Welcome to the art of marketing operations, a tailor podcast. Here you can
grow your knowledge about marketing operations, listen to ideas and strategies to help you
scale, grow and optimize your efficiency, drive your speed to market and enrich
your work life. Let's get to it. Welcome to the art of marketing
operations, a tailor podcast. I'm Glen Bottomly, and today my guests are
Joy Martinez, director of marketing operations at Way Star, and Brian Morris,
marketing operations manager at Way Star, an organization which offers a powerful technology platform
that simplifies and unifies healthcare payments across the revenue cycle to empower healthcare organizations to
automate manual work, gain insight into processes and performance and ultimately collect more revenue.
Thanks for joining me today, joy and Brian. Thanks for having US
Glean. This is fantastic. Well, I'm really excited to because this is
the first time that we have ever had two guests simultaneously on the art of
marketing operations. But before we get started, I understand that you both have
an amazing background, whereas you had met in the past and new at some
point you both would work together and now you are. So can you share
a little bit about how you both originally connected? And now the love of
marketing operations was sort of the key that connected you both professionally? Yeah,
told it, I would. I would love to share my story now.
I have to have be browsing on Linkedin and decided to follow the Hashtag marketing
operations. And why? scrolling on there, I saw joy. She had
posted a jobless thing, but kind of what calm my eye was her seven
time certification with Marquetto and I know, I really, I knew right away
I could learned so much from a professional with those credentials. So I messaged
joy. We started chat about our love from marketing operations. You know,
soon after joy have reached out about the opportunity she had and you know,
I got very lucky and I got a chance to work with joy. You
know, I might be a little biased, I have to say we're marketing
offs, partners in crime. Joy's an awesome leader and mentor and you know,
I really have an awesome pleasure to get to work with her every day.
Brian, you're too nice. No, I mean after we met on
Linkedin, like it was, you know, awesome. I could see that
he was super talented and I started noticing, you know, him liking and
commenting on my post and stuff a lot and you know, I kind of
look at, you know, who's engaging with my posts and so, yeah,
I was super excited to bring him on here at way start. Just
he started a month after I did, so pretty much right away, and
you know, I knew that we'd work well together and, you know,
we've just kind of vibe from the start. So it's been fun. Oh,
that's wonderful. Well, let's go ahead and dive in to talk a
bit more about marketing operations and Brian, let's go ahead and start with you.
So I know that your background in marketing operations originally started with an ECOMM,
as you know, agency Software Organization, where you were sort of the
soul marketing operations team member. I think you had mentioned to me that you
were responsible for pretty much everything marketing strategy and the marketing road map, email,
marketing, lead scoring, the entire martext AC etc. So what have
been some of the universal lessons that you have learned from the past that you're
bringing to your current role in marketing operations? Oh Yeah, I definitely had
a pleasure to get to work on so many aspects of marketing operations, which
was, you know, so awesome. But you know, one universal lesson,
like I think I've learned, is, even working on a small,
one to Pert, one to two person marketing OPS team, I think it's
crucial to prioritize and project manage your own work. You know, by doing
this it helps improve communication cross functionally, you know, because people will know
when to expect the work that they care about. It helps keep everyone organizing
in those you know, it helps community know what I'm working on, what
order I need to work on it. You know, basically helped everyone's sanity.
I think on smaller teams you often see bouncing around from project to project
and you begin not tracking all the things you've accomplished, like even the small
things. So, you know, I would recommend like a project management software
to really help streamline that process. Excellent. And then so in touch to
us a little bit more about like how do you establish the metrics or what
is the most important? Do you use revenue or potential for revenue, or
you know the importance of the project based on, you know, the stakeholders
in the business? How have you found the best way to prioritize? Yeah,
now that's a great question. So oftentimes, like I for example,
like I had our CEO want a lot of marketing operations data, and I
came back from that meeting I was like, oh my gosh, I have
so much too. Where do I start? What do I do? And
you know, I went straight to a right which is our project manament software
at the time, and I you know, I really started to with the
basics. What's the foundation of you know, what I need to break down
and where I'm going to pull the data and then how I'm going to organize
it and you know, and then get it ready for you know, and
her case it was going to the board. So how to make it look
pretty and all ready to go. So, you know, I really started
with that foundation of that data. Where am I pulling it from? What's
important? What do they need to see? And then from there, how
to you know, what what's what's most important, what's really going to tell
the story here? And from there just, you know, really break down
different pieces and make a story with it. Yeah, well, and I
think that's that's it's a powerful comment and it's one that I think we hear
from many of our guests, you know, with the art of Marketing Operations
Podcast, and that is that. You know, so much of it starts
with the data. But I really appreciate your coming about like how you use
the data to tell a story, because I think that oftentimes stakeholders in a
in an organization, you know, we live in data all day long,
but being able to extrapolate that, raise the level of abstraction to something that
communicates the importance of that or how that tells a story for the impact of
what that has in the organization is really key. Yeah, definitely, and
you know, I was always told and trained and you know, as I
learned data and how to tell a story with Datas you know, I was
always trained just because you have a set of data, you should always find
a way to tell a story, if it's good or if it's bad.
You should never just present data. You should also tell you like how you
got the data, what the data means and then what stories this data telling.
So ever since then, anytime I even pull a basic report for let's
say a campaign ops, for an email, I'm also going to tell you
why and what was happening. And you know what was the highs and lows.
So I think that's really important whenever you're, you know, just pulling
a simple report all the way to a complex revenue pipeline report. Yep,
excellent advice. Now Joy, let's shift over to you then. So as
for your background in marketing operations, I know that you started on the campaign
creation side and then you later moved over to marketing operations and, as Bryan
had mentioned, you know that you know very, very high end certification.
From a MARQUETTO perspective, you're an expert in platforms like part ot and in
Marquetto and to operationalize digital marketing campaigns and, as Brian had mentioned, you
know you are a seven time solution architect for Marquetto. That's that's really amazing.
And your background in marketing has brought you to organizations as diverse as you
know, startups as well as literally multimillion dollar firms. So for you would
have been some of the universal lessons that you've learned from the past and that
you're bringing to your current role in marketing operations? Yeah, great question.
Yeah, I mean I think I have had a diverse background. Like you
said, I started more in the marketing program side of the House marketing campaigns,
you know, go to market and really started taking over marketing operations because
there wasn't somebody to do it. So while I was creating the marketing program
strategy, I also needed to execute on it and operationalize it to get those
in the market. So that's kind of how I started and you know,
I've kind of moved from inhouse rolls then to agency work and dependent consulting work
back in house, and you know, one of the number one things that
I've learned kind of along the way is just curiosity. You know, curiosity
sparks discussion and I think of it too. You know, one of my
strengths is, like I love to know things, I love learning. So
for me it comes quite naturally to like ask questions and just be curious.
It's also something I was trained in, you know, when I was consulting.
And so you know what that does is, like everybody has a client,
okay. So if you work at an agency you have clients. If
you work in house, you have clients. You have internal clients, right,
your client, maybe sales ups your client, maybe director of Rub ups
your client, maybe the Cmo your client, maybe the board of directors,
you know, depending on the day and what the activity is. So,
you know, I think asking questions and just being curious, I get a
you know, creates better alignment between teams and working cross functionally, understanding what
other people do, understanding the ask that they're, you know, asking you
to complete, and I helped. I think it helps form better solutions to
I think in marketing APPs it's easy to take something and just be like Oh
yeah, sure, I'll do that, you know, and everybody, if
you say like Oh yeah, that'll just be really quick and easy, people
little legit think it's going to be quick and easy, even if it's like,
oh well, it's easy, because I've liked, had all this experience
at all these you know, years of experience gaining the skills required to make
it easy right. And so I think backing up when you get an ass
you know, and understanding like why we're doing it, the impacts for it,
is not only going to you know, kind of build trust and show
appreciation around what they're asking for, but also be able to just form better
solutions and, you know, more scalable solutions for the company to you know,
I think about even, you know, when you're building out foundational elements
like your lead life cycle and the lead management process and lead scoring. You
know, it's you've got to listen to opinions from a lot of different people
while you're doing that. It's definitely not a function that you would do in
a silo and marketing APPS. You know, there's a lot of different parties
involved and so if you don't stop and ask questions and literally make people go,
you know, step by step of literally every little thing that they do
along the the life cycle process, like, you're probably not going to get
a set up functionally that's going to work for the company. So yeah,
just curiosity. I think just always staying in that discovery mode is probably the
biggest lesson. And do you think that part of it is also trying to
impart that characteristic of curiosity on others in the organization, because you have that
passion, but you also find that part of it is making sure, sort
of to Brine's point about making sure that you're telling a story, that if
you can be that inquisitive and that you can impart that sense of curiosity on
others in the organization, they will start to, you know, thirst for
more, you know, information, more storytelling and that they will have a
sense of patients, you know, because they will be just as curious as
you'd is that part of your role as well, or you just like,
you know, I'm the curious one and everybody else just wants it today now?
I mean, I think that definitely is, you know, kind of,
I guess, setting the stage for, you know, how other people
can be curious as well, and I think there's like the right way,
in a wrong way of going about curiosity. You know, it's not so
much like the feeling of like pushing back and like being like well, why
are we doing this and like you know, this doesn't make sense. It's
not that it's like hey, that's interesting to me, like I'm kind of
curious about that, like tell me more, you know, and it's just
like an open discussion and dialog that you're having, not a finger pointing exercise.
And so, you know, you could even, you know, if
you don't know how to start and like asking questions like this feels like a
little like nervewracking for you, like, you know, just saying like Hey,
like I'm trying to you know, understands that I can build this the
right way. You know, can you help explain a little bit more,
you know, about what you're thinking here or what is your really end goal?
Or, in a lot of cases with mine, I'm always like,
okay, well, how do you want to, you know, optimize on
this and how do you want to be able to see the reporting on it?
Because based on how often you want to optimize, what you want to
optimize, how you want to report on it and see that reporting, like,
I may set it up one way versus another way. So I think
it's just that open dialog. I think that's great and, like you know,
one thing too is I think also is building that relationship with that person
to like it's okay to get to get them, know them personally and kind
of build up a relationship. And you know, I often notice a lot
of times when we're working with different departments, they're not even sure what marketing
operations is and what we do. So building that relationship, getting to know
them on a personal level and explain like how we can help with that,
I think then that curiosity starts and we can also ask them what what they
do and like how we can help them, and so I think that also
sparkse curiosity and they start to feel more comfortable talking to us. Yeah,
exactly. Yeah, and I think to your point it so much of business
just comes down to people and relationships and the humanize the workplace, right,
we're all humans before we are employees, so let's treat everybody like humans.
Exactly. Well, speaking of humans, this is actually, I think,
a good segue. So let's dive into some of the the thornier issues that
are really facing marketing operations leaders everywhere really, and I think I'd like to
start with staffing, in with people. So what is the best way that
that you have found to sort of deal with massively understaffed teams in marketing operations?
You know, have how have you been able to communicate the value of
what marketing operations is, you know, to gain more organizational support and more
investment in your teams and, you know, operations? Definitely I think this
is a that's a such a great question and something that's really hot topic right
now. Keep seeing on Linkedin, you know, I think it's something a
lot of organizations are currently struggling with now. I think there's a few things
I've found, but official and communicating the value of marketing oppos as you know,
I would say first like be transparent with your manager there. You know,
they're there to advocate for you, and if they don't know you're overwhelmed
with work or if timelines are being pushed out, it would be hard to
kind of gain that further traction towards getting a higher new hire in place.
You know, as join mentioned earlier, you know be curious about the vision
and the goals of the company. Know if they have a goal to,
let's say, double the amount of Web and everything will hold in a quarter,
or looking to implement a new ABM tool, do their ABM strategy.
Those are all things that are going to add to your existing workload and,
of course, are going to require more additional resources, you know, either
inhouse or contractor or agency, whatever that looks like. So I think it's
crucial to understand what the vision looks like so you can properly communicate how you
feel and then you can support that vision and be part of that success for
the organization. You know something I think we join I both have found successful
as a marketing, operations, ticketing and project management system to really track our
work. You know, running your internal operations team as an agency makes a
lot of sense to communicate the value to the organization. You know, for
an example, if you average ten tickets a month for various trouble shooting reporting
requests, it starts in and like, let's say, it starts to double
to twenty tickets a month, it may require additional resources to support those requests,
you know, and we found that having that tangible proof through that ticketing
system, it shows how much work is really coming our way and we can
use that to show leadership that we need additional head account to execute that work.
Yeah, I mean I think one thing from my perspective to is like,
you know, as the person leading marketing operations here, you know,
like I need to be an advocate for my team. So, you know,
when I meet with, you know, my boss, which is a
VP level, and you know he's meeting with the sea level, you know,
sharing our accomplishments, you know, giving kind of public recognition, if
you will, of like hey, Brian, this really cool thing, like
he put in all this work and like this is why it's so important and
you know what it did for the company definitely helps kind of like showcase that
value and then they're able to kind of like pass that along you know,
upwards to people that maybe I don't have, you know, daily access to
that he does. And so marketing APPS is, like I call us like
the wizards behind the current, right, like we're like wizard of us,
like when everything is moving smoothly, like you kind of don't notice us because
like everything's just going great and, you know, people don't know how that
stuff is getting done, but somehow it gets done, and that's us,
where the wizards behind the curtain kind of making it all happen. Conversely,
you can kind of were the ones that get looked at when alves and something
like doesn't, you know, seem right or something's broken to but so,
because we're kind of the wizards behind the current, you know, like you
you may have, you know, the people like creating the marketing programs,
like getting credit for things, but like, you know, we're helping get
that out the door to like it's definitely, you know, like a dual
effort, and so I think just like internally advocating and just communicating like the
accomplishments and the things that we're doing in the importance that it's bringing helps your
leader then also kind of trickle that upwards and just become a valuable player well
in the the the the fact that you're talking about that. You know,
both of you have used the word team. They're you know a number of
times that you know, marketing operations is not, you know, this separate
function. You know the successful marketing operations teams are integrated. They're integrated,
whether it's with revenue ops, with sales ups, customer service, the data
teams, technology, whatever it is, these are all parts of the same
team. And so I think that, you know, education is such an
important component of what we're doing and but I think that that that actually sort
of brings me to a to a follow up question, and that is that
so, when we think about the team and as you are advocating to your
executive leadership and to your peers across the organization to understand what is going on
there, what would you say is from a team spective, how do you
identify and coach to the sort of the individual strengths of your team members to
maximize the effectiveness of your team's efforts? Because I would just think that that
a that identification helps you with the communication and the sharing and the advocating across
the organization. Would you agree? Yeah, sure definitely does. So I
kind of well, for for people who don't know, and maybe you don't
know. I think I told you, Glenn. You know, I used
to actually own a strengths development coaching company and so I'm very passionate about talents
and strengths. Talents are something that we have innately in us. It's what
we naturally think, feel, behave do work. But in order to really
become a strength, you need to gain knowledge, you have to develop your
skills and you have to make an investment of time to really develop that talent
so that you can work productively in it, versus under using or over using
your talents. So one of the things that I really like to do with
my team is give them a strengths assessment. You can do this as formal
or informal as you want. My favorite one is the Clifton strengths assessment from
Gallop, used to be called strengths finder. Our company gives us the disc
profile. There's Myers Briggs. There's a million of them and I'm not really
looking at it as like personality process assessment. I'm really looking at it from
like I want to know like inside, deep down, like how this person
naturally thinks and feels and works. And so you know, even if you
don't have like a formal assessment like that, you know, just even asking
them like what lights you up, what energizes you, what motivates you,
like what are the types of things you like working on? If they don't
know, you can say, well, what if people you know giving you
compliments on would if people you know told you that you're good at and I
have exercise I used to put clients through called the peak, peaks and pits.
You know, you think of like when you were at the dinner table
when you were younger. I don't know if your parents ever played the game
of like what was your peak of the day? What was your pit of
the day? It's kind of like that where you're thinking and kind of going
through your tasks for the week and it's like Oh, like this list important
was, you know, like the bane of my existence. I would never
want to do this again versus when I did this other report. Thing like
that really energized me. And you know, finding out really what they enjoy
doing. I think once you know clearly what lights them up and energize and
motivates them, now you can coach to that. It's really hard to coach
that if you don't know what it is right and I also think, to
Brian's point earlier, you have to get to know them on on one on
one level in order to know this information right. I know Brian very well.
I know when he does in his personal time. I know what his
goals are professionally and because of knowing that and because of knowing his strengths like
now, I can coach him and give him opportunities to, you know,
lean into those natural talents and use them or make that investment of time so
that they become a strength. I also know, you know, if he's
over using one where I'm like well, like lacks, like you know,
Brian's laughing, and I can coach them appropriately. So it's not to say,
like when you have a strengths focus, that you are, you know,
ignoring weaknesses or not giving that constructive feedback that you know what employee would
need. It's really just, you know, allowing them to do more in
their natural strength zone and then find the coaching opportunities and the learning opportunities that
you can provide. You know, and maybe they're blind spots to the areas
that they're trying to improve on. So I think of like a personal example.
I had a manager once tell many years ago my number one strength on
the Clifton strengths is maximizer, which likes to do really excellent work. If
I overuse it, it's borderline perfectionism, right, and so we all know
what that can lead to and work and she was like, I know you
really want to give Cadillac work every time that you give work. What sometimes
we just need Chevy, like I just need you to do this at like
a Chevy level. It's good enough. We need to get done, we
need to move on, and it's like okay, so I've learned to now
like ask what expectations are up front. That was a learning opportunity for me
because you know, maybe they don't need or are looking for that Catillac work
for just that one item and you are actually giving them what they need.
So that's a strengths to me are like the deep insights into the person and
allow me to better coach. Yeah, and I think on the other side
of the table where you have a leader who really cares about your strengths and
and that from being on the other side, it really helps from a manager
looking up to someone like joy, understand also their strengths and how to how
to work with you know. You know I'm a really competitive person and she's
a maximizer. So how do we work together with each other to, you
know, use our strengths together to, you know, really kill out an
awesome project or, you know, how do I need to approach a difficult
situation, knowing her strengths and my strengths and you know what we need to
do. So I think also understanding it on a manager level of what your
boss, bosses strengths are, can really help you. That's an excellent point,
which is it's part of it's like everybody has a responsibility in understanding strengths.
It's the understanding the strengths of the team and your team members, but
the team members also have the same responsibility of understanding the strengths of the leader
as well. So I think that's great. So, joy, you know
from your perspective, I know that you have said that you believe that if
you don't make the people who work for you feel seen, heard and understood,
that you're going to fail as a manager because your team's not going to
perform well. So I think this is an interesting point point on that.
So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I
mean I'm a relader, so I like to get to know people on a
deep level, but not everybody is like me, right, and so understanding
what somebody strengths are and what energizes them and, you know, knowing their
personal and professional goals, builds trust and rapport and that's instantly where I know
what strengths to lean into myself in order to build rapport with the person that
I'm not working with and as reporting to me. So by doing that and
also knowing kind of like what makes them tick and who they are, that
trust is like there's nothing that can replace that. Once you have trust like
they, you know, are going to be more open to having discussions with
you, they're going to be more open to having hard conversations. Right,
sometimes you have to have hard conversations, and they're going to be more receptive
to feedback. They're just going to be more coachable, honestly, and so
when you have that, you are not going to struggle as much with getting
to your kpis that you're trying to reach to hitting company goals you're you're probably
not going to have as much like performance issue discussions and things like that.
So for me it's like super effective to just understand who they are and what
makes them tick and order to just move together productively as a team. And
it works. It really works, and having a manager of like that is
amazing because we can do so much together when you truly understand each other and
trust each other and can actually talk really deeply about conversations. It's unbelievable what
you can do. Yeah, I mean if either of US need help,
it's like no, I got you, like I'm on it, like there's
no questions. It's like the level of trust is so high and, you
know, I also believe that like trust is like given pretty freely to people.
I I think that most people have good intentions and are trying to do
the right thing, you know. So I think by offering that and just
getting to know people is like there's literally no replacement for it. Wonderful now.
So let's shift, Brian, to you then. So when you look
and think on marketing operations, what advice would you give to our audience as
to what you see as sort of the next wave of innovation for marketing operations
teams. What do you think's coming next? Yeah, I mean, I
think it's it's amazing how you can watch the evolution of marketing operations change and
like just one year, I know, I truly believe marketing operations will begin
being the leader of the marketing and revenue departments and every company where. I
think we'll begin to see a little bit more VP of marketing operations roles,
working right along with the CMO to make strategic decisions based on their data and
then working with the teams like demand generation to really execute those campaigns. I
think a lot of marketing operations teams are already gaining value so quickly to organizations.
I mean been noticing that even more sales operations departments are wanting to work
closely with marketing operations to really complete that endo end lifesty. Will reporting,
I think, because of this shift, then the need of more reporting.
I think we're going to see a lot more marketing operations team being built out
for multiple headcount like Mark Campaign ups, platform ops, reporting analyst, as
more and more and more director and VP level rolls start like showing up in
the market. Yeah, I mean I think I'll add into like in addition
to like more director, senior director, VP level rolls, I think what
we're also going to see is like more niche specialty roles. So, you
know, there's tons of marketing operation manager positions listed out there. Depending on
the company, might have different, you know, definitions of what a marketing
ops manager does. The you know, each company kind of has their own
needs, but I think like it's hard to hire, or I guess about
saying like from the person that's looking for a position having all the skills in
the experience and everything that lines up for that Unicorn role that like does everything
right, like marketing apps manager, and it has like a slew of different
responsibilities. That's kind of overwhelming. It's nice kind of, I would say,
earlier in careers because you know, you're trying to figure out what you're
passionate about and what areas of marketing aps that you enjoy, because there are
so many different specialized paths that you can go down. But I also think
like it's good for the company to consider those paths because if you have a
lot of goals to automate reporting and, let's say you're you're not successfully reporting
on attribution today, or more of a full funnel picture of reporting than like
you may need to hire an analyst that specifically specializes in analytics and reporting versus
a general marketing not manager. If the general marketing AP managers like giving campaigns
and emails out the door and Oh they're, you know, trying to manage
renewals for technology and they're doing this and and and it's the company may have
a hard time kind of reaching the goals that they're looking to reach, and
so I think, you know, kind of having more specialize roles may actually
help the company reach the goals in effective effectively impact the bottom line really at
the end of the day. Yeah, you know, some advice also,
I would mention for marketing ops, people that you're just by yourself, you're
on that one person team. You know, I would really recommend you,
if you're really strong it, let's say reporting, and that's where your focus
needs to be and you have a lot of platform operations, don't be scared
to go to your executive and ask for, you know, a help,
say with an agency. If you can't, if you don't have the money
to bring in a new hire, it's okay, you know, to ask
help for that agency, that we maybe they can work on more platform and
campaign operations. Why you're really digging into that report analysts. So, like
you know, I wish I almost had that advice and early in my career
as a soul marketing operations person to really ask for that help. Don't we?
Yeah, just ask for it. It's okay. And then one thing
that can sort of strikes me is sort of this move, as you both
have just described, into more of a specialization. So you know you've got
now, you know certainly teams, depending on size, you've got teams that
are doing it all. You know, in it's a team of one or
two or a smaller group. But there's this movement of of sort of fracturing
or moving into the specialization role, where there's a person who's just about analytics,
there's a person just about reporting, is a person just about Martech,
is a person just about road map, one that's just about strategy or working
with creative or brand or what have you. So what do you think is
is driving that? Is it the complexity of MARTEC and that the platforms are
so complex that the only way to be successful is that no one, you
know, person or a group of individuals on a team can manage that,
that that technology is fracturing the teams towards specialization, or is there something else
sort of driving this shift to specialization? I think it's kind of a couple
things. I think that's a good point with the MARTEC but I think it's
just kind of the nature of things too. So, like, you know,
if you have a general role where you know, I know in the
past, like I've written email copy. Well, maybe you're not a great
copywriter. You're also the person admitting Marquetto right. You're also the person.
I've also designed graphics in my day. Now. Can I design graphics?
Yes, and my graphic designer absolutely not. Am I going to develop in
code templates? Do I know sequel to pull that report? You know,
there's so many different things where it's like yes, I can, you know,
do all of these things to an extent, but it all comes back
to again like working in your strengths and if the company wants to get where
they want to get, having a person that kind of does it all and
it's just like okay, at least five things and they excel in this one
area, like you're going to get okay, work like you're not, you
know what I mean. And so, depending on the goals, like,
instead of having to marketing up managers, maybe you need, you know,
analyst that no sequel and you need, you know, somebody that can be
more of a campaign APPs person. Maybe your needs and are, you know
where you do tons of custom development work and you need somebody that can write
eachtml and like you know. So you just need to understand like internally what
your initiatives and goals are within marketing and hired to that, because it would
probably be far more effective to hire three, you know, specialized roles then
three general rules where everybody kind of splits the same pot of work and you're
just getting, you know, kind of mediocre work from this person because maybe
they like sort of know how to edit html but they don't really know html.
But like this person over here and knows it and like probably loves it
and would like to spend more time in it. So I think it's just
really having an understanding of like what you are looking to do and then leaning
into those strengths. Yeah, and it feels that you know that success leads
to increased demand. As a marketing operations team is, you know, drives
more and more success in there. You can point to more and more success.
It's going to increase the demand on that team and then therefore it's sort
of that increased demand sort of necessitates more of that specialization, because no one,
you know, you know one person can do that. You know,
it's like the demand just keeps on growing. And back to your point about
the ticketing system or other ways to try to show that the demand is growing.
And so therefore we need more or support. We need to start to
break that down even further. Yeah, and it may not be all full
time hires either. Like there's agencies, there's contractors, freelancers, there are
ways to get the type of skills that you're looking to gain as a company.
So if you can't afford like we have an agency that does all of
our web and development, right, so when we have a custom landing page
to develop, our a new email template to develop or javascript that needs written,
like I'm not a javascript expert, right, like I know how it
works, I know what needs to be done and when we need javascript,
but I'm going to hand it off to an expert in Hoo can code javascript
in order to get Xyz done, and so I think you just need to
kind of explore the opportunities and if it isn't a full time higher resources can
look like all different types of things. So just, you know, be
open to the opportunities that are out there. So, Brian, how do
you ensure that you set clear and attainable goals for yourself? Yeah, definitely.
So, you know, I think this is so great, especially because
I was a one person marketing team and I actually worked for a CMO that
we were just moving so fast and constantly just getting campaigns out of the door
that, you know, KPI's weren't really her focus at that time. So
I was actually in charge of setting my own KPIS and actually making shrine was
hitting those. So I've always been that kind of the guy that's like all
right, I'm going to do this, I got this, this is what
I'm going to do. And you know, for example, like I joined
under joy and she's like hey, you know, go for this marketing certificate,
Shin or Quetto certification. I'm like great, I'm going to do this
and like she's like, you know, to was charged it with like six
months or something like. I can totally believe in you, you can do
it. I was like I did it and within I don't even know,
joy you remind me. It was like within a short room up. I
said, let's do it in the first ninety days and you're like no,
I'm ready right now. And it was like under thirty days and I was
like, are you sure you're ready? Like and he's like yeah, I'm
ready. I'm like, okay, you got it. Of course, to
my strength, being one of them, being competitive, of course that pop
out. So you know, if you are on a one person marketing team
or even in a team alone, like set, keep you eyes for yourself
on a personal level and a professional level. I, like I said,
I was I was running them by myself. So I would I would create
a list of keep eyes for myself and I would actually track them quarterly and
see how I'm progressing and I would actually bring to our C Moom like here's
my kpiyes and here's how I'm doing and like my percentage of what I'm hitting
and what I'm not hitting and what I would like to learn on a personal
level and a professional level. And when I brought that to her, her
eyes and her mouth were just wide open. She was unbelieved, and I
think that's a great point. Is like always care about yourself, always care
about what you want to learn, you know, really take time to invest
in yourself and share that with your executive. Yeah, I mean, especially
if they're not asking right because, like sometimes people fall into management because they
like love being people managers and love to coach and and be leaders, and
sometimes they fall into it just like because they just fell into it and they
maybe, you know, aren't that great at it yet. I mean,
one thing that like has worked for me has been those quarterly goals too,
because I'm a high achiever, so I like to check things off, like
accomplish things, you know, and so like if I was only working towards
like those lagging goals or like an annual metric, like I'd have to wait
so long right, like accomplished that thing. It's like I want to accomplish
things like as I go. So like, even if it is an annual,
you know, goal, or however your company sets goals. To me,
having like something quarterly that I could work towards that and it's like biting
off little chunks at a time was really motivating for me. And worked well
for me. And then I agree with Brian on like having professional and personal
goals like always. And if you do have a manager and leader that like
really cares about you, they will do everything to help you accomplish those personal
goals to whether it's a financial goal or maybe you want to speak more podcasts,
or Brian wanted to get his marqutto certification. You know you are going
to be able to. Then, I guess, give them those opportunities to
be able to accomplish those personal goals. So super important. Life is work,
it's family, it's personal goals, it's a lot of things, and
so it should kind of encompass how that may affect like your job as well.
So and like I want to also give you like a piece of advice.
If you're out there and you're a one person marketing team and you're new
to marketing opps and you are challenge to set your own Kpiyes, you know,
the biggest thing I would recommend for you to do is look at Your
Marketing Operations Road Map and really make sure you understand and know what what the
room map is and what you're wanting to accomplish. And then from there set
your professional goals. Know what what, know what's possible, know what you're
trying to achieve and from the company goals, and that's going to really help
you create those. You know, I was in a position where I was
like where do I even start? And so I went to that more marketing
operations room map that I created and I'm like this is perfect, this is
exactly what I need to do to set my professional kpis and hit them.
I think it's wonderful. Now let's move into our my final question for today.
What excites you both about the future of marketing operations and, conversely,
what scares you the most about the future of this functional area across industries today?
Join? Yeah, I mean I think what excites me like we are
seeing more higher level roles in the industry. So when I started my opps
career, like there was a lot of marketing that manager roles, but there
wasn't really director, VP level roles. You're definitely see more of that today.
You're seeing more of marketing apps go into a REV OPS function. We've
done the actually here. We moved marketing apps into our revop function, which
is called commercial operations, and I think it like it allows you to have
a more valuable seat at the table and position marketing kind of outside of what,
like, some people may think is like a cost center, because,
you know, marketing has a big budget right at like every company. So
and it's more now positioned as like a revenue driver. Right like. We're
part of that. We're you know, our seat is pulled up to the
table now, so that excites me. Think what scares me is just still
so many of those like one man, one woman, like Unicorn rolls that
are out there. I think the biggest thing that scares me about that is
not even that like the person isn't playing well to their strengths because they're kind
of doing everything. I mean there's that, but what scares me about it
is if that person leaves, all of that tribal knowledge that that person has
gotten around the company's processes and how we do things and why decisions were made
goes out the door to and so you know, you want to document that
stuff, but a lot of times, when you're one person show, we
have a hard time like keeping up on documenting all of those major processes and
decisions. And if that person leaves, so does all of that information.
You know, I can't even count on one hand, two hands probably,
how many, like even Marquetto instances I've gone into. We're like nobody had
like there was zero documentation for any processes and I literally had to like go
and investigate and figure out, like, okay, what is their life cycle?
How do they do scoring? What is this? Why was this decision
made? This seems weird, you know, and so that is stuff that
a company can not get back, that tribal knowledge, and so that is
probably what scares me about those types of roles the most. Yeah, excellent,
Brian. How about you? Yeah, I love this question. I
think it's great. You know, I think what ex like to me is
the new MARTECH that's coming out like every day, which is always going to
need a marketing ups person to run it. You know, there's so many
different career paths, like we talked about, that you can go down.
It's so there's so many, so much opportunity with all this new MARTEC coming
out for you to really find your niche and what you would really enjoy doing.
So I that really excites me and what that can mean for the future
for ops. You know, I think the thing that kind of still,
you know, scares me and I think would be a great linkedin post is
I know I do get nervous that sales operations, it will eventually start wanting
the pull marketing and sales operations together and it really lose that importance of both
functions. You know, I think I least I hope, we'll kind of
see that not happen as we start to see more VP of marketing operations roles
come into teams. But you know, the biggest thing is, I think
it that you're nervous that's happening in your organization is, you know, really
make sure you're showing your value of your function and what marketing operations is and
what sales operations is and how you can both work together rather than creating it
into one function. So I think that it scares me a little bit because
I think we're starting to see them work together more. So I just want
to make sure that importance of both functions are still there. Excellent. Well,
we'll leave it there and this wraps up this episode of the art of
marketing operations. Thank you so much for joining us today, joy and Brian.
Until next time, stay safe, Take Care Air and thank you all
for listening. Thank you for listening to the art of marketing operations brought to
you by Taylor. Don't forget to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player.
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