’ll come in and help us. So, uh, her husband’s Paul Wilson, I think he’s the VP of marketing ops at Salesforce now. Um, but he came in, talked to our it team talk to pretty much everyone in the room that had to do with this tech issue.

And he was able to break it down and. Essentially like lay out the roadmap for us in one phone call and just the way that he was able to do that. And the fact that he was getting buy-in from executives. I had never seen anyone do that from a marketing ops perspective before, and it completely changed and inspired me.

I mean, I walked away from that conversation thinking like that’s who I wanted. Right. Like, I want to be able to have those conversations and, um, I haven’t really had that experience since. I mean, I’ve, I’ve definitely heard conversations and, um, listened to podcasts and things like that. But seeing someone tactically come in and take such a complicated issue and in one phone call, lay it out, um, in a very humble, um, but authoritative way, it was.

Was really awesome. And that, that has really inspired me throughout the last five years, um, to try to work towards being able to do do that. So, yeah. That’s great. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like I’m always impressed by people who can kind of go up and down in terms of the level of conversation they’re having with people.

Um, and in are totally comfortable diving deep into the details of a technical problem, and then bringing it back up to like, here’s how you need to go clean it up. That’s that’s definitely a skill set that, um, is probably underrated in marketing ops or really any functional area I would say. So one of the things that I’ve picked up from the conversation so far is that in many cases you were either.

Yeah. You wear all of marketing or you were the, you were the only marketing ops or MarTech kind of person in these stories, you know, um, like how, especially as you go into a new organization or if it’s, if it’s a new thing, like how have you hanging out? How do you. Sort of juggle all the different demands.

Cause even as a team leader, as I am know, I find it hard to sort of juggle, interact and adjust priorities for the team and things like that. So I’ve not really been in a situation where I was the only person, at least not in a long time. So curious about how that’s been, how has that impacted your, your kind of journey?

Yeah, I mean, I think. You, you will have to juggle no matter what. Um, I think transparency is the most important things. So whoever you’re reporting to, um, needs to know very clearly where your time’s being spent. So very early on in my journey, I was tracking every single project, the tasks that I was doing, how long it was taking me to complete those things and trying to align those tasks to.

Executive goals. Um, my manager’s goals to make sure that I was really, um, you know, just following the strategy of the team later on in my marketing ops career, I started to kind of pivot and start leading the goals a lot more. Um, so I, I would say if you’re. If you’re a one person admin, um, it’s important that you are a part of those conversations, um, because you don’t have that team support, you know, behind you and you might not have people on the team who understand marketing ops.

Um, and so you really have to advocate for, you know, your own goals and what you know, needs to be accomplished to me. The the larger picture. So that was one way it was just tracking. Okay. So can I, yeah, I want to get into this tracking thing. So one of the things that I think has come up fairly regularly in our, in our episodes, even regardless of what the topic has been, has been, uh, tracking or project management in terms of vary a little bit, but, um, I’m always curious and I think our audience would be really curious to know what.

Tools did you use to help manage those projects and keep track of all that stuff? So you can communicate. Yeah. Is there any that you gravitate towards? I have primarily used a sauna, um, to track everything and, you know, there are like Smartsheets, um, I’ve used that in past companies for goals specifically.

Um, and that works well too, just to kind of cascade things down, um, and make sure that. At every level, people understand how marketing ops is achieving different goals. Um, but yeah, I would say a sauna works really great because it’s customizable. You can add an hours. Um, it’s very easy to adopt and use and.

My last company, I was able to, I was using a sauna just for marketing ops specifically, and I was able to pull in the rest of the marketing team into using it as well. Um, so if your marketing team is already using something that I would say, try to try to join in with what they’re using. So they have visibility, but if not, um, trying to get them to adopt, it can really help with streamlining processes and having visibility and things like that.

I think it’s really interesting that you, you hit on something that I’ve found is that they think things like a sauna or Wrike are more traditional. I call it detailed project management tools. They, they, where they were, I’ve always struggled with them being effective is going up a level to strategic goals.

And I’ve done the same thing as you, something like Smartsheets or that, um, to, to do that level. But then the actual work gets broken down and managed through something else. That’s uh, so I think that’s. It’s too bad. There’s not one thing. I’ve I think there’s, um, where’s the one I saw I saw somebody wants to, it was using something.

I think it’s called notion in my head, the ability to do sort of play in both spaces, but I haven’t actually used it to food. Interesting. Okay, I cut you off. Was there anything more about like, you know, your experience of, uh, how you managed as an individual, can a person running all of that stuff? Uh, the only other thing I would say is you have to delegate, um, Certain things.

So, because you’re the, the one person, a lot of times I would have other things kind of added in, um, or they’d asked me to do things that weren’t necessarily my expertise. So, you know, things like, can you design a new newsletter for us? Can you, uh, design this landing page? A lot of design. Yeah. You know, things like that.

So somewhat, you know, being able to push back and say, you know, this is about how long it will take me to do this. This is what my time is worth. It will take away from this project. Can we, you know, here’s three different options. We could hire this designer, you know, trying to kind of walk through that with people.

Um, I think is important and then empowering, uh, your marketers or whoever, you know, is using the system. Empowering them to learn more and teaching your team about your systems and how they work. Um, cause you’ll find people who will get excited about it and want to learn more and want to potentially even use it.

And it could kind of be their journey to marketing ops as well. So try not to hold the gate locked. If you can. Yeah. Okay. So that’s really interesting. Are you, um, okay. So are you, are you still, uh, kind of a lone Wolf or have you gotten to a point where you have a team now? So we, uh, we do have a consultant team that we work with.

Um, but I’ve been able to, through all of this tracking, kind of prove out the fact that we need a full-time. Employee. Um, so we’re hoping to hire one in April. Uh, two will handle most, most of the campaign side of things, so I can focus more on the infrastructure. Um, But yeah, it really came down to me. I had to literally visualize it out for my boss, um, and show him, you know, these are, these are all the tasks that I’m doing, and this is what my capability is.

And it will take us 24 months to clean this up, or it could take us 12 months, um, depending on what resources I can get. And, you know, there definitely is a game of politics to play when it comes to budget and trying to figure out what you can get. Um, but. I have too many times said, yeah, I can handle it.

Yeah. I can do it and not been able to deliver or I’ve been completely burnt out. And I’ve learned now to just speak up right from the beginning, it’s better to get too much than not enough. And you usually end up somewhere in the middle. So that’s really what I try to do now. I think it’s really interesting.

So can you. Talk through, uh, let me maybe go a little more in depth about how you kind of pitched that idea of bring, getting another resource and, uh, Like, what do you think was critical? And just by the way, for those listeners who probably know what’s coming out of my mouth, next is, this is exactly why you need to understand finance, right?

You need to know how to build the case for this. And that means you have to come up with like the ROI. So I’m going to guess that’s part of it, but please make me look, make me look smart here. Okay. Or dumb. Yeah. So a couple things, one, you know, I came into this new role and they pitched it to me that it was, um, I was going to be the one marketing operations person.

And there was a consultant that had been running the platform prior. Uh, but they, you know, wanted her to slowly kind of start. You know, working on other things and I should be taking over the instance. Um, and so when I came in, I did a complete audit of the instance and pretty much on a spreadsheet, uh, took different sections of the instance, things like lead scoring and email marketing and database management.

Broke down what best practices were and what the environment currently looked like and what the gap was, and then put a project in the sauna for any of the gaps. Um, so from the infrastructure side, I really just wanted my boss to see. The projects, the project load to get it to just a standard stable environment.

This isn’t like any cool, extra bells and whistles. Just what do we need for this thing to be stable? This is the kind of stuff. This is the stuff that I always think of is it’s it’s the part of the iceberg below the surface of the water, right? Or maybe the better analogy is it’s the Duck’s feet under the water that are going like crazy, but you don’t see it.

Exactly. Exactly. So, and I think to be honest, my, so my manager was new to the company as well. And because no one had really owned the instance, there was just not a lot of understanding of even where it was at. So I think when they hired for the position, they really just needed someone to come in and, and tell them what they needed to some degree.

Um, so yeah, so. I showed through a sauna, the, there were 43 infrastructure projects that needed to be done. I tried to scope them out from a high level. You know, these are the, how many hours? 43. Yeah. Wow. Lots of projects. Yep. So just that number, like, right. Like that’s a lot. And so my manager. Looked at that and then looked at the hours and then I’ve said, you know, this is just infrastructure.

I have to run webinars. I have to go to meetings. I have to, I, you know, I took my campaign ops side of things, accumulated that hours, uh, accumulated those hours. And then I just, you know, gave my hours that I can do. And obviously there was a large discrepancy. So that was, that kind of gave him the understanding of, you know, the gap in resources.

And then when you talk about ROI, What I did with all the infrastructure projects is I looked at marketing planning’s goals. So they had said, we want to do customer retention. We want to do this many webinars. We, you know, and I took all of their campaign stuff, what they wanted to do. And then I highlighted the infrastructure projects that needed to be done, or those campaigns would not be successful.

And those campaigns. Through marketing and we’re tied to a certain number of a certain number of dollars that we needed to accomplish from each campaign. So that’s how I was able to tie the dollars to it. Um, was looking at the projects that I wouldn’t be able to complete, um, without additional resources.

So I’m curious. Cause I feel like. That kind of thought process and how you build that case and thinking about, uh, if we’re going to spend X amount of dollars to bring on another person and we would expect to get this some sort of incremental value out of that that’s above and beyond that, it’s not like, I don’t know that there’s a lot of people who naturally get that.

Um, unless they just. Gotten they had training on it for like finance or school or they had a manager or leader who helped them through that. I’m curious. So given that as a, as my kind of prop proposition of this, but how, like, how did you, where did you like learn to come up with that? I mean, was there somebody you’ve worked with that helped you think through things like that?

Or is this something that you just naturally have done or is it school? I’m just really curious about that. Um, honestly, the, the framework that helped me get started was, um, I think it was marketing rockstar guides. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that website. Yeah. Is that the one that’s Marquetto focus, but yeah, so I, yeah, I knew that we needed people.

Um, And I was just, I honestly just Googled, um, I, I don’t know exactly what I Googled, but I, I was just Googling things like how to, uh, prove out a need for resources or something like that. Um, and I came across this marketing rockstar guide that was marketing ops team. Uh, capacity and it was just a spreadsheet and it showed based on, you know, these different elements you need one or two people.

And that’s where I started to kind of framework and think through this, like from a, from a dollars perspective. And, um, I also did use that as part of my proof point. I think, I think I know, I think I know what spreadsheet you’re talking about because I think I’ve looked at it as well in a right. Yeah, that just gave me, it gave me kind of that basis right.

Of how I need to start thinking about this. Um, and you know, I looked at, it says things like, you know, if you have more than four marketers that you’re supporting, then you need an additional person. You, you know, we kind of walk you through step-by-step. So that framework helped me kind of start to think about, you know, what resources are needed and then.

When I was thinking about all these projects and I was putting hours to it, that’s when I started to connect to my hours. And then it was it just kind of all I came together. Naturally. I wish that I could point to like a specific class I took or something specifically, but it all kind of like naturally came together as I was pulling more and more information and, um, I just wanted to continue to build my case.

And so I’d make another connection and another connection. And I kept trying to connect it as deeply to dollars as I could to the universal business language. Yes. Um, okay, so this, this is your. One of the things you said in this conversation, this is another sort of connecting the dots between these conversations is that sort of everyone we’ve talked to along the way has been very, um, it seems like individually motivated to go do research and solve problems and.

Researching and reading on your own or going through communities like, um, is that something that you just, you just have learned to do and then are there specific resources? I mean, you talked about the marketing rockstars, which is one I now I’m pretty sure I know what that one is. Um, but are there other websites, resources, or, you know, obviously we’re doing this on behalf with MO Pros, right?

Are there other communities that you go to what’s, what’s your go-to way to sort of help help you?

Yeah. So at the beginning of my career, I. Really, really, really, um, relied on platform, specific community forums. Um, you know, when you’re in a specific tool, that’s going to give you the most reliable and quick information to fix like technical challenges and things like that. Uh, so that was pretty much where I spent a lot of my time in the beginning and the, and the marketing ops community was still growing, you know, six years ago.

There just wasn’t as much as there is now. Um, so, and I also didn’t have a team, right? Like I was the only marketing person or the only marketing ops person. And so I didn’t have anyone that I could go to. And then I would say about halfway through there started to be, um, like meetups for specific platforms.

Um, so like Marquetto groups, um, I started joining those regularly. To learn like hands-on and in person. Um, and now because of, you know, COVID, everyone is online and I feel like these communities have grown even more, which has been amazing. And I’m really relying on slack. Now I’m in three slack channels right now, um, that are marketing ops specific.

And that has been my go-to for. That’s. Yeah, I, I, I I’ve told Mike, um, Rizzo that, yeah. I often wonder what my career might have looked like. Had there been these communities and this amount of support 15, 20 years ago. Um, it just it’s, it is. I blown away and I, and I, I don’t know if, if other communities are like this in other domains, but I could tell you.

The marketing ops community is it’s like a, um, oh, I’m trying to turn it. It’s like a sisterhood or brotherhood, right? It’s, it’s, there’s this real camaraderie of shared experience, uh, and, and wanting to help each other. That is really. Uh, it feels unique to me. I don’t know if it really is. Yeah. I don’t know.

I don’t know if my friends who are fighting in finance would feel the same way if there was a finance community and there probably is. But yeah, I feel exactly the same way. Okay. Um, okay, so we’ve covered a whole lot about how you got there, how you’re built. Like you’ve gone from, you’re going from team of one to building, getting to add to the team.

So I like that. That’s really some good lessons there. Um, Yeah, you did have these other roles and it sounds like you feel like you’ve found your place in marketing ops, but I’m curious, is there like, is there anything about marketing ops you’re like, I wish I didn’t have to do this. Like, this is the trade-off I have to do this kind of stuff to be in marketing ops or sort of the related.

Was there anything from previous other roles that you’ve played that you miss, that you don’t get to do either don’t get to do or don’t get to do as often as you’d like and marketing ops? Yeah.

I feel like I still to this day have to explain email best practices all the time and that we can’t just blast. I mean, how many times you’ve been asked to put a video and do an email? Yes. That one too. Those two, uh, those are pretty rough. Um, but I just love marketing and ops honestly. And even the challenges that come with it.

The roles that I’ve had have changed every single day is different. Um, and so I really don’t think there’s anything that I miss about my other roles. Um, yeah, marketing ops. Is it for me? I think I love it. You found, you found your people and you found your calling. Exactly. Okay. So. This has been really interesting to get your story.

I mean, this is, um, I’m fascinated by every one of these stories of everyone is a little bit different, so cool. So, okay. So we’ve covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else from your career story that you, that we haven’t covered, that you want to make sure that our audience hears about it can learn from?

Um, it’d be really cool. Like, gosh, it’s been, we’ve covered so much. I wasn’t expecting it. Yeah. Um, well, I would just say, I mean, we touched on the community stuff. I would just say to really start digging in and trying to find your community, um, because that’s, that’s the main reason why, um, You know, I even joined this podcast is because of that, you know, finding different communities.

And, um, I really wanted to try to give back this year and be more active in those slack channels and, um, helping. You know, the, the baby mops, people who are just learning and then even some of us who have been in it forever and are trying to figure out how to deal with the biggest latest challenge. So definitely look for those people that are willing to help and raise your hand because like you said, this community is.

It’s such a great place. I feel like it’s a lot like Hogwarts, like we’re all like these like wizards out in the muggle world. And then we come to these communities and everyone speaks the same language and, um, yeah, I love it. Oh, that’s an interesting analogy. I haven’t heard that, but I get it. Yeah. So.

Yeah. Well, it’s funny that you say like the, uh, what’d you call them then the mops babies. And it was, it makes me wonder, what am I in my, like the grandfather? Maybe you’re like the fun uncle. Okay. I’ll be the fun uncle. I’m the one who’s over the tea tying went on Thanksgiving, right? Yeah. That’s that’s for our ops cast after dark episodes.

I don’t do that here. Thank you promise. Awesome. All right. So, okay. So this is going to be, I think, um, one of the things that we’d like to talk to our guests about, and part of this is because of the MO Pros community. And one of the things we’re trying to achieve is to, um, help elevate the whole profession of marketing ops.

But one of the things I think we recognize is there’s not really. A consistent, um, set of education or training that’s available for people to do it, to help them elevate their game. If, if there was such a thing as a marketing ops certification of some sort, what, you know, based on your experience, what would you think would be critical to include in that?

Um, maybe one or two things. I think data, you have to understand it. Yeah. Uh, how to connect it, how to clean it. This is becoming so much more important. I totally agree. Yes. Um, what tools are available to clean it? Uh, I think, I think we touched on this when we spoke before too, but, uh, leadership and marketing ops, I feel like there needs to be more training around.

Um, because this profession is growing, there are going to be more and more teams. It’s not just going to be one person admins. And as I’ve been looking at my career trajectory and where I want things to go, I want to lead a marketing ops team at some point. And how do you do that? If Mike was, if Mike would, if Mike was here, he would say, this is the year of the marketing ops pro.

So, so yeah, I, I’m a big believer that we need to start. I’m a believer that we need to do. We, as existing leaders need to do a better job across all functions of developing new leaders. So that’s just like, to me in marketing ops is its own unique sort of components to that. Exactly. So, yeah, I think leadership strategy and data, those would be big, big ticket items for me.

Oh, that’s really interesting. None of the well data. If you were to ask me if someone asked me today, like how would I build out a marketing ops team if I could do it from scratch? And ideally like, like from ground zero data, like some, either across the team, right. Looking for. Data skills and experience and knowledge and understanding how to put data together and report it.

Um, and to interpret it is going to be a really important skill set. And I almost believe that it needs to be a full-time like that’s almost a full-time function now. Um, as I said this to somebody recently that I don’t know any organization that doesn’t have enough data, what they don’t have is enough time or expertise to really take that and turn it into actionable.

Incense and inform what they’re doing. I think it’s, I think it’s going to be it’s it’s if it’s not already, it’s gotta be one of the most important skill sets that, that marketing ops pros. And by the way, if you can do that and we’ve had other guests on, so like we have all the data, like if you can do that and provide insights back to the organization on what’s working, what’s not working how to like how to change things.

If you want to be a part of that strategic conversation about how you’re going to market, that’s the way to do it. Yeah. Lauren, you know, what’s happening is all these tools are coming in and saying, we can do that for you. You don’t need people, you just need this new tool or you need a new part of our platform.

And what I’ve found is you just end up with a more expensive tool that you still need. The, like you said, the expertise, the skill set, and. Everyone to be on board about how the data’s going to flow and it has to be clean data, any kind of tool isn’t going to solve that. Yeah. I mean the analogy I like to talk about it, it goes way back to my early career when I was doing it and management consulting, and we did a lot of.

You know, selection and implementation of financial systems. And one of the things that I kept finding is that the, the vendors that made accounting and financial software, when they would go out and talk about it, they talked about all that like, oh, we do this great. Monthly and a month and a quarter and a year reporting, yada yada, yada.

But that was only as good as how well you could do a P a R G L stuff every day. And if you can’t get that right, then the reporting only makes the bad reporting faster. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Uh, I’m a, I’m a huge fan of technology as an enabler, but it’s gotta be done like. There’s so much behind it that that needs to be taken care of.

And I would rather. Um, get a process and stuff right before trying to over automate it. Right. I agree. Interesting. All right. Well, there you have it. So marketing ops pro certificate needs to have what’d you say, strategy, leadership and data. Data expertise. Okay. Got it. Bethany, this has been fantastic. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.

Um, as usual, I probably learned more from it than you have, and I think our audience will really benefit from it. If folks want to connect with you or kind of key, you know, see what you’re doing out, out in the world, what’s the best way for them to do. Uh, so I am on LinkedIn, but those slack channels that’s, you know, mops professionals, uh, the Kardashians is a great one.

Yes. If you’re a part out user, that’s the place to be. And then, um, MO Pros I’m on that slack channel as well. So. Okay, rose.com. There you go. All good. Well, this has been fun for our audience. Thank you again for, uh, allowing us to invade your personal space. Um, and, uh, and continuing with the journey on us with us here.

Continue to send us your feedback and suggestions. Uh, if you know somebody who would be a good guest or a good topic, or you want to be a guest and have a topic, definitely reach out to me or Mike Grizzard named Matt, Luke, any of us, we can, can help facilitate that. So until next time, thanks everybody.

Bye.