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 Bottomley and today my guest is Colton
Slawson, marketing operations at water mark and award winning software in services provider that
gives higher education institutions the insights they need to continuously improve, evolve and empower
student success. Thanks for joining me today, Colton. Yeah, it's my
pleasure. I'm excited. Well, to kick us off today cold to let's
start with something unrelated to marketing operations. I understand that outside of work you
have a passion for Web design, fashion design and clothing. So can you
just tell us a little bit more about where those passions came from? I
feel like to set a very young age I was a very interested person,
or interested in a lot of different things, and so growing up I was
very artistic and creative, ear least I thought so, and so, you
know, getting into college and such, learning about different things. I want
to learn about how to start a business, how to start, you know,
different things, and one of those things was starting a clothing business.
It only lasted about a couple months, but it was a good learning process
about, you know, how a business has run, how to start a
business. And and then, just you know, web design is actually something
that I do on the side outside of marketing ops. I own a Web
Design Company and me and another colleague, and so it's kind of the more
creative side of my brain that I get, kind of an outlet that sometimes
I get in marketing ops, but not always, and so that kind of
feels like that void for me a little bit. Well, that's wonderful and
as we say on this podcast that marketing operations, it is the left and
right brain. There is that creative in that data side and hence the art
of marketing operation. So that's great. So what's shift now to talk more
about marketing operation. So can you tell us a bit more about how you
got into marketing operations originally and what is it about the discipline that fascinates you
the most? Yeah, so I kind of fell, and I like to
say that I fell into marking oups. It was a lot. When I
graduated college, I graduated with a digital marketing degree and I think in the,
you know, course of my program I probably there was probably like a
paragraph of what marketing operations was in a textbook. Maybe I would assume it's
probably very little, if anything. But when I graduated or was about to
graduate, I was looking for internships or just an entry level position and marketing
didn't really care exactly what it was. I had know I wanted to be
in marketing but I didn't know exactly what. So I was just applying to
everything and it was a different job market then than it is now. where
I mean right now, it's crazy. You could, you know, if
you're graduating, call it it's a great time, where as when I did,
it was a little bit harder. So you had to, you know,
go through the struggle of interview and then, you know, potentially not
getting out, just like, I mean all the interviews. But and I
just stumbled across marking operations and, you know, as I what the heck,
I don't even know all this is, but let's that has marketing in
the title. It's let's try it out, and I remember my interview.
They act like and I remember reading through like the job description and so I
looked at like what the tools were and I saw Marquetto and I think I
pronounced it wrong in the interview. I can't remember what I said, but
I know I pronounced there wrong as just like yeah, I'd be totally interested
in learning about it. I don't know what it is, but I'm totally
like gold and I'm ready. And you know, I started out doing a
lot of list uploads and a lot of kind of the the nitty gritty work
of marking ops and the automation side, but quickly came to realize how amazing
marking ops and marketing automation is, just because there's so much to learn.
And I feel like the word expert. I kind of get annoyed with the
word expert or like just expert in general. It's like nobody is an expert
in marking operations at all. Like yeah, people have their way of doing
things and that's awesome, but there's so many different ways of doing something awesome
within marking ops that can work better for one company and not so great for
another. But there's always something new to learn each day when I start my
day it's like, all right, what am I going to learn today?
What, you know, problem is going to come my way that I need
to solve or, you know, hope that I can get ahead of that
before you know is a dumpster fire. But you know, that's that's the
fun thing about marking offs is there's always something new to learn and it's so
collaborative. I feel like that's kind of the turning point that I feel like
a lot of marking offs professionals are getting into right now is we're having to
get outside ourselves more more so now than I feel like in, you know,
the couple years that I've been in marking ops, than ever. It's
like people are realizing that marketing ops is very integral and a very integral part
of the organization, but we don't always have the seat at the table to
get the view across. And and so it's just a fun profession and I
like telling my Linkedin, you know, community and the people that I callagues
and sets that it is something that you should get into and I you know,
it's awesome, it's really fun. That could be good advice. If
you are talking to someone in your organization, say what do you do in
marketing operations. I prevent dumpster fires. I love the urgency in your voice
and also just sort of the passion that you have for just wanting to dive
right in. You know, not only is that just, you know,
the wide eyed you know sort of to your point, that the innocence of
walking straight straight into something and just I want to learn. So I think
that's fantastic. But that actually my be a good segue to your current role.
So, you know, in your current role, I know that you
have just a huge job managing, you know, a large and in an
expanding martek stack and in addition to managing the platforms themselves, you know,
you're also responsible for the interactions and the integrations between them. So here's a
question for it, which is that, sort of given the persistent challenges that
always seems to exist and pop up when connecting, you know, all these
various platforms together, what advice would you give to our audience on how do
you make integrations is as pain free and as effective as as possible? Yeah,
that's a great question. I think at the very beginning I would ask
yourself, is this platform even worth it? Like, yeah, I may
have a you know, it may be flashy and maybe what everybody else is
doing in the market or in the industry within marking offs, but ask yourself,
is this actually necessary? Because a lot of times would I found personally
and from colleagues that I've heard from, is I mean we get so inundated
with all this all this information from various text acts that you can get so
in the weeds of one and then realize, Oh crap, two days have
gone by and have weve in touch this other one, you know, and
then you know it's just adds on top of each other. So first off
our to say, evaluate whether or not it's necessary, effects it will have
on Rli, will it actually change anything? And then if it does,
then yeah, what I would recommend is, for me, it's always important
to make sure that, depending on the integration, it's so varying in what
type of integrations can plug into your text act, but make sure that you
have the people there in the implementation process that need to be there and make
sure that those that don't need to be there aren't there. And I mean
that's that can be a hard thing to understand too, because you have to
understand different roles within your organization and obviously the platform that you're integrating. They'll
have their their community, their tech person there to help out. But make
sure you have your people there, because I found that a lot of times
when you integrate a process or integrated a platform and you don't have the other
like, let's say, like it's a cells force Addman, like, make
sure that they're there because a lot of what I mean I'm a Marquetto user,
so a lot of what I do affects sells force, so and and
sometimes you have to have them there just fulfilled creations and other things. So
just make sure people are there. They don't have to be there the whole
time. We could just be an awareness thing, but let them know that,
hey, this is happening and this is what it's going to do,
just so that they're where. And I feel like awareness and just open communication
with your internal organization really impacts the success of that platform being successful. Wise
they but yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a good reminder of the
importance of sharing the information, bringing in key stakeholders, you know, on
decisions such as that. And again it's a it's a good point of a
reminder of I think that there are so many technology platforms available to us.
I think cheap Martechcom I think it's over seven seventy five hundred or eighty eight
thousand some odd distinct Martech platforms. Now it's just so huge, so many
to choose from, and so distilling that down to is this even going to
be worth it or is it even going to be necessary? It is just,
you know, a good core advice. So thanks for that. So
let's kind of stay with MARTEC for a few more thoughts here, though.
So I know in when we you and I chatted before, I know that
you're using a number of intent to buy software platforms today. So can you
share with our audience just more generally, what these are, what you like
most about them and also what don't you really like about them? Yeah,
that's an awesome question. So we're probably a couple months in. We just
launched it with ourselves group, and so what for me? But what's awesome
about it is a kind of freeze up and breaks down that barrier that marketing
and cells typically have, and what I mean by that is I mean historical
that I feel like marketing and cells are so separate, but their goal is
the same thing. Right and with intent platforms like a count level. At
intent platforms, I feel like we can target the same areas that were our
target markets and a similar fashion together, whereas before it's like all right,
you know, marking. We're also focused on you know, how many clicks
or how many mtls, how many Yada, Yada, Yada, whereas you
know, cells are just like I don't really care about that information, I
just want someone to talk to that it's interested. Right. And now you
bring in an intent platform that shows you these accounts, these these companies are
interested in your product or platform or service or whatever it is, and it
surfaces that information out based on various connections that this platform has with different,
you know, article companies and you know, you name it, that it
shows that they're, you know, searching up, for example, in you
know, our industry, like education, software or whatever the case, maybe
for your particular case. But it shows that information, but it doesn't show
the individual unless you have that information in your own database. So it's not
like that, like it can get, you know, a lot of the
stuff can get kind of big brothery where you're just like, oh, this
is kind of creepy. But the way, the thing that I like about
it. It is account level. It's not like in less, like I
said, unless you have that person in your database already to show that,
hey, this individual filled out this form or they went through this page or
they interacted with Soandso's whatever. Right, and it really highlights these these companies
that are actually interested and display that to both marketing and cells in a quick
way that allows us to, you know, get to them at the time
that they actually want to hear from us. Because, I mean, we
can send millions of emails out, but how many, you know, people
actually care, you know, and and so many people it's like, will
I do the same thing? My inbox is just overfilled with, you know,
random products you need by this whatever, but half the time I don't
spend the time to you know, unsubscribed. So it's like you'll have people
in your database that they don't care, but you you see that they open
up an email and I sometimes just open up an email just to clear out
of my que my inbox, but I, you know, obviously open rates
through the aren't that you know what they are? Well, in not.
Yeah, I think it's a good point because, you know, for me
personally, and I've shared this story I'm not sure if I've shared this on
this podcast, but for me I get inundated with so many emails that come
to me and so the challenges there's very few that sort of get through the
the noise, and so the challenge that I find is I used to would
sort of methodical that if this email came through and I knew it had nothing
to do with me and I have no interest, you know, in this
be tob solution, I would just click unsubscribe. I would go to the
website, I would fill up form, you know, do whatever I needed
to do and I would get off that list. But what I have found
recently is the amount of emails that I receive so great that, and how
many times have you probably experienced it? When you click unsubscribe and then you
go to a page. If it's a onetime unsubscriber, I click a button
and then it just says you're unsubscribed. That's great, but a lot of
times it'll be like, why did you unsubscribe? What is the email address
that you know? You receive this email too, and I have multiple email
addresses at work, so I don't I've then have to go back and I
have to find it. So now I'm just finding that that's not necessarily guaranteed
that it's going to be a painless process. So when I find myself doing
now just my own personal, you know, behavior is I just block.
And so when that email comes through, I just block, because that's guaranteed
because you know then when that if I get that email again, it's just
not even going to get to me because it's going to get, you know,
you know, intercepted with my email provider and I won't even see it.
So to me, blocking, you know, an email is actually more
of a guarantee than going through a formal unsubscribe, even though you know that
unsubscribed would probably be the right thing to do to help, you know,
this company who I probably don't want to, you know, deal with.
But but it's so interesting with what you're saying, because you know you want
to try to understand where that buyer is at, but doing so where it's
not, you know, too invasive exactly. And I think that brings up
a really good point because, I mean, my whole thing is I love
to learn new things, like I'm I'm building an outdoor office in my backyard
right now because I just and I've never built anything in my life, but
I'm learning right and there's so many things that we can learn and do.
But when it comes from marketing, there are so many great marketers out there.
Like I like sometimes I'll open up an email back, wow, this
is awesome and it should be focused on when we want it. So it's
like, yeah, you can have the best email out there, but it's
like I'm not going to, you know, buy because it's not the right
time, it doesn't fit, or we may not be the person you actually
need to sell to, which happens quite often actually. But I feel like
there's this change of all right, we when marking ops or marking automation platforms
were first introduced, I feel like it was so like everybody was like so
gung Ho, it's all right. Now we can just like spam everybody.
We can spam everybody, we can capture everything, we can get all the
information we need about these people and do great things. And Yeah, you
can, but then it gets to the point where it's like why are we
doing? Like you got to think, like why are we sending out this
email to these people? Actually Care? Are they even in market exactly?
And so it gets to the the bigger question that I like to ask myself
a lot of times when I'm working with my colleagues here, as you know,
what's the point? Does this customer actually want or does this potential customer
even want this? And Are you? You know, we have like M
cols and they out of Yada, Yada, but like m cools are great,
but it's like they I want them to come to us. If they
really are interested, they will find us. I mean hope you were doing
what we're supposed to do. So they do find us and if they are
interested, they will go to you know, book a demo with us or,
you know whatever other means that we have for them to interact with us
and get more information. But I have a hard time sometimes with the like
spammi nature of marketing that I'm like the two sides of me. I was
just like struggling like all right, should we do this? Should we not
do this? I'm like, all right, no, we shouldn't do this.
That internal conflict right. Well, you know, and obviously you have
been an early mover on, you know, advanced marketing operations technologies, you
know, like intent to buy and in others, as you stated, but
so how are you finding that you're staying on top of all of the latest
trends and sort of keeping a pulse on the the next big thing in digital
marketing operations platforms? Yeah, I mean, for one, before you even
go to other platforms, it's like first figure out if yours are actually,
you know, doing what they're supposed to do. And then, I mean
I'm very active on Linkedin and there's such an amazing community of marking ops professionals
out there that share amazing information that you can just absorb just by going on
Linkedin and just, you know, curating your profile to show marking ops information.
But there's also tons of slot communities or user groups for marking ops that
isn't specific to Marquetto or can be or hubs by or, you know,
whatever the new platform is. But there's so many good communities out there.
That what I found a lot of the colleagues that I interact with in marking
oups. They're one man, one woman's shop of marking outs professionals, you
know, the other company, and it could be, you know, a
small one hundred person company or up to like eight hundred, and like it
could get very daunting especially when you are working with so many different platforms and
stuff. So it's good to have, you know, a community of people
that you can rely on to be like hey, this was asked to me,
this is what I'm looking at, or, you know, whatever the
case may be. In just plug you get out there and a lot of
times I found I get really good feedback back that isn't just like wow,
that was really dumb. You know, you need to change it. It's
like wow, great question. You know, this is what I've done.
You know, take it with a grain of salt, because it's different case
by case. That the company. But I mean, whenever it comes to
new text act anything, I'm always looking out at communities that I'm a part
of or in Linkedin in general, just asking people that I follow that I
respect their content that they're putting out in marking ops and this acting, like
hey, have you ever had the experience with this, this problem, or
the even like a problem? What salute, what solution do you use to
solve for that problem, or what text act do you like that? Yeah,
and just sharing the best practice in the you know what, what ideas
are working for others. So let's let's stay with this, this notion of
talking about, you know, other marketing operations executives, others that you connect
with, etc. So what what do you believe that most marketing operations executives
are struggling with right now, and how do you think maybe you've addressed the
situation in your current role to sort of minimize the impact of that? That's
a tough one, I would honestly probe. And I think this is this
is not really, I think, an issue that a lot of people solve
and we're still trying to solve. It's just understanding what parts of reporting truly
matter, because there is this this I mean when Marquetto and other platforms first
started, it was just like the mql is like the Holy Grail of marketing.
You know, you get an Mql, you send it the sales it's
like, whoo, you slept the gold star on that. It's great,
but in reality it's like we're finding and you know, it's quite obvious that
you know mcls. Yeah, they they convert every now and again, but
a person that attends a Webinar and then, you know, scores out to
an MTL, yeah, they may, you know, be interested, but
most of the times they're probably just learning and wanted to learn and you know,
that's it. And if they really are interested in you know, they
will reach out, they will go to your website, they will do this
stuff, because that's the type of market that we're in right now that you
have the option to buy stuff and it's so a lot of stuff that's so
self served that if you need it, you can find it and you can
get that solution. But I think right now it's just like understanding of the
customer and what truly impacts the buying process and a lot of that is,
you know, discovered through reporting. But I just don't feel like a lot
of companies do reporting well, and I'm speaking, you know, from my
personal experience to it's is something that there's so much to look at sometimes it
gets a little bit daunting to look at and to manipulate in a way that
actually makes sense or you can, you know, make tells out of what
you're looking at. And I mean we're we're getting there. We just added
a chief revenue officer, which is really aligning the cells and marketing groups so
that we're not all, you know, trying to look at different reports here
and there for what we know on but as a whole, as a company,
and simplifying these reports down, because you don't need to know, like
there's so many reports that we have. They're just like why are we pulling
this report? Like, does anybody look at this it? Is it just
me that I'm creating this report and you know it gets shared out, maybe
in a board deck here and there, but like, is this actual information?
Is this information actually valuable? And I think that is a struggle.
Will it move the dial? Yeah, will it move the dial? Is
there? Is there value here, or is it? Are we going to
the up the the the the process, the motions of it? And I
think that's one of the challenges that I hear a lot on this podcast is,
you know whether or not you know a company or a marketing operations team
has a customer data platform, is CTP, whether they have some centralized or
coordinated reporting package that you know, feeds multiple feeds together and you know it
creates a that problem that you raise is prevalent, I think, across so
many organizations and part of it, I think, is exacerbated by so many
of the martextacks that are out there. Of course, each come with their
own set of reports. So now, as your martextack gets bigger and bigger,
your problem is is extrap you know, extrapolated, because now it's,
you know, ten times harder to realize what is the most valid and most
important information, because now I've got ten different platforms that I'm looking at and
what's the what am I looking at is? And then sometimes you've got the
conflict of this report doesn't match that report or this information and that everything.
So yeah, I think it's a good reminder that you bring up here,
which is constantly be asking that question about is this important and how do you
make sure that the reporting is really reporting on what matters? And I think
you know, kneeling down at that point, that you know there are so
many text stcs out there, there's so many platforms that give you all this
information. You know, simplification is, I believe, at the core of
marketing operations. So when you're doing things, you need to step back,
you need to stop and think, Hey, is what I'm doing right now
or what I'm planning or being asked to do this is this thing going to
create more work for me? You know two months from now, a quarter
from now, a year from now, that you're going to get back to
and be like, what the heck did I do? Like, what is
this like? What is this thing that is put in place? Because you're
right, I mean, there's so many different places that we can get,
you know, data pulled from, you know, this text act to this
one, and you know, a lot of times there's confusion from those text
acts plugging into the one bi tool or whatever, and I mean there's there's
complexity there, and I think the hardest part for most companies, at least
in my experiences, that great reporting cannot happen at all unless the the database,
the core systems are fine tuned, and that that part is the hardest
part in my opinion, because there's so many different ways, especially when you
add more text, you know, platforms to your your automation, that you
can have things coming in that are are messing up you're reporting because it wasn't
properly set up a year from year ago or two years ago when it was
first implemented. And and I feel like that that's the hardest thing to really
fully grasp and control is, you know, is that process of okay,
we want this report, we want this executive is asking for this and this.
Okay, I understand that they want this and they on it this way,
but from my standpoint, and I push but you have to push back
sometimes be like, okay, I get that you want this and I want
to get it to you as soon as possible, but we're in our current
data space is not in the the space it needs to be to get that
information accurately. Yeah, I can create this rapport in, you know,
our Bi tool or whatever and get this information, but I'm not going to
feel confident and saying, Hey, take this to the you know, the
board and say hey, this is what's happening, because it's like a lot
of times you just have to clean up your shot before you know it's ready
to to be display to everybody. And so I think that is a big
struggle that a lot of companies face. And I mean when I first got
where I am, I read there was a lot of acquisitions. So there's
like seven companies coming to one. So there was a lot of information that
was not the best and being used in different ways. But it was kind
of a good starting point to kind of reframe our instance of Marquetto in a
way that made sense for me, but also that I could document within our
documentation of just how this is being run so that you know, you know,
Heaven for Bet I'm gone. But like you know, when the day
comes that I am gone, somebody can come and be like, okay,
this is how it's working, and then they don't, you know, make
the reports all screwed up or, you know, make things harder for themselves
just by coming in. But I mean well, and I think part of
the thing of what you were just saying is sometimes it's more important to slow
down now so that you can speed up later and so do your point.
You know, there's always going to be tremendous pressure. Always I need this
information, I need it yesterday, I need to make this decision. Tell
me X Y Z. But to your point, you know, either sharing
what you have with lots of caveats as to you can use this information.
But here's how you need to interpret that data, those data. Here's the
information you're looking for, but here's the challenges of how you should, you
know, be using this or how you should or should not be using it.
So sometimes, to your point, it's better to slow down now a
little bit so that ultimately, once you get these things in places, you
can speed up later. So I think that's good, which that actually brings
up an interesting question, which is, if you were talking about, you
know, sort of reporting and you know, sort of like the platform about
what's necessary, would you sort of look at the same thing here as it
relates to automation? So, in other words, you know, how do
you want to evaluate whether or not you're automating the right things while ignoring those
areas that you shouldn't be automating, you know, so that it doesn't lead
to reduced or why or less impact? So would you say the same sort
of thought, which is, is this going to matter? Is this automation?
If I implement this automation, is it actually going to matter or not?
Is that sort of the lens that you use to evaluate automation? Oh,
definitely. I mean this happened a couple weeks ago. I was at
I mean marking offs typically, or ticket takers almost, you know, for
marketing, and sometimes cells as well, just depends on the organization. But
I was asked to do something. At first I said, all right,
I'm going to do this, and then I started, you know, really
thinking about how I would go about, you know, creating this sort of
automation and it was all in ways to carry a list of emails and things
for sales to understand, like okay, this is what's going out, but
not just like what the email is, but like the whole email. So
they were just they wanted, like to get all these emails, to see
all the sales reps, and I was like hold up, you know,
we're wanting to send all the cells reps every email that we send out.
That and I was just like okay, no likes. You got a step
back and be like all right, why are we asking? You got to
just ask questions. I mean, before you do any automation, ask yourself
questions. If you're confused, there's probably a reason why you're confused. Ask
a question, especially in this world where we're, you know, working from
home offices and such. You can't just go and, you know, tap
on someone's shoulder and be like hey, what is this? Like I don't
understand what you just typed out in an email. Like you just have to
ask questions. And so, you know, I asked the question, like
why, why are we doing this? Why? Who is asking for this?
If they're asking for this, do they actually need this? Like in
and it came to the point where they're like, I got the response back
that know, the end, you know, the person that they were trying
to do us forward to actually ask for this and they probably wouldn't like it.
And and you know, they don't want thirty million emails a days saying
Oh, this is coming from marketing today. They don't want that and it
would just create more work for myself to figure out, all right, how
to do this and mitigate, you know, the headache of having to,
you know, correct it later on. And I feel like that I'm gaining
my own confidence in telling people to know. I feel like there's a power
and a responsibility that marketing ops has to have, you know, and that
is saying no, owning what you do and knowing that, all right,
you are the person at this company or you know your group of people,
you own this. Make sure that if it doesn't sound right to you,
it probably isn't right. And the thing is, nobody else really knows really
what you do that much, you know. So it's like, if they're
not if they're going to say it's right, they're going to say it's right,
but if you feel uncomfortable about it and it seems weird. It seems
like it's going to create more work later on. It probably will, and
so just ask questions, say no when you need to, and say with
just, you know, I mean every now and again to yeah, well,
when it goes back to your comment about simplification, is at the core
of marketing operations, is that, you know, sometimes you have to simplify
for your other internal stakeholders. You know, they may as for Xyz,
but you know, by bringing it down about why. You know, sometimes
you can ask those two or three probing questions and maybe what they're asking for
is exactly what you can get them and what should get them. But sometimes
it might not be exactly what they're looking for. It could be something different.
So I think that that's good. So, colden, you were talking
a little bit about, you know, about emails, and it's sort of
made me think a bit about content in general. So when you think about
content, whether it be email content, web content, thought leadership content,
you know, other sources that you have, would have been sort of the
best ways that you found to use content and content strategy to sort of propel,
you know, a user through a through a buyer journey. Yeah,
I mean we had here at my current company, a he's a current customer,
but he's kind of a I don't even like influencer, that's not the
right route, but he's a spokesperson basically, for for our company and how
his university uses it. And I mean we got a lot of information from
him on how, you know, how content and our marketing efforts are really
impacting the end user. And I mean I was like thinking, you know,
as a market I like to think of different ways that we can get
in front of, you know, a customer and be like Hey, this
is important for you, making sure that they understand that it is important.
I mean that's difficult and so making sure that, I mean, for one,
you think like the customer. I know that's like marketing one one.
You know, like if you're going to do anything, think about the customer
and how, how they would receive it. But it's like we're customers every
day for so many things. We mentioned it a letter where we have emails
coming to us all the time. So, like I sometimes go through my
emails and it's really nerd you of me, but like I'll look at them
be like all right, the why are they sending me this? Like why?
Like this has nothing to do with me and my, you know,
my job. They obviously didn't understand it. So making it so, especially
when it comes to emails or or not so much social for my current role.
But I'm I'm sure other companies where social is a little bit easier.
I mean education market is. They're not on social media media as much as
other industries. But so that's why we don't use social as much. But
anyways, like email and you know, different strategies that you have for distributing
content, you know, putting the customer in in that content, making sure
that it's simple enough for them to ask the question of like, all right,
why do I need this? And then if you provide the answer in
that piece of content, then it really drives home that. Okay, I
can reach out, I can, you know, follow up with this person
through, you know, their website or whatever. And I mean there's so
many different platforms out there that make content strategies awesome, excellent, good thoughts.
So let's fast forward a five years. Where do you see marketing operations
going? That? I wish I could know that. I mean, at
least in my linkedin feed. I feel like there's this growing sentiment that the
way that we're currently doing things is not right. As far as like tracking,
I mean it's just we track so many different things. If like form
fills this this, you know attendance at of Webinar are you know, which
are all great to know. You know how things are performing at the end
of the day, at the end of the day, for our why?
For your you know your different marking channels, which is great, but at
the end of the day, what truly matters is, all right, how
are we communicating this information out to the customers? How is this impacting close
one deals, and I mean, yeah, it's great to know how many
people came to we when are but I mean, at the end of the
day, you know the number at the end of the day is a close
one. Whatever you close one is, you know, the holy ground,
and I just feel like we in marking ups are going to have a big
shift, especially with date of privacy and different regulations that are constantly changing and
being updated or being added, that I feel like we're going to there's going
to be a big shift in in just marking in general, just how we
do I mean, it's crazy to think, but like before phones it's like
people didn't mark it on phones because their phones didn't exist. But I don't
know, like what, what will be that thing that you know in five
years? It's it's hard to really know. I don't know if I anybody
really knows that right, but it's makes this question so difficult. And,
you know, staying on top of that, I think it's not going to
be overnight where it's like all sudden it's like all right, marking automation is
out, this is the new thing. I think marking operations, marking automation
is just a going to involve evolved into something that currently we don't use but
or you know, that's how it's use. But it'll be something that I
hope, you know, it'll be better for everybody, but you never know.
Who knows how it's going to it's going to be an interesting journey.
I'm sure exactly will golden. As we wrap up today's episode, what is
the one takeaway that you want to leave our audience with your extensive experience in
marketing operations? I mean I would just say if you're in marking ops,
stay hungry, stay eager to learn. act like you are a brand new
intern, because I mean a lot of days you get in there and you
don't know what you're you know what's going to come, but stay eager and
stay positive that you know, just take one step at a time. I
mean, not a lot of people know what you're doing at in marking off,
but there are a whole bunch of other people in the community of marking
out professionals that know how much you're impacting the business as a whole. Find
those people, find those other sources of information that you can rely on and
bounce ideas off of. But stay hungry, stay willing to learn and be
humble about you know, if you do something wrong, own it, you
know, own your role. I love that. It makes me think of
a phrase that I love, which is your vibe attracts your tribe. And
so the the intense energy that you have towards marketing operations. That energy allows
you to find people on Linkedin slack communities. It finds likeminded individuals this podcast,
other listners. You know, keep the energy moving and I think that's
outstanding and really relevant advice. Well, that wraps up this episode of the
art of marketing operations. Thank you so much for joining us today. Colton
and until next time, stay safe, take care and thank you for listening.
Thank you for listening to the art of marketing operations brought to you by
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