The Role of Marketing Ops in Modern Marketing with Daniel Murray

In this episode we had the opportunity to talk with Daniel Murray (host of the Marketing Millenials podcast) about how he sees:

  • The relationship between marketing ops and overall marketing
  • The importance of understanding broader marketing and sales processes as a marketing operations professional
  • The shifting perception of marketing ops and potential elevation of marketing ops leaders into heads of marketing/CMO roles

In addition, we talk about overrated / over-hyped martech and the importance of understanding data and analytics in the marketing ops world now.

Recorded live.


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. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by the MO Pros. I’m Michael Hartmann joined today by my cohost, namely Lou and Mike Rizzo, presale low. I am saying hello for the first time in this recording.

What’s the first time that this recording, we just left though. Anyway, I’m excited. Let’s do this. Yeah. So cheers. And I’m like, you’re, you’re making this an after dark on your own. Um, so we’re good. Good to go today. We’re we’re excited to have Daniel Murray with us. He’s a marketing operations solution consultant.

They clear bit. And is also the co-host of another podcast, the marketing and millennials, uh, he’s been in around marketing and marketing ops most of his career after having played football in college. And in addition, he’s also an advisor and investor in some early stage companies. Daniel, thanks for joining us today.

Hebrews stoked to be on this podcast. Well, I think we’re more excited than you. So there you go. Um, so I, I did, I did take a listen to some of the marketing podcast episodes. And I would recommend it to people who are interested in kind of the broader marketing, uh, topics that you cover. But as you’ve talked to people in those, in your podcast and your experiences as a consultant in others, you come across people from other kind of other areas of marketing, you know, what are some of the things that you’ve learned from that?

And you’re unexperienced that would, would be beneficial for the folks who are our listeners in marketing ops. Yeah, I think one of the most important things in why I started the marketing millennials is for marketing ops people. I think that you should learn the broader sense of marketing, like all the topics to understand how to put the pieces together.

A lot of marketing ops people are very technical. They get how to do things. They get data. But when you don’t understand like the top level marketing things, it’s hard to connect the dots on process and data and insights for your marketing leaders. So the one thing that I’ve learned in. Just even getting information from all these different marketing leaders, it helps me talk better in conversations with them.

It helps me get better solutions to people and it helps me connect dots on why this channel is underperforming and over-performing. So I think like in a broader sense, it helps you become a better marketing. I was professional when you learn the broader sense of marketing and why. Different market leaders are making different decisions.

I, uh, that was something that you and I caught up. Um, you shared that with me, you know, kind of on our one-on-one that we were having the other day about some other things. And I, that resonates so much with me personally, when I’m curious to hear Naomi’s thoughts on it too, but, you know, it seems like some of the standout.

You know, folks that are sort of climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak, if that’s your ambition and marketing ops, um, and you want to maybe move up in terms of leadership and stuff like that. It seems like one of the ways to do that. As by trying to understand more broadly the kind of plethora of marketing activities that are out there.

Um, and, and maybe that’s like one of the steps that you can take is trying to go learn the rest of that stuff. Does that resonate with you Naomi? Like w yeah. And I think this is something that I’ve kind of touched on before, where I actually don’t really like the term marketing operations, because I feel like it hole.

Right. Like, especially once you start getting to a, um, once you start getting to a point where you have a mature technology stack and instead of like finding new tools to acquire, you’re actually looking at optimizing the existing ones or looking at alternative vendors to replace existing tools that you already have in your stack.

Right. Um, I’m finding that, you know, uh, at least within EFI marketing is, you know, we still support majority of our day to day is marketing, but. I would say a good chunk of my team’s bandwidth is tied towards things like, you know, um, our support teams and our professional services, even internal it stuff, things around finance deal desk, order to cash sales ops.

Like they’re not necessarily marketing functions, but more so like business operations or customer experience type stuff, you know, the full life cycle of things. Um, In the beginning, it was kind of like, oh, having a conversation with someone in a different functional group. And you’re like, oh, you know, I can support you in this.

These are your pain points. Here’s how I can help automate some things. And then you just tend to like word gets out. Right. And you tend to have your tentacles, like gripped into other areas of the business that, you know, I find that it’s super fascinating. Like what you had said, I know about, you know, Speaking to other folks and just being able to speak eloquently about different areas of your organization and how the tools can help.

So

I’m just getting out. I think we’re all on the same page. How important is to understand the why behind what we’re doing? Um, I’m just curious, uh, And actually I was going to ask a good question about curiosity, Daniel, do you think, do you think it’s important to be curious as, as marketing folks so that we, we want to try to learn that and understand how what we’re doing can impact our ability to go to market effectively.

What’s working, what’s not working. How’s that going to impact the sales teams, right? Things like that, that maybe are not. Yeah. In an early, you know, someone early in their career in marketing ops may not really understand. No. Yeah. I think I’m actually, curiosity is probably one of the biggest traits you need to have, because I think one of the goals of a marketing ops person is.

To be a step ahead of a lot of the leaders to like, cause you’re trying to figure out how to scale for the longterm, give insights on like what’s going to happen. Like, but from the data you’ve seen and if you don’t know. The curiosity to learn all these new subjects even learned about your counterparts.

It’s really, really hard to make a decision or give a good recommendation to your leaders. Um, so always being curious on what you can optimize, what you can. What, what does this data point actually mean? Is it, uh, is this actually useful data or not? There’s so many things that why curiosity matters and marketing ops and in marketing in general, I think it’s like a trait that you need to have.

If you have marketing in your title. Yeah, totally agree with that. I was on with, uh, with this group that, um, we have some programs in our community and one of them, what we refer to as, uh, called the channel takeover, and it’s a way to drive valuable conversations inside of a specific channel in the community.

And, um, one of the things that they were talking about today was this idea of. Just understanding the analytics part of, of marketing ops and how going up funnel like upstream and downstream, how that impacts the business holistically. And it was like one of those things that you’re just talking about.

Right. It’s like, just trying to be curious about how data and the structure of the data is actually going to like influence future decisions that you want to make and trying to think about, you know, the big picture. Right? So it. Even when you start getting into the weeds on something as nuanced and specific as like data and analytics and trying to understand it, you still have to be curious and thinking about the bigger picture when it comes to all of those things.

So I’m really excited about like that conversation that’s coming to the community soon, but it seems to like, That underlying thread of curiosity and thinking about sort of the holistic view continues to permeate throughout all of the conversations that I continue to have with folks like yourself and, you know, in some of these other folks as well.

So I don’t know, just sharing. Yeah. It’s it’s it w I think it’s, it’s really interesting, cause I think we all believe, and I actually think it’s a trade. The best marketing upset people have is that they’re curious and wanna understand stuff. But I don’t know about you and Daniel, this maybe actually I think Daniel, Naomi, you got sort of two different perspectives maybe.

Yeah. My experience was way before I did marketing ops. I was a consulting and so I got used to. Asking lots of questions and not being afraid to not have an answer. Always did I, I got, I want to go figure it out, but I feel like there’s a lot of people who will that part of why they may be curious, but they may not be comfortable asking questions or when they’re asked to question, not being comfortable with.

I’m not sure, but I’m going to go find out and then doing that legwork I’m yeah. And I say Naomi and Daniel was like Daniel, because you’ve now been, you’ve done both kind of in-house and consulting and Naomi, I don’t think you’ve done consulting. I’m just curious. Now I, my wheels are turning because there’s something about consulting that makes you comfortable with that.

I haven’t officially, uh, worked for a consulting agency. No, but I think that sometimes you can, you can say that, you know, the companies that I’ve worked for, especially with different business units, um, I kind of feel like an in-house consultant sometimes, especially when they’re, you know, differing within the business units, differing agendas or different priorities and things like that.

So it does feel like, um, you, you know, you’re working in a, working in a con internal consulting agency almost. Um, but with. Handful of dedicated clients as opposed to always onboarding new ones. So, yeah. I love that. I see Daniel’s head nodding in agreement here. Like what’s your take Daniel? I, I think that.

For me to get in this role of a consultant, I feel like a great marketing ops org. The great marketing org see marketing as a consultant or strategic advisor. I think that when marketing. Ops isn’t seen as a strategic advisor, like, and as a support function, that makes it hard for them to be curious, like when they pigeonholed by what the marketing leader says that they have to do, or this market leader has to, or are they just doing all these tickets?

And they just, oh, my job is just to be supporting marketing. I’m not supposed to give my advice on anything. I think that’s when it happens. But if you’re in an org that you’re lucky enough to be. That strategic advisor, that consultant that feeling. I think it’s very transferable to like being an outside consultant because all you do all day is help leaders make strategic decisions.

Yeah, I think so. It’s interesting. So all those listeners out there who are curious, but haven’t, haven’t had the opportunity or haven’t been comfortable speaking up or asking us questions. Like I encourage you to do that. That’s I think it will make a big difference in where you go, but. I want to kind of shift topics a little bit.

Um, we kind of, we’ve kind of been going on this a little bit. Mike, Mike has declared that this is, uh, that the 2022 is the year of the marketing ops professional it, in some ways I think I’ve started seeing some things to do. They hadn’t seen regularly, like VP level jobs or Mike marketing ops and things like that.

What, like, Daniel, do you, are you seeing a difference in kind of the perception or both? Maybe the perception and the reality of what, how marketing ops is viewed? Um, it’s some of your clients or your own experience? Yeah, I think. Like the function of like go to market strategy and ops is becoming a, a newer and a function that’s happening.

So I think a lot of people are looking for that later that can come in and see the bigger picture, because before I think. The tech stack was stuck to like, oh, these one or two or three tools, but now you have to know about like data warehouse and how data pipes through like segment and. More broadly.

And I don’t think a lot of marketing professionals know about that. So they, they leaning on your like marketing ops person. I come in and help me do this. Cause I, I need to make strategic decisions and I can’t right now, um, because all of the data is happening. And if, I don’t think if you don’t have that in your function, a great marketing ops leader, it’s hard to.

With all the competition these days, because there’s so much data out there so much more competition, so much more tools that you need. Someone that could look at the big picture and be like, how do I, what data with TAC with insights and help the marketing arc. See it from a big picture view. Yeah. I don’t know.

So it’s interesting that you bring up, you went right into data and insights because. Over the last, really over the last, probably 24 months, two years or so. I think my view of if I was to start a new marketing ops team, I don’t know that somebody with super deep, like who’s focused primarily will be on data and analytics and insights would be the first hire, but it’d be second or third and, or, or I’d be looking for people who could do that.

You have that skillset. And can do say tech ops or something like that. Know? Naomi, are you seeing more, more? I think so. Yeah, definitely. You’re just, I think it’s one of those things where you don’t know that you need it until you have it where you miss, you know, it’s like kind of the chicken or the egg Carter horse type situation.

Yeah. Oh yeah. You don’t know what you don’t know. Okay. You do now. And from like a curiosity perspective, there’s like going back to that idea, when you sort of have an idea of what questions you can ask and get answers from date. Right. Like, I know I want an answer to this type of question, but I don’t really know how to make the data, helped me see that.

And, and sometimes you’re not even educated on how that works. And so like the chicken or the egg carton, the horse thing, like sometimes you need someone to sort of like open your mind as for a second. No, no. Let me show you, what’s possible with, with like, when you start to pull in all these like multi threads of sources and stuff like that.

So I could see it being like, Definitely a second person. Oh, it was interesting from that same conversation that I was having earlier with these folks around data and analytics is, um, they basically said like, Hey, you sorta need to know SQL in order to use this tool effectively. That sucks. Cause like I’ve written like three SQL things in my life.

Right. And the last time I did it, it was like 10 years ago. Like probably more than that. Um, and so it’s interesting. Like, are we moving in a direction where we’re kind of adding yet another skillset that we need to like tack on to this operational role, this marketing ops role, um, and. You know, I realized there’s pillars of marketing ops, but I don’t know, like, what do you think Daniel, do you think you need to be like savvy enough and like sequel and you know, manipulating data in order to call yourself a marketing ops pro or does that start segmenting you into a new category?

No, I think, I don’t think you need that the CQL stuff, but I think you have to know like, Be able to interpret data and understand where the data came from and where, how it gets to that place. I think you can hire a full people with CQL a data analyst and stuff like that. But I think like, as you get into those director and VP level roles, I think marketing ops splits out to like insights and process.

It’s not just like focusing on tech stack. It’s also focusing like the insights part of it. That, that insights part makes you become more of a strategic advisor, because now you’re looking at data and can give decisions to the marketing leaders, like where to go next and stuff like that. Like I like to, and going back to questioning us or earlier what I’ve learned from some guests on the market, millennials, like there’s this, um, guy who wrote the book alchemy co named Rory Sutherland.

And he, he said that. You can S a lot of marketing roles are like one piece of a SU Doku puzzle. Like you can solve a Sudoku puzzle with one piece. You need all the pieces. And I don’t think that like, and what I think marking OBS sees is the whole Sudoku puzzle, because you have to be talking to all the functions in marketing.

And I think even like the CMOs so busy that they don’t see it. We’re the ones who see like the Sudoku puzzle for like the tech, the data, and we can like help make those strategic decisions. So that’s why I think, like, I think that like future CMOs are going to be marking out as people because they see the bigger picture.

That’s my, my thought process. But because a lot of it is like knowing data, knowing tack, knowing finance, and that’s just my prediction in the future. You’ll see more and more going to that. It’s just think of the same thing. I’m seeing her on Saturday for dinner. I’m going to be like, Hey, I know a guy you should.

Uh, okay. I know this guy, Daniel. I know a guy. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. So Danny, are you you’re you’re it’s like yours was an echo of, uh, Vivian Chan who was a guest. Half a year ago, ish. On our, on our podcasts. And she said the same thing, right? Her sort of provocative statement was that feature CMOs would be, there would be a lot more than row rising up out of marketing ops expertise.

I think that’s, um, maybe, maybe that’s the, that’s like that’s the true indicator, right? That more people are talking about that as a potential career path to get to the CMO level that this is, you know, a, a, a, I don’t know what you would call it, but, uh, you know, a, a pivotal point in, in the. The professional world of yes.

I mean, I think you don’t have to want that. Right. It’s certainly a path. Um, and if you get. Versed in the broader spectrum of marketing capabilities. And now how then it’s helpful to head that direction. But like, I still think that there’s a, a home for people who want to stay sort of on the technical, you know, I want to think about the go-to market strategy and the technologies.

We need to be able to execute that piece. That’s not necessarily the CML. Yeah. I, I, I agree with that. I think there’s, I think there’s, I think like anybody in their career, like, I think there’s people who want to stay as like, like, if you want to be a CMO, you really going to have to like love numbers and you have to really have to like, love talking to finance and a bunch of people all day and not focus on what you love, like which could be the tech stack or a technical capabilities, or if you’re the head of demand, gen love.

Running campaigns and stuff like that. Like, you don’t do that much when you’re a CMS. So like, I think like you have to like, know that, like the reason I say that some marketing ops people are going to become CMOs has. The way marketing ops is becoming is like, I think like that insights part is becoming more and more a part of the function.

When I started marketing, I came up with marketing automation. So like all I thought about it was like tech. And then I was like, oh goodness, like now I have to like, become better at learning insights now. My last role, I was doing a lot more insights and I’ve ever done, but that taught me so much, um, about marketing and marketing ops and the new version of marketing ops that is evolving.

Yeah, totally agree. No, well, I mean, when Daniel was saying about marketing, the new version of marketing ops, I’m like, is it like a marketing ops? 2.0, and what does that look like? I feel like there’s. Organizations and leaders where business leaders, where we’re still trying to convince on the benefits of marketing ops, but then it’s, it’s interesting because then you also have a group of people who have been working in the industry for quite a long time.

And we’re kind of like defining, um, what that next chapter looks like and does the gap. Or is there like a catch up period? I don’t know.

It’s a really interesting idea, right? That maybe there’s. Hasn’t have knots in terms of, if it is marketing ops 2.0, that’s interesting. I mean, but in some ways I think I’m seeing some of that. Actually. We are. I mean, it look was that we there’s a book out now it’s from backroom to boardroom. Right. And it’s literally about how marketing ops becomes a part of the C-suite or the leadership table, um, or is just the right hand person to, to, to the executive kind of leader in marketing.

Um, and so you’re maybe not the CMO, but you will be a C-level level something, and you’re really advising that, that role strategically. Um, and we’re seeing that shift and, you know, I think. I saw just recently, again, another VP of marketing ops role out there. Uh, I can’t remember the gentleman’s name right now and I should remember it, but he left slack.

Right. And went, uh, moved on to a new role. And that’s incredible. Like we’re seeing a lot of those VP level titles. Gosh, just three years ago, there was like almost zero. Right? So maybe it really is the, I guess the question, and this is just a, this is not like I’m not expecting an answer for this. So the question is, are these VP or senior director and higher marketing ops roles?

Are they born out of, um, uh, I guess the question is, are they there because someone was there. Escalated internally and then left or are they there because there are new roles and the organization has deemed that it’s important to have this as a role.

Good question. I don’t know. Who knows. So no Daniel, between the two, between our two podcasts. We’re going to go figure this out. I’m interested to know the answer. I think it could be a little bit of both. I think like I’ve seen more and more people like have, like, it’s not even rev up. Rev ops is splitting up to like, like this, I go to market ops now and then like customer ops and they’re like separated.

So. Things. I even splitting up that way where like used to be like everything under revenue ops, and now like things just putting out like, and go to markets, becoming like a big thing now, like go to market strategy and stuff like that, where like that wasn’t even like that big of a function and like orcs, it was like a small, maybe a small team, but now it’s like go to market ops and strategy is like an organization that’s popping up now.

So. Um, you know, I’m Naomi, I don’t think we can answer that question, but like, I’m also very interested to know what the, our listeners think and what they’re saying, because there’s a part of me that thinks some of this is because yeah, they’re seeing. Um, it’s a little bit of a reaction to, you know, the, what was it, the great resignation or whatever we’re calling this time period, right?

Where people they’re finally seeing, like, if I lose this person, if Naomi leaves, right, we’re screwed. And so as part of the way to, to retain people, right? We’re, we’re, we’re, there’s some escalation and titles and compensation and that kind of stuff, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m just saying, like, I wonder if it’s that or if it’s actually a sort of, sort of a fundamental shift in the, in the perception and the, and the expectations of the role.

Wow. I get three people silenced. I don’t think I’ve ever pulled that off. Um, all right. So th this let’s let’s move on because I think we could probably, we’ll probably circle around the drain on this one for a while, but. Definitely interested. I was really excited to hear that Daniel, your take that, you know, future CMOs, you know, there’s, there’s the chance for people to come out of marketing ops for that?

I think that’s something that, um, I’m excited about. Um, let’s talk about, you know, one of the things I think we probably can all agree on is that there’s a, there’s a lot of hype around technology and marketing. And now to some degree, sales is catching up to you in terms of the number of tools and things like that.

But. Yeah. A few days ago, another, you know, another friend of the podcast, Darryl Alfonzo had something on LinkedIn where he was asking like, what’s the most overrated marketing tech. I’m curious, like I know how I voted. Um, and I, you know, I actually had, I think he had four things I probably would have, if I could have done two votes, there were two that were clearly above for me.

But I’m curious, what would you say Daniel or kinda overrated tech or, or maybe misunderstood is maybe the other way to think of. That’s a good question. I didn’t see Darrell’s Paul. So I gotta think about that, but what’s overrated. Um, yeah, that’s a good thing. One of them was like, well, it was like ABM solutions.

Uh, uh, I conversational marketing, like bot. Those were the, and I know those two, because those are the two that would have been top of my list. So yeah, I would definitely ABM ABM is overrated to me. So like, I don’t even, I feel like most marketing is just a B like account based marketing. Like, am I my opinion?

Like, cause you’re like going after a list of people, like, okay, guess like ABM at scale for like B2B, at least. So I think like that, and also like intent-based stuff. Means that your cap, a lot of times, it’s like you capturing people when they’re in bind motion, but like great marketing should get people crave demand as well.

So like, this is like, you’re just capturing intent to people that are already looking for in the field and like maybe like fighting against competitors for that instead of like going out to the market and beating people before. To do the research, like for example, like some tech that I heard about from like in a community and then I’m researching about it, like, like someone’s has to create demand somewhere.

And I think that’s like, intent is just like weird to me. Like I’ve never, I’ve never been a big fan of ABN. Recommended for a lot of people. Um, oh, I’ve, I’ve always thought like ABM it’s I think somebody chimed in on that, right. I E ABM. Is a, it’s a strategy, not just a technology. And second, I believe in most places where I’ve been right.

You could probably achieve a step forward in an ABM strategy with other tech that you already probably already have, like marketing automation and things like that. So, sorry I interrupted you Daniel. I think that’s a great answer too. I think it’s like a lot of people. I think it’s just, it became a buzzword because marketing vendors made it a buzzword instead of like, um, it actually being like when it’s been done for years, like it just like.

Oh, let’s call it, give a buzzword. So then we can make technology around it that could fit the buzzword of ABM, which a lot of marketing vendors do that anyway with a lot of things. Um, yeah, it’s like, oh, we aren’t using like the best. Lead scoring in the world, or we not be using the best like marketing attribution.

You should get that tool like to do that. They just create stories that people latch on to because, and then I becomes a tool or like becomes everything, everybody using. Totally. I think for. There are, there are moments in this journey we’ve all been on for MarTech and, and broadly the technologies that serve all these different functions, where there really isn’t a clear like category name yet, and somebody has the opportunity to sort of name it.

And so, like, I think there’s two really clear examples of that. One of them is actually. There is a strategy that nobody sort of like put a broad stroke name to, and then they created a technology for it. It was born out of like, you know, the flip, my funnel movement and all that stuff. And the other clear example of that is creating high value, good content for SEO, otherwise known as inbound mark.

Right. And HubSpot, like categorically named that thing. And it was like, cool. Just like create really good content that people are looking for and be helpful. And like, we call that inbound marketing and they created a category and they named it and nobody had named it yet. And before it was just like SEO.

But whatever, but they’re like, no, no, no. Like this is inbound instead of outbound and that’s, I mean, Hey, it’s a great way to describe it. Don’t get me wrong. No, like flack on them. No flack on the category leaders, they created ABM, but there’s just opportunities that people sees our companies sees and they name it.

And then. Yeah, I think that’s what happened. Did, did they, so did they kind of come up with the concept of inbound marketing to sort of describe a strategy and then they, uh, obviously they had technology that could support it, but they’ve never have they, did they describe their technology as inbound marketing?

I mean, I think that’s the gist. That’s what I’m trying to get. Like ABM went from very quickly from. A concept to technology called after it. And that’s the part that rubs me the wrong, well, maybe not revenue, but I think that’s where it has created like a lot of hype about the technology without a lot of people really understanding the strategy and all the things internally that you needed to do from a process standpoint, to make the technology work to scale.

Uh, when you start tracing the roots of where ABM came from, you’ll see, you’ll see why that sort of happened. Like there needed to be large funding rounds and then technology built on top of it. And everybody got really excited and it was this big hype cycle. Um, I don’t want to like totally misspeak or put words in the mouth of the founders of HubSpot or anything like that.

But I had a really unique opportunity to sit across from Dharmesh at an inbound conference. Just very, very privately, like one-on-one with my co-founder of the company that I was with. And we just asked a couple of questions and their piece of advice was like, don’t write the book on the movement before sort of like trying to create, like, don’t create a category.

Like it’s the hardest thing you could possibly do if you’re like literally creating a category. Um, so they actually like, literally wrote a book on inbound. And then sort of referred to their tool is like the tool to enable inbound and like push this movement. But over time that’s changed. Right? Like, so I don’t, I don’t want to, like, I’m not, I’ve never worked there.

I that’s just my experience. Uh, but yeah, they definitely sort of created a category and I think people seize those opportunities and that’s what we, you know, that’s what we find

no issue with that. I mean, it’s the year of the marketing ops for I’m seizing. I don’t know, that’s what I’m calling it. Right. So, okay. So. There’s probably a bunch of things that we probably could list out of over-hyped or overrated or kind of technologies any, I’m going to flip it over. Like, are there any things out there that from a technology standpoint that you’ve found that, you know, uh, I hate to call it low-hanging fruit, but something that is relatively low cost, low effort, maybe a behind the scenes kind of thing that you think is a technology.

I think we should all be thinking about that is for Daniel. Um, low costs is very hard. Um, but, uh, yeah. Um, but I, I do I’ll, I’ll go on like the non low costs. I think a lot of. Companies like have an opportunity to seize a data warehouse as the source of truth instead of like a CRM, um, because the amount of things that could store in there and the amount of things that happen, I think.

Salesforce, wasn’t built to handle all the data that’s happening now and all the touch points that marketing has and all, all the things that need to be stored because so many things get overwritten in Salesforce. And it’s hard sometimes to add new fields in Salesforce. Been talking, talk to Salesforce teams sometimes.

Always. So yeah. So like having a data warehouse where like something is separated where you can store every piece of data, that’s like future ICP, future Tam, like, and it’s not all in your marketing automation tool, not all in your CRM. I think that is. The newer movement that I’m seeing with a lot of companies is that that’s becoming the source of truth.

And they moving away from using like Salesforce and a marketing automation to do that. And a lot of companies are so using segment to push data to a bunch of different sources. Where before it was just like, okay. Lead comes in and goes to marketing automation, marketing automation to CRM. And it was very like simple, but now, like there’s all this product lag growth and data and product.

And you want to all that data to be pushed in multiple places at once and not just be siloed and tools. Um, so I think that is like a new, a movement that you seen with the tech stack, where. People are using more data warehouses and, um, tools like that for their Mar their tech stack. I think that’s a huge opportunity for.

For people, it’s definitely not cheap. Um, but I think we’ve said a couple of times on this show, like I’ve yet to see an organization that’s implemented some sort of like data solution data warehouse solution. That was like, wow, that really hit the mark. We’re really crushing it now, but maybe it’s just because it’s still too early.

So I think there’s like, there’s a lot of like pie in the sky. Thoughts around in a perfect world. This is how we’ve leveraged this thing. But I also agree with, uh, I was talking to Dan Mugu today, Daniel. Um, and I, I tend to agree with one of the things that he and I were just talking about, which was.

There’s a chance where these marketing automation providers are going to be seen as kind of old tools like old tech. And they’re going to be like a little bit by the wayside because all of a sudden you’re going to have the capabilities to do all of this segmentation and like splitting up, like you’re targeting reach from a, from a snowflake or, or what have you, right.

Some sort of data warehouse. I think you could just push it into an email provider. That’s like way more cost-effective than having to do all this like smart logic stuff. Right. So what’s going to like, um, it’s kind of funny, you said that. Cause I was going to say that something that’s becoming, starting to become overrated is like those big marketing automation providers.

Um, because. Like customer.io, which is cheaper, could do a lot of stuff where you could, you don’t need that big bulky Marquetto anymore. Um, you could use that instead, and then you could push, you have to push data to multiple places and it’s just easier to use something like that. So I’m seeing a lot of people move to like customer.io now.

And instead of using like a Marquetto ops. That’s weird. No, it was like, Naomi’s like fighting words as you evaluate other tech to I I’m a Marquetto fan. I’m a, I love Marquetta. It does a lot, but I still think that like a lot of companies are just moving into, like using a segment, a customer died out.io.

Like a data warehouse or something like that. And like, they’re just like not using bulky, um, marketing automation tools anymore. So it’s a weird thing to think about right where, so, so getting back to this idea of like, what does it take to be in marketing? Ah, Right. You largely, you’ll find people that are very well versed in one category of Mar marketing automation platform.

And then as you start to branch into like, no, I understand how technologies can be integrated and woven together. And I see this opportunity for this like, sort of. Bigger play. Um, and like, so what do you do? You just go learn, uh, like how do you learn that part? Like who are you trying to hire? Well, This, this almost comes back to our F the very first part of our conversation where like, you’ve got to understand the big picture and be open-minded about right.

Um, learning is there, is there. Yeah. I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong answer to any of this. Then I think that’s the challenge, right. Is there’s always, but they’re trade offs. I think there’s trade offs. And the more you understand, yeah. There are definitely trade offs. That’s almost like, I don’t know that there’s any debate about that.

There’s trade offs, that almost everything in a decision in life, let alone in this, but there’s this in this case, I think it’s really interesting. I think I heard the first sort of. Um, talk to somebody who like, like Daniel described, right. They’re using a relatively low cost email provider. I don’t remember what segment, but something like that, a relatively low cost CRM and it was enough for what they needed to do.

It was going to allow them to actually, not only as a startup, the scale, it was probably could, I could see a pretty good argument that it could be what they need. Even for a pretty long time period. And I mean, there there’s something to be said right now. I think, yeah. Obviously HubSpots continue to grow independently, but every one of the other ones that have been acquired all the other big three, and I, I know that there’s now starting to be, you know, we need to do another state of the union.

Right. But I haven’t seen a ton of like really innovative change coming out of any of these. Platforms in awhile. Yeah. And I, and I, right. I mean, most of what they’re doing, trying to do is bolt on other stuff that other sort of site, small things, I think so Daniel, you’re talking about like, being able to see some of these categories.

You know, leaders followed by the wayside from some of these other technology solutions. And, you know, there’s like going back to this comment about trade-offs right, Michael, where are you saying? Like, Hey, if, but if I have Marquetto, there’s sort of like sort of guard rails in place. Like you you’d like, I at least understand what the system kind of is telling me.

I am capable of doing, and I can hire somebody to go figure out what the heck is going on. Right. There’s an ecosystem behind it, of people and experts and other bolt on technologies. And so like, if I want to now go to this. Movement. I’ve convinced my organization that there’s a need to pull everything apart because we’ll be able to do so much more.

What happens when that person who sort of leads that charge? Like isn’t there anymore. There are no guardrails. And how do you figure out how all this stuff works and how do you weave it all back together? And so pulling that back into like, what’s happening maybe with HubSpot now everybody knows I’m a HubSpot fan guy.

But like when you see that they’re focused on allowing there to be a guard rails, but continuing to add on more and more and more capabilities that are all within the same code base, not code that isn’t actually interwoven together, but it’s literally within the same code base they’ve they match it.

That changes the game a little bit, because now you’re, you’re working inside of one ecosystem and you can still go figure out what’s going on. And it’s all still within sort of the same sort of environment of experts that are out there. And you’re not trying to figure out how did somebody piece together, a snowflake with a segment, with a customer IO with, uh, you know, all this stuff.

And so, you know, we’ll see what happens, but I think they have an like an interesting opportunity to continue on the track record that they’re on. But going back to what you’re saying, Danny. Gosh, I don’t know what’s going to happen. If people start moving in the direction of, yeah. This person created this like amazing machine, but then they left because they like, felt like they needed to get paid more money or they were fed up with tech and they wanted to go like start their own thing.

And, you know, I don’t know, build homes or something like this. This is, are going to be left. Like. In the dust, like how do you deal with that? So I don’t know that we have answers for any of these questions, but I think they’re all really interesting things to think about as we’re seeing some of the shifts in the market.

Yeah. I also think that like, when you started thinking about like, Marketing technology, not just as like marketing technology and you think of it as like revenue, like technology and it’s fun, like the revenue, or then you have more people to talk to and more people to see the bigger picture with. I think it helps a lot.

I do agree though, that it will take longer for this movement because there is more Marquetto experts out there. There is more like HubSpot experts out there. There’s um, there’s a bunch of that in the. In the industry. So it’s hard to move to these newer stacks, but also going back to what Michael was saying before about consulting.

I think like marketing technology has moved into more like asking, like how does this technology fit with like the value of like the marketing goals and the value of the business instead of. Uh, like I felt like before, like a lot of people were just buying things cause everybody was buying it or like, it was like everybody had Marquette.

I was like this BioMAT Marquetto like, now it’s like more asking, like, what is, Marquetto going to soul for my business today? And is it going to suffer or down three years down the line, how’s it going to fit into our overall or goal? And I think like, that’s a bigger question. It’s like, Marquetto might work for your cause.

That’s your goal? It might not work if you’re like a product like growth company. And you’re trying to do a bunch of things like with data and you can’t, and it’s, you’re stuck. So it all comes down to being, having that consultant mentality and asking those questions. I think, well, I think Nao, Naomi, you’ve talked a number of times about how you’re kind of regularly reassessing your tech stack and, you know, do we need to do to cut something?

Do we need to add something? And I think that’s. That’s another one of those sort of underrated things about marketing ops. People need to learn how to do it, clearing house a bit rate because sometimes it’s, you know, there’s not adoption across the organization. I don’t want to pay for something that people don’t use no matter how great of a tool it is.

Right. And depending on how much, um, impact or potential, I think it might have, I’ll usually give it, you know, maybe I’ll give it another shot. Like, Hey, let’s do the renewal. And then, you know, because. Two sides, right? It, part of it could also be just the technology adoption or me not, um, um, pushing our training, our business partners to really like utilize the platform or, you know, integrate it into their, um, uh, their marketing or content life cycles or whatnot.

Um, so it just really depends. Right. And so sometimes what I’ll even do is I’ll even like disable, um, Within the entire platform and see if anybody notices, if they don’t, then it’s like, wow.

Yeah, this is something we need. Just like we’ll delete all the users. And then, yeah, I’ve done that before. I’ve done that. That’s a good hack. I like that. Hey, before, before we wrap up, I just want to put out to the audience since Daniel does sort of, uh, not sort of, you do work with Clearbit. Um, and for Clearbit, uh, I visited their website today for the very first time on behalf of somebody that I’m working with.

And we were both on a screen-share and I’ve, I’ve actually never seen. Uh, site function the way that that one does. Like, I, I, it, I, as I was about to navigate off the page, I realized that it was showing me who it thinks that I am from a company perspective. And then the entire rest of the website was customized to my experience as me as this business.

And I was completely blown away by the technology I spent the next 10 minutes just going through every single page and because the company actually wasn’t. Uh, I went in and I figured out that there’s a way to like, claim your profile on the website, which I think is an incredible move as well. Uh, but my ask of you Daniels to go to somebody on the team and fix my profile.

Cause I don’t work for that company. However, it was an incredible experience. Holy cow. Talk about like a demo live on a website. Like, so for those of you that haven’t visited the Clearbit site. Yeah. Shameless plug for them. Like that was really cool. So anyway it happened today. So that’s why I’m bringing it up.

Who was an accident. That’s great. But Dan, you, I, I feel like, like we just scratched the surface of what we could have talked about. Um, but I think we’re going to have to wrap it up here. Any, any final thoughts for our audience on yeah. That we so that you really wanted to make sure we covered that we didn’t.

Just curious. No, I would just say that like two marketing ops folks out there keep fighting to be the strategic advisor and keep pushing towards that. Like, I don’t think you’re a support role. You’re, you’re more valuable than you think. And that’s why you see this great resignation right now, because if a marketing ops person leaves like.

Th the org is pretty much like shook for a while. So keep fighting and, you know, you’re, you’re more valuable than anybody gives you credit for. So that’s what my lap parting words. That’s awesome. So we’ve talked a little bit about marking millennials. So obviously people can kind of, uh, go listen to your podcasts.

Any, any other, like where, where can people kind of keep up with you or if they wanted to connect with you? What’s the best way to do that? Yeah, my LinkedIn DMS, um, um, just don’t sell me. The first, the first like, message. But yeah, any questions you can go on? My LinkedIn DMS, I’m on Twitter at Deemer 68. And then I also have the marketing millennials page, which I think is fun.

I think it’s like a marketing meme page. So have fun with that all the time, too. You could go fall out as well. And so it’s a funny, you bring up the, you know, getting the, the LinkedIn connection requests followed by the pitch and slack today. It is it’s feels like it’s just, it’s picked up in the last few, like since the turn of the calendar.

It’s just, everybody’s like I got targets. If you’re out there listening to this and you’re thinking about doing that to me, like, I’m going to disconnect it for me. I’m lucky. So also go listen to our podcast about how the. Mic drop. Yes. Is that your deck to me backwards. They get,

I love it. Daniel, this has been super fun. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. Um, thank you to everybody. All of you listening out there, continue to send us your feedback and suggestions, uh, good or bad. And then, uh, if you’re interested or in being a guest or, you know, somebody who would be good. Get ahold of me, Naomi, your mic until next time.

Thanks everybody. Bye.