By: Tom McKeown
As the new year gets underway I thought it would be a great time to catch up on the big marketing trends in 2024. Today's focus is the meaty topic of marketing operations.
I recently sat down with Chris Kiertz, founder of Moperations to discuss this topic.
Chris Kiertz, Founder of Moperations Chris is a fractional MOP's leader and certified Hubspot solution partner. His expertise includes the areas marketing operations, demand generation, customer marketing and much, much more. In short, there is no one better to discuss this topic with!
Our interview covers the predictions, challenges, and the state of current marketing operations. Read below and make sure to reach out to Chris for your marketing operations needs!
TM: What sparked your interest in Marketing Operations?
CK: I sort of stumbled my way into marketing operations out of necessity. When I started using HubSpot back in 2014, we didn’t have any sort of “marketing operations” role on our team. And honestly it didn’t really seem to exist anywhere at that time, at least not for HubSpot. HubSpot’s entire value proposition revolved around making it easy for marketers to do their jobs without the need for complicated systems.
TM: What led you to start your own consulting business?
CK: It came down to a few factors:
I had been laid off for the fourth time.
The job market was terrible. It was the first time that I couldn’t land an interview after losing my job.
A few people in my network asked for some part-time help.
I’ve always had a bent towards entrepreneurship. I’ve started a few cocktail-related side businesses in the past, and knew at some point the time would come for me to go all-in, so what better time than now?
TM: What is the primary focus of Moperations?
CK: Fractional MOPs. I’m the guy you call when you just lost your marketing ops manager and you can’t wait three months to find and hire another full-time replacement. I also help startups when they’re just not ready to hire a full-time MOPs head but still need some expertise to keep the marketing machine running.
TM: What is the number 1 challenge that you see your clients struggle with in the area of Marketing Operations/Automation/CRM?
CK: Over-complicating attribution. The juice is never worth the squeeze. You end up spending 6-12 months revamping your systems and models and at the end of the day you’re not any closer to answers than when you started. Keep your models simple and spend your time focused on creating the absolute best products and content.
TM: Do you think most companies are getting value of their MarTech stack? (There seems to always be integrations, data, or analysis gaps)
CK: Getting value? Sure. But getting the value they should be getting? Nope, not even close. Way too much tech, half-baked setups, broken integrations, and no one to fix it. Marketing ops have been first on the chopping block for so many of the recent tech layoffs (“last in, first out”) and the MarTech stack suffers.
TM: The perception of Marketing from many non marketing executives is that it is solely focused on branding, events, messaging, etc... How have you helped companies utilize marketing data to make a pivot or strategic shift? IE change the direction and performance of the business overall?
CK: Most of my marketing career was spent in some sort of demand gen / customer-focused marketing role. Data is what tied my efforts to outcomes, and it’s why I spent so much time creating systems and becoming such an expert on the marketing ops side. Webinars are a great example; as I used to say “we don’t run webinars for webinars’ sake.” Webinars were strategic, collaborative, and served a very specific purpose to our business. We would use the leading indicators (ex. registrants, attendees, questions, poll responses) to showcase our ability to create compelling content and lagging indicators (ex. meetings booked, opportunities created, revenue won) to highlight our ability to convert interest into intent.
TM: What has been the biggest change in Marketing Operations you’ve noticed within the last couple years?
CK: Marketing ops is getting a seat at the table where they never used to. Organizations are starting to fully understand the importance of this role to the business. Marketing influences most of the entry points for any buyer’s journey, it’s up to us to set the precedent for how the leads are handled and how the data is processed. We have to get it right, and companies are starting to realize how critical this is to their growth.
TM: What are your big predictions for the evolution of Marketing Operations in 2024?
CK: Here are my top three:
Companies will hire MOPs earlier in their lifecycle, whether fractional or full-time.
Marketing ops will continue to get more strategic. It’s not about pulling levers and pressing buttons. It’s understanding the impact marketing has on the business and having those conversations with executive stakeholders.
More teams will structure marketing ops under the revops function instead of marketing. They have similar goals and speak the same language, and the alignment of all GTM ops teams is critical.
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