Tag: MOPs

Manage Your Marketing Automation Platform Migration

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TLDR: Migrating to a new marketing automation platform is a demanding project. We’ll help you plan it carefully to get the results you want.

Why migrate platforms? The decision to migrate to a new marketing automation platform is one to treat with care. You might be looking to solve the pain points of your current platform, gain more advanced features to support your growth, or see more value for money by focusing on specific capabilities.

Why it’s a heavy lift: Moving to a new marketing automation platform can get these results and revitalize how your marketing team performs, but this isn’t a project to underestimate. Migrating to a new platform is a technical, resource-intensive effort that requires careful planning to yield results with minimal disruption.

What’s in this article for you? If your CMO or Marketing VP is pursuing a new marketing automation platform, this Tough Talks Made Easy is for you. You’ll learn how to:

➡️ Set realistic expectations on timelines and performance.

➡️ Advocate for the processes.

➡️ Understand how to execute the project correctly.

 

Size up the task

Before you get off the ground with a platform migration, your marketing operations team needs to be clear on the demands of the project. Leadership might assume that features shared between platforms will translate identically from one to the next, and therefore expect a much faster turnaround than what’s feasible.

There are a few points of guidance you can give to address the project scope.

👉 Migrating to a new platform means rebuilding your marketing automation system from the ground up. This means you can’t resume with your new platform exactly where you left off with the previous one.

👉 Present how key features differ between platforms to leadership and your team.

👉 Determine the pieces you can migrate cleanly versus infrastructure to build anew, similar processes versus functions the team needs to relearn.

Before your team starts building any infrastructure, Marketing’s evaluation should deepen until they’re able to set priorities for the migration.

Some of the key questions that should be answered at the initial risk assessment, include:

  • What assets and programs are critical to migrate?
  • Which prior integrations will you need to reestablish?
  • How deeply will you need to clean your database?
  • Without historical data on your new platform, how will you interpret the first few months of reporting?

 

Time it right

Naturally, a significant project like this will have productivity consequences for the team.

 

“You’ll want to budget 12-16 weeks to get your assets and database from A to B.”

 

You’ll want to budget 12-16 weeks to get your assets and database from A to B, accounting for all stakeholder approvals.

While your team handles the migration and gets to grips with the new system, advocate for this to be a cool-down period for campaigns, events, and other intensive projects like rebranding or moving to a new website.

After all, Marketing will be best set up to succeed by ramping up to normal only when they’ve mastered the new system.

To make that happen, highlight the need for a dedicated team to help with training and project support. Whether your experts come from SOPs, MOPs, or IT, they need hours in the week scoped out in advance to assist.

Continuity is another key thing to account for.

Base the timeline for your migration on the contract with your current vendor. A crossover period between the two platforms, where you gradually dim the switch on your current system, is essential to prevent from going dark. To stay up and running, suggest to leadership that you begin the migration with at least a month left on your outstanding contract.

Ultimately, your planning should conclude with key stakeholders all on the same page about the work to come. Encourage your team to contribute to a project management resource that breaks down tasks and responsibilities, dependencies, tactical elements, and required buy-in.

This, along with agreed-upon and documented definitions for key terms and processes (e.g. lifecycle modelling, lead qualification criteria), is crucial for your team members to work in sync with one another during the migration.

 

See it through

Once your migration’s in motion, effective project management is vital to ongoing success.

 

“A delay in one area of the migration has consequences for other moving parts.”

 

A delay in one area of the migration has consequences for other moving parts, so encourage your team to participate in weekly sync calls, sprints, and targeted meetings to share status updates and proactively keep on top of risks.

As the project progresses, all of the stakeholders involved in the migration are going to be learning about how your new platform works; to help with onboarding and knowledge transfer, have them contribute to a resource that outlines how all new processes and functionalities work.

A platform migration is a project made of many different factors—from timelines to training, priorities to vendor contracts—and the closer your team collaborates to understand the task at hand, the better the odds are you’ll put together a plan that works.

No matter the size of your organization, migrating to a new marketing automation system is a complex and resource-intensive process. For any support you need with planning or executing a platform migration, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

Follow Revenue Pulse on LinkedIn and join the conversation.

How Do I Build a Marketing Ops Team?

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Hi Jo,

After several years in a single-person marketing operations team, my company is now willing to invest in growing MOPs.

Encouraging as it is to have initial support from leadership, this will be my first time in charge of building out a team.

How can I hire, structure, and lead a MOPs team effectively? What should I account for in my plan?

Thanks,
Leading Leah.

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Congrats on getting buy-in, Leah.

By giving the green light to growth, your company is showing they take the success of MOPs seriously.

Creating a team from the ground up is no easy feat, but as a new and rapidly evolving function, building and leading a team in the MOPs space comes with a few unique challenges to plan around.

Here’s a rundown of the key considerations your strategy should address:

Competencies

While the tools and processes in your organization will determine some of the fine print, the essential mix of skills in a MOPs team broadly breaks down as follows:

  • People leader who understands marketing technology platforms.
  • Day-to-day owner of each marketing system and tool.
  • Data expert to own reporting and data warehousing, with expertise in BI tools (e.g. Tableau).
  • Someone to handle day-to-day deployment and requests from Marketing, building campaigns, emails, and other tactical pieces.

Note: Depending on your budget for headcount, multiple functions can live in one individual; for example, you might own admin or reporting while leading the team.

 

Role design:

Whether you’re hiring one person or several, indicate in the title if each role is a generalist or specialist position, and to what extent the position’s deliverables roll uphill and have the candidate interfacing with C-Suite.

A smaller team might have a MOPs Manager (wearing all hats) and a Junior MOPs Specialist in support.

In larger organizations, you tend to see Senior Directors and VPs of MOPs along with Managers of Martech and Analytics. Note how those roles suggest degrees of seniority and focus.

 

Attracting candidates:

The benchmarks of expertise in MOPs are different from more standardized functions like IT.

It’s not uncommon to see job postings for senior MOPs leaders that ask for 10-15 years of experience—in a function that hasn’t existed for that long.

Without prior experience hiring in MOPs, collaborate with HR to research the correct compensation and realistic skill sets for roles in the space.

We’re in a candidate-driven job market right now, so your offers need to be compelling to poach top talent.

 

Nurturing internal talent:

For the same reason, recognize and reward effort.

Don’t overlook junior colleagues from adjacent teams (e.g. Marketing, IT) who want to learn new things.

Some of the best professionals get their start after an organization gives them the chance to grow, so keep an eye out for ambitious internal candidates.

 

Leadership initiatives:

MOPs people are driven to excel and willing to take a swing at things; you want to harness that competitive nature in productive ways.

Your team should understand what success looks like, so share high-level KPIs for the organization that cascade downwards to Marketing and MOPs.

Encourage your team to create job descriptions for more senior roles above them.

This accomplishes several things:

Clear upward career trajectories will incentivize people to act for the jobs they want.

If your team is displaying these advanced competencies, it’ll help in negotiating promotions, training, and raises with HR.

You’ve got this,

Jo Pulse.

How Do I Create a Webinar Campaign?

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Hey Jo,

I’ve been asked to manage a webinar campaign at work.

It’s my first time taking charge of webinars, and I’m unsure of all the processes to account for and the information I need to gather.

Where do I start with webinars? What do I need to do to make this succeed?

Thanks,
Webinar Willa.

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Willa, thanks for writing in.

Putting a webinar campaign together for the first time isn’t always easy, but it’ll be a rewarding experience and a good step forward in your role.

From my time working on webinars over the years, I’ve found there to be a pretty low general awareness from other stakeholders towards the demands of webinar campaigns and the required preparation.

 

“The concept of your webinar needs to be compelling and have a solid strategy.”

 

Before you can start to build a registration page, the concept of your webinar needs to be compelling and the strategy solid.

So, before focusing on anything technical, take some time to clarify the fundamentals. Your manager and team are there to help.

 

Key points to establish:

👉 Purpose: What’s your webinar trying to accomplish? Who’s the target audience?

👉 Content: What’s your webinar about? Who’s presenting?

👉 Delivery: Which webinar software will you be using? Is it integrated with your marketing automation platform?

👉 Promotion: Do you know which channels you’ll use and how you’ll allocate spend? What copy and assets do you need?

Look back at past webinar campaign report data to inform your decisions here.

👉 Scope: Ask a colleague to work with you to develop a webinar blueprint or briefing form that contains all of the relevant information.

This can help to establish and convey the scale of the work involved to other team members as you go through the process.

At this stage, you can start working out the flow of processes and getting stuck into the technical side.

👉 Share your steps: You want all your relevant stakeholders to understand the steps, timescales, accountable team members, and dependencies involved in getting each piece of the puzzle together.

A visualization tool can help you communicate your processes succinctly.

👉 Templates and testing: Program templates are likely to save you some time.

Once you’ve uploaded them with the relevant details, loop a colleague in to test them out.

Play with it until you can register for the webinar, get the correct emails flowing at the right time, and generate a link to access the session.

👉 Self-serve: Self-service updates will make your life easier after you start the program. Create a shared space where relevant teams like Sales can see automatic updates with registrants and attendees.

 

“Think about how you want to engage your registrants after the webinar.”

 

👉 Follow-up: Think about how you want to engage your registrants after the webinar, whether you send a follow-up email to suggest other relevant webinars or set up a nurture program.

After you’ve got performance data on the webinar, bring your team together to show how your processes worked and share the results.

You’ll get the opportunity to reflect on what went well and what you can improve for the next campaign.

But this is also your moment of recognition; congratulations, you pulled it off.

You’ve got this,

Jo Pulse.

How Do I Show My Boss My Value?

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Hi Joe,

I’m not sure what to do.

As a MOPs professional, I do so much for the company and am always juggling a ton of things on any given day.

 

“My boss thinks I only work in Marketo, but I actually take care of so much more!”

 

My boss thinks I only work in Marketo, but I actually take care of so much more!

What can I do to show them my contributions and how I’m actually spending my time?

Thank you,
Undervalued Uriel

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Hi, Uriel,

I wish this weren’t a common problem, but it is.

So often, MOPs “teams” are made up of a small group of people that sit under Marketing or Sales, reporting into leaders that don’t fully understand what MOPs is and how much effort it takes to get it right.

It’s a challenge, particularly for small teams that are left to manage multiple tasks and projects without much investment or support.

There’s hope on the horizon, though.

The talent pool of MOPs professionals and leaders is growing every day, and that means that companies are far more likely to hire managers and directors who understand how many plates you have to spin in a role like yours.

In the meantime, here are some of the things you can do to improve your current situation.

 

Have a transparent conversation

Your manager doesn’t know what they don’t know.

And while it’s not your job to educate them, you can have a frank conversation about the different things you’re doing and how you can’t do them all.

Going into this conversation, take the time to:

➡️ List out tasks you do

➡️ How much time you spend on them, and

➡️ Prioritize them based on how much value you feel they add to the marketing team.

If you feel that you need another person on the team, share your advice around how you would divide the tasks to make the most impact. At the end of the day, you’ll be the MOPs expert in that conversation, so make sure you show that expertise.

 

Take a forward-looking approach

Another important conversation to have with your manager is about the direction you want your career to take.

As you know, there are so many paths and specializations to follow in MOPs.

Choosing a path and communicating that to your manager will help them understand that you can’t be the “catch-all” for MOPs, and it will give them the opportunity to support you with the training and mentorship you need.

Pair this with strategic thinking around where your organization can take MOPs moving forward, and a good manager will be even more inclined to craft a role that is right for you.

 

Don’t be afraid to make a change

If none of that works, then it might be time to look elsewhere.

You deserve to work for a team that understands how important your role is — so start looking for one.

Companies that have built a strong marketing ops culture will have various people in MOPs roles, including a director or VP who has years of experience in the space.

The job descriptions will also be telling.

If the hiring manager has written down a laundry list of tasks they want a specific MOPs role to fill, you can bet they don’t fully grasp what MOPs is all about.

 

“Your future is in your hands — and it’s bright.”

 

Your future is in your hands — and it’s bright.

As MOPs continues to grow as a space, there are going to be so many more solid opportunities for you to build your career with. Just wait and see.

Read our recent column I’m All Alone in Marketing Ops, How Do I Get Help? for more advice.

You’ve got this,
Joe Pulse

How Can I Increase Data Integrity in My Organization?

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Hi Joe,

The data situation in my organization is a mess.

Whenever it’s time for Sales and Marketing to collaborate, they both bring different insights to the table from data sets that don’t correspond with each other.

 

“We struggle to make confident decisions about campaign activities and spending.”

 

As a result, our data is unreliable, and we struggle to be proactive and make confident decisions about campaign activities and spending.

What sort of change needs to happen to improve our data integrity? How can I encourage teams in our organization to participate in sorting out our data?

Thanks,
Siloed Sam.

 

Break silos

To align your efforts, avoid duplication, miscommunication, and rogue analytics coming from each business unit, all your data needs to live under one roof.

 

“Your first move should be to invest in a central data warehouse.”

 

Your first move should be to invest in a central data warehouse.

Your teams can easily maintain the cleanliness of your data through master data management and data cataloging.

 

Allocate costs based on each team’s resources

Modern platforms like Snowflake make it simple to allocate costs across different parts of the organization.

Your organization can treat storage and processing as separate line items that can be easily monitored by different business areas. This makes it easier for organizations to manage data in a way that’s focused on their needs.

Teams with limited budgets can invite more teams to join and enable easy data sharing among them without having to cover the entire cost.

 

Get leadership buy-in

Marketing and sales teams that lack data literacy tend to shy away from data management. To overcome this, leadership needs to infuse the value of data into your culture.

Leadership can accomplish this by:

👉 Requesting data from Marketing to clarify insights and support decisions.

👉 Investing in data enablement for their marketers.

👉 Setting a course for data and reporting initiatives.

 

Find the right leaders

Any data transformation effort needs to be staffed with people who know about data pipelines, business intelligence (BI), and how to present to various stakeholders.

Depending on where these skills lie, this initiative might live under your CMO or IT.

Is IT’s partnership with Marketing strong? Can MOPs translate the technicalities for Sales and Marketing?

Consultants and agency partners can jump-start the process, but you need internal clarity beforehand on what your organization wants to achieve.

The rise of new data warehousing tools like Snowflake has made it more achievable than ever for businesses to de-silo their data with minimal upfront investment.

 

“As more Marketing activities take place online, the consequence is growth in campaign data.”

 

As more Marketing activities take place online, the consequence is growth in campaign data.

Take advantage of these newly accessible methods for sorting, capturing, and analyzing data, and your revenue machine will run more effectively than before.

If you need any other help, let us know.

You’ve got this,
Joe Pulse.

The True Value of Agency Project Management

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TLDR: An agency-side project manager (PM) bridges the gaps between your organization and agency partners throughout a project. A PM ensures you’re on track to deliver the project on time, within budget and scope. During a project, an agency PM will help your organization plan deliverables and timelines, follow coherent processes, communicate effectively between teams, troubleshoot issues, and monitor and mitigate risks to the things you want to achieve.

Which projects benefit from project management? Projects like marketing automation platform (MAP) implementations and migrations are often heavy to plan and coordinate. Migrations and implementations involve bringing many different stakeholders together throughout the project to share updates, deliverables, and decisions against agreed timelines and scope—a particularly complex task in larger organizations.

How PMs help: It’s easy to underestimate the demands of aligning communications and actions between various accountable stakeholders in an agency-client relationship. As a result, organizations may decide not to involve an agency’s PM to steer the progress of a project. This decision adds a high level of risk for big projects like migration or implementation.

 

“Having an agency-side PM is essential to keep your internal teams and agency partners on the same page.”

 

Do you need an agency PM? Even if your organization has an internal PM assigned to the project, having an agency-side PM is essential to keep your internal teams and agency partners on the same page.

What’s in this article for you? In this Tough Talks Made Easy, we’ll help you navigate the intricate space of project management, particularly in the context of complicated projects. You’ll learn how:

➡️ To effectively communicate the value of agency-side project management to key stakeholders and decision-makers across departments.

➡️ PMs drive collaboration, alignment and risk mitigation.

➡️ PMs bridge the gap between your organization and the agency, ensuring timely input, decisions, and updates to prevent project delays.

 

The PM’s value 

At a high level, PMs ensure that your team and the agency are working towards the same goals to deliver a project on time and within the budget and scope.

PMs accomplish this by:

👉 Planning and setting up meetings between teams.

👉 Coordinating the delivery of action items.

👉 Raising awareness of risks and causes for delay.

👉 Pushing stakeholders to make timely decisions to keep the project moving as planned.

 

“Stakeholder alignment is the key area where PMs make a constructive impact.”

 

Stakeholder alignment is the key area where PMs make a constructive impact.

Migrations and implementations involve many different tasks and decisions. These projects also involve various teams in your organization — such as Marketing, Sales, IT, and Digital — each has responsibilities and decision-making power.

PMs track when input and decisions need to be received and connect these teams to provide timely and relevant updates. Without an agency-side PM to play this role, deliverables, and decisions can slip under the radar and delay project completion.

 

How PMs work

Involving a PM right from the beginning of a project maximizes your ability to succeed.

During the initial kickoff session, PMs create the spine of a project by constructing a plan for deliverables, responsibilities, and timelines. A clear understanding of these pieces is essential for stakeholders to deliver and communicate as needed to progress the project.

 

“PMs bridge the gaps between your organization and the agency throughout the project.”

 

PMs bridge the gaps between your organization and the agency throughout the project:

Agency-side PM responsibilities include:

  • Ensuring that the agency has captured all the relevant discoveries.
  • Establishing who from your organization is required to participate.
  • Following up with stakeholders to ensure that input and decisions follow the agreed timelines.
  • Helping to identify, mitigate, and monitor delivery risks.

Through mediation, agency PMs help you achieve success.

Stakeholders from your workplace can go to the agency PM to discuss and address feedback on the project’s progression.

Should a colleague raise concerns about the project or develop new requirements, PMs work with agency teams to find solutions.

An agency-side PM will ask questions like:

  • Is your organization’s request in scope?
  • How can we make this work?
  • What impact will any changes have?
  • How can we address any risks?

Having a PM to ask these questions lets teams get organized, make improvements on the move, and solve potential issues as they arise.

 

Alleviating project management challenges

PMs experience some persistent challenges when project managing MAP migrations and implementations.

Timelines are often compromised when organizations lack the resources to participate and provide input as planned or juggle competing projects (e.g. a web launch) that are likely to interfere with the process.

 

“PMs proactively work to anticipate and minimize risks to project delivery.”

 

Unclear ownership of tasks and scope creep born from underestimating complexity can also cause disruption and delay. In these scenarios, PMs proactively work to anticipate and minimize risks to project delivery.

For example, an agency PM can help your organization involve the most relevant stakeholders and sensibly delegate tasks and responsibilities. PMs can also factor competing projects into the initial plan and continuously monitor the risk of interference.

Tips for working with an agency PM:

👉 Scope creep: Avoid strain from scope creep by taking time before the project begins to review the steps involved and decide where your organization needs the most support from the agency.

👉 Project delivery: Define clear goals and priorities to help the PM organize stakeholders and deliver the most pressing items and achievements.

👉 Identify stakeholders early: Identify the people within your organization who need to be involved and establish ownership and accountabilities for the project.

 

Steering projects to success

MAP migrations and implementations are complex undertakings, and the agency PM plays an indispensable role in guiding them to success.

From the start to the end of a project, agency PMs contribute effective planning, process management, risk mitigation, troubleshooting, and alignment between your teams and the agency to deliver results on time, within scope, and within budget.

For any further guidance with MAP migrations and implementations, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

How Do I Evaluate New Pieces of Technology?

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Hi Joe,

I’ve been asked to evaluate new solutions that could replace one of our tools.

This is the first time I’m having input into the assessment and purchase of new software, and I’m not really sure how I should approach this.

I have two specific questions:

  • How can I identify the most effective tool for my company?
  • What qualities should I look for to guide the decision?

 
Thanks,

Evaluating Evan.

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Evan, it’s good that you’re thinking critically about this.

The amount of martech solutions is increasing by the day, so it’s becoming more of a challenge to cut through the noise and advocate for the best tech.

 

“It’s almost a rite of passage
for people in MOPs to get burned by a tool.”

 

It’s almost a rite of passage for people in MOPs to get burned by a tool, whether:

❌ they were oversold on its capabilities
❌ the solution didn’t gel with their stack, or
❌ it just wasn’t the right fit for the problem or goal at hand.

I’ve participated in evaluations where solutions seemed promising — useful functionalities, relevant integrations, good price point — only to not quite deliver on their purpose.

Frustrating as it is to wait out a contract, these experiences make clear how important it is to be intentional with your tool purchases and how sometimes, this is a difficult thing to get right.

 

Guide your evaluation:

 
👉 Know your agenda: What problems are you trying to solve or efficiency gains are you trying to achieve?

Whether you want to improve a particular process, consolidate multiple tools into one, or make it easier to scale, see if you can accomplish this during the trial or demo phase or determine whether it’s possible or not to do so.

This is a big clue as to how suitable a tool is.

 
👉 Keep focused on your primary issue: You might spot something interesting about a tool that isn’t why you wanted it in the first place.

That observation can lead you to solve a different problem or open a new opportunity, but keep in mind the capability or issue that’s driven you to enter the process.

 
👉 Understand its total value: How well does a tool address the breadth of issues and functionality gaps in your company?

You might find a solution that does exactly what you need it to without broader utility or an adequate tool for your intended use case that fits optimally with other aspects of your business.

Both are valid motives for choosing a tool; consult with the stakeholders in your company who’ll use or sign off on the tool to determine which would bring more value.

 
👉 Integration: As a standalone product, is the solution you’re looking at best in class at what it’s designed to do?

Is it an established market leader or gaining positive momentum? Does it integrate well with your CRM, CMS, and marketing automation platform? These are positive signs that a solution has longevity and that it’s compatible with your stack.

Look for online reviews, Gartner Magic Quadrant placements, and partner/vendor certification with your core pieces of tech.

 
👉 Research the solution provider: It’s worth doing your homework on the solution provider just as much as the tool itself.

Take into account the deployment options, customer support, and training that the vendor offers, along with any third-party reviews and feedback from your network.

 
For more reading on this topic, check out our piece ‘Is It Worth It? The Hidden Cost of New Martech Tools.’

You’ve got this,

Joe Pulse

The Secrets to a Happy Consultant-Client Relationship

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TLDR: Whether you’re in a MOPs team or consulting in the space, learn methods of managing processes, projects, and expectations to strengthen the consultant-client relationship.

Why is a good relationship important? A strong relationship with a consultancy can help MOPs teams to optimize day-to-day processes and tasks, address issues that have built up over the years, and unearth opportunities to improve the strategic contributions that MOPs makes to the business.

The secret to a good relationship: For consultants and clients to enjoy a successful working dynamic, however, both sides must empathize with the needs of the other and be considerate and transparent around scope and project expectations.

What’s in this article for you? If your MOPs team is beginning to work with consultants to deliver projects, or you’re a consultant in the MOPs space looking to build successful client relationships, this Tough Talks Made Easy will help you:

➡️ Communicate your needs within the partnership

➡️ Better understand those on the other side

➡️ Understand effective methods of managing processes, projects, and expectations to strengthen the relationship

 

Active listening

When MOPs teams and consultants begin to collaborate, there’s a groove to find between the established ways of doing things internally and new recommendations that consultancies bring to the table.

 

“Reciprocity and active listening are perhaps the most important qualities.”

 

At this early stage, reciprocity and active listening are perhaps the most important qualities to get the relationship off to a strong start.

As a client

Before contacting an agency or consultancy, your marketing ops team should adopt a specific mindset for success.

👉 Have clear objectives for the partnership

👉 Be prepared to communicate with the consultancy effectively

👉 Be open to incorporating external expertise, even if it means adjusting established work approaches

As a consultant

If you’re consulting with a MOPs team, responsiveness is essential.

Spotting early opportunities to optimize your client’s workflows and tech stack can quickly prove value and create rapport, but your vision should respect your client’s priorities.

Your recommendations and suggestions need buy-in from the decision-makers and day-to-day contacts in the team—and you’re most likely to get that if you show awareness of what your client needs and how more significant changes will impact them.

Big takeaway

Whether you’re on the client or consultant side, approach these early discussions respectfully.

Take on board your consultant’s rationale for certain changes or what motivates your client’s organizational choices and methods — regardless of how early decisions go, if the other party feels understood and appreciated, you’re creating a solid basis of trust.

 

Expectations vs. reality

As your projects continue, transparency and open lines of communication are like oxygen to the relationship.

As a client

For a marketing ops team, sessions with the consultant are a proactive way to surface your needs and communicate expectations around expected deliverables and timelines.

If your MOPs team lacks experience working with consultancies, they might not understand that consultants have other relationships to manage with unique deliverables and timelines. What might seem like a fair request in-house can be unviable for consultants to fulfill.

For that reason, encourage your team to consider the demands your partners are under and prepare to be flexible. Some urgent turnarounds just aren’t possible for your consultant. Others can be done but require adapting project scope.

As a consultant

Meetings with clients help you keep up with requirements and requests.

A common pitfall for consultants is to view the content of a project in isolation and underestimate the amount of time it’ll take to complete.

Avoid building up client expectations beyond what’s realistic by clarifying the factors that contribute to delays like scope creep, vacations, multiple rounds of reviews in testing and gathering consensus from multiple stakeholders in the discovery phase.

As a consultant, you want to reflect on all these dependencies and share them proactively with clients when setting a turnaround date.

 

“The train can go off the track without a regular communication channel to set the course.”

 

Path to success

Both parties should know that the train can go off the track without a regular communication channel to set the course.

Whether you’re client-side or consulting, encourage systems of working that put you on the same page.

👉 Suggest task management software (be it a dedicated tool or a spreadsheet) to assign tasks and monitor progress, and establish weekly status calls to discuss the status of day-to-day projects, longer-term plans, and any issues or roadblocks impeding progress.

 

Reciprocity

The consultant-client relationship is one of mutual participation.

It requires openness and respect from both parties towards the other’s expertise, needs and demands.

Transparent communication around timelines and deliverables and an enthusiastic approach toward your shared purpose are the foundational components of a rewarding relationship that gets results.

For any project guidance, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

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How to Guide Your Hiring Team on MOPs Recruitment

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TLDR: Demand for skilled MOPs people far outstrips the supply. To attract and retain the best talent, your recruitment process should focus on the candidate experience and the employee experience.

The struggle to attract talent: Demand for skilled Marketing Operations professionals has long outpaced the supply. The current job market is especially driven by talent. Top MOPs candidates have the bargaining power to take or stay in roles with the most attractive company cultures and compensation packages, and for as long as that’s the case, companies that hire without regard for the candidate experience will struggle to attract and retain the best talent.

What’s in this article for you? If multi-stage interview processes and a lack of long-term thinking for each hire sounds like your organization’s approach to recruitment, it’s time for a Tough Talk.

We’ll help you discuss what effective MOPs recruitment looks like with your CMO and Hiring Manager, so your team can get great candidates onside and nurture them for long-term success.

 

The candidate experience

Far too often, companies in the MOPs space operate with the assumption that the logistics of recruitment should work in their favor. Really, the process is a two-way street.

In each interaction, candidates are scoping out whether your organization is the right place for them to work, and considering the scarcity of MOPs skills, the people with real potential to excel in your roles hold all of the cards.

 

Encourage hiring teams to view their recruitment practices through the candidate’s eyes.

 

👉 Does a demanding job description position your company as a rewarding workplace?

👉 Is a string of multiple interviews with disparate stakeholders (e.g. Sales, Marketing, IT, Leadership) the most considerate use of a candidate’s time?

👉 Is it respectful to require candidates to perform free labor or attend a full-day interview while working a full-time job?

The candidate experience is not just about extending decency. Practices like these fail at selling your company as an inviting and stimulating place to be, which has real business consequences.

If you can’t attract talent, your company faces spending serious dollars on a recruitment agency. And even then, you run the risk of hiring subpar candidates.

Bottom line: The lost productivity and cost involved in fixing the mistakes of an ill-fitting hire will completely dwarf the size of investments your company should have made into

  • Well-researched role requirements.
  • Building a culture that your talent people advocate for.
  • A recruitment process that puts the candidate’s needs first.
  • An attractive compensation package.

 

To keep people, hire with a purpose

MOPs roles are often multidisciplinary by design, but many of the industry’s job descriptions read like laundry lists of scattershot and highly advanced competencies.

Just like how the right tools for your business are the ones that effectively support your goals, leadership needs to plan and design new roles around the specific needs of the MOPs team.

Before writing the job description

Before your hiring team sits down to write any section of a job description, tell them all about the skill gaps and upcoming projects in the MOPs team.

This is the basis of an intentional hire. Your hiring team can identify the experience that’s truly important for candidates to bring versus skills that transfer or can be taught.

As an example: Many roles seek experience with a particular marketing automation platform. But experience using one platform is highly transferable to another. Unless particular expertise is crucial to the position, keeping the role platform agnostic will attract a broader range of competent candidates who can learn new skills in the role.

This is essential for employee retention.

Rather than looking for a candidate who fits your requirements 100%, prioritize candidates who are 80% there.

Your hiring team can think of it this way: A 100% fit candidate has already been there and done that. Are they going to be satisfied in a job that doesn’t represent meaningful progression? You might offer them a higher salary than their current position, but there’s no telling if that’ll incentivize them to stay long-term.

 

“Your 80% fit, however, can truly gain something from taking the job.”

 

Your 80% fit, however, can truly gain something from taking the job. That makes them a better investment. A candidate who can say your company gave them a chance to develop their skills has motivation. That’s motivation to give their best effort, stay on the team and advocate for your brand to their network.

TL;DR: The perfect fit has room to grow.

 

Your recruitment brand

Desirable places to work all have this in common: They create environments where people want to stay.

To attract and retain the best marketing ops talent, leadership should focus the recruitment process on two things:

  • The candidate experience, then
  • the employee experience.

Treating your candidates and employees with empathy — practices based on candidate needs, a rewarding culture and compensation, hiring to invest in people — is how you create a workplace that people advocate for.

For any guidance you need with building a MOPs team, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

How Should I Approach My First Days in Marketing Automation?

Posted on by admin

Hi Jo,

I’m due to begin my first role in marketing automation with a new company, and I’m wondering what I can do to get off to a good start.

I’m interested in the technical and data-driven elements of marketing. But I’m coming from a role focused more on campaign content.

This will be my first time getting truly hands-on with a marketing automation platform.

What things should I prioritize learning? How can I make a good impression on my new team?

Thanks,

New Naomi.

Naomi, congratulations on your new opportunity!

It’s natural that you want to shine and show your new colleagues that you’re someone they can count on. That said, don’t feel pressured to get a handle on all the complexities of your tools and the detailed dynamics of your industry and company just yet.

 

“Marketing automation platforms have a steep learning curve, and the MOPs space constantly changes.”

 

Marketing automation platforms have a steep learning curve, and the MOPs space constantly changes. When I first started in marketing automation, I found there to be no shortage of new things to learn. including the:

➡️ technicalities of the platform
➡️ priorities of the business and
➡️ ways that my new teams work together.

Confidence and fluency in these things are what you’ll develop over time as you get comfortable in the role.

For now, it’s best to focus on understanding the:

✅ essence of marketing automation
✅ fundamentals of your platform, and
✅ things your teams need from MOPs to work effectively.

 
Here are some steps I recommend you take as you settle into your new job:

 

Think user-centric:

Platforms are all about the user experience.

If someone is reading your content, you have one shot at engaging them further — what does this page or email need to convey to encourage them to download that whitepaper or click through?

Reflect on the principles of demand gen and inbound marketing. They underlie all the capacities a platform has to bring a campaign to life.

 

Resources:

Check out your platform’s support documentation, learning hub (e.g. Marketo Engage Tutorials, HubSpot Academy), and community forums.

These resources will help you to become self-sufficient, answer questions, and explore the different features of each platform. And, you can also develop a network by participating in user groups and discussions.

By interacting with people over time, you’ll increasingly establish yourself and learn more about the broader direction of the MOPs space.

 

Talk to people:

What do various people in your teams like or dislike about your marketing automation platform? What challenges are they experiencing? Talking about these things is a good way to start forming relationships, and it helps to focus your learning of the platform.

If you can discover how to solve problems that people are having, you’ll quickly establish rapport and expertise.

 

Make small improvements:

Your new team might want you to do things by the book or optimize established processes where you can.

Always be receptive to what your manager asks, but suggest potential areas for improvement along the way. Read our post ‘How Do I Get Management To Listen To Me?‘ for more ideas.

Whether you identify some tweaks to a page that could bring more conversions or introduce new visualizations that make data more digestible, it’s good to subtly show how you can improve things and make peoples’ lives easier.

You’ve got this,

Jo Pulse.