In the human body, the core is the foundation where all movement begins. Just like any structure, your marketing operations team depends on a strong foundation, or else the organization collapses.

Establishing a foundation is not an easy task, but taking a step back and reassessing the basic functions can prove to be beneficial. For many, this would seem to be a set-back, but the reward is a major comeback. Your MOP’s team will be able to pinpoint flaws in your core, such as:

• Sync errors
• SFDC CPU limits hit
• Lack of campaign structure
• Slow system performance and disorganization
• And much more

Marketing ops, just like the human body, need fine tuning and care over time. Elevate your team by focusing on the foundations and fixing the areas that cause friction.

Tune into this episode of fwd: thinking where we go in depth on why your marketing operations “core” really matters.

Transcription

Crissy:

Okay. On today's episode of fwd: thinking, we're covering a topic that is especially important to those of you in marketing operations who are looking to be more strategic and less tactical, and really elevating the role of your function. That's the core of everything that we talk about here on fwd: thinking.

That's definitely our goal, and speaking of core, that's the topic that we're going to cover today, and it's the concept of a strong marketing operations core.

Crissy:

So like the human body, we have a core, and a lot of people think it's just our abs. Like, do crunches or we maybe leave some time at the end of our workout, but then we wonder why our body isn't working as properly. Really, your course made up of so many other parts of your body.

It's your glutes, it's your hamstrings, it's your lower back, and it's also your obliques and your transverse abdominis, all of that. So it's pretty much everything above your knee to your rib cage, and marketing ops function is run properly when there's a really strong core.

Crissy:

Now, people can move without a strong core. You can do things, it just might not feel as good, or you might not be running as smoothly, and down the line when you try to do something that's very basic, say, like doing a squat and you throw out your back, that's a sign that maybe you don't have that inner core strength to really support that.

So taking that concept, we can run that against our marketing operations foundation and see if we have a really strong core, because without it, yes, we can run things. Yes, our marketing operations can get by, but it's not going to scale, and there might be cases down the line where if there's some type of big event or initiative, or you're trying to really sophisticate it, you're going to run into issues.

Charlie:

Yeah. As soon as you try and push it, like if you were trying to do an ultra marathon or something, or to carry on with your analogy, or to get your one rep max squat or something like that, yeah, you're just going to come up with issues if your foundational core isn't up to scratch.

Crissy:

Yeah. And I think that a lot of the times, like the human body, we look at one area or one problem, and we fix it. We have another area where we see a problem, we try and fix that. We really just look at the source of the pain or the problem, instead of just looking at kind of the other things in play that could have created problem or that pain, so the same thing goes with the core.

This might seem pretty basic, but actually having this concept of a strong core be the backbone of everything you do from a process standpoint can really help you in having the operations function that runs smoothly, or what we call a functional marketing operations process.

Charlie:

Yeah. I think one of the other things as well to frame this problem is a lot of people in marketing operations and in B2B marketing in general, they get very carried away with shiny object syndrome.

You really shouldn't get too carried away and start adding on tools into your stack or complex processes or anything, really, if you don't have that strong core, because it's just going to create a lot of problems down the line. You're not going to be able to execute properly, and your vision for your marketing operations function just isn't going to be realized.

Crissy:

Totally. Okay. So first thing is how do we address this? Where do we go to basically build a strong marketing operations core? And the first thing is go back to your basic functions and see how properly they work. So always, continuing this analogy, it's kind of like running an assessment of your squat.

You sit with a personal trainer or something, they're going to say, "Do a squat," and then they're going to see how well you do that or if you have any issues where there might be something wrong. That's the same thing with the marketing operations. There's a lot of foundations that make up that core, but then they're into these big bucket and categories and making sure those are just seamless.

Crissy:

So a few examples of the marketing ops foundations, one is your sync of your marketing automation platform to your CRM. The second is an order of operations. This is one that I know, Charlie, we've talked about before, and you've done a lot of work with your clients to work on, and that's essentially from when someone becomes a lead all the way to when they hit sales. If that's not working properly, what's the point of doing marketing?

Charlie:

Right, and there's a lot of aspects that go into that that really build out that strong core, right? But the concept is to make sure that any new lead or any new information that you're getting is getting into the right person's hands at the right time.

Crissy:

Totally. And then there are things that are kind of mixture of what's happening outside of your systems and your tech stack and then directly into them. So part of that is the campaign process. There's the campaign planning, and then there's the execution, and then there's the tracking.

So even from when a campaign is being ideaized, how does that get then to a marketing operations team to be operationalized, and then actually operationalizing that and then being able to report on that. So that's a big foundation that seems simple, but a lot of times there's issues there, and why focus on some intense scoring model when you can't even get that down right?

And so there are a list of some of these core foundations, especially if you check out audit sheet, you can even see like within our phases of the audit, a lot of those encapsulate the core functions, but just those things alone, focusing, that's where we see a lot of problems, and that definitely makes up that core.

Crissy:

So once you kind of identify the core, another thing is you might not have a problem with your core. You might have a strong core, but what are the signs of a weak core? So it doesn't mean that you don't have those systems in place. It just means that they probably could be improved to make sure that they're strong.

A lot of times, we might then create patterns or have things be part of our processes that are unnecessary because we're making up for the weak core. Same thing that happens with a human body. So some of those signs are sync errors or CPU limit errors on the Salesforce side or your apex errors, things like that. All those kinds of errors, that's an easy way to see. That's kind of like if you had pain in your lower back. You would see those errors.

Crissy:

But then there might be other patterns that maybe you can get by doing, but then until you really take a look, a deep look at assessing, you don't realize that there can be improvement. So some of that is lack of campaign, structure, process, slow system performance and disorganization, because you just have an unwieldy system that's never been maintained right.

People can't even find their programs or even build out a program effectively. Then others like email deliverability is poor or segmented list creation takes a day instead of a few minutes. Those are all signs that maybe you have a weak operations core.

Crissy:

Lastly, I think the whole point of this video really is why should I care? Why should you care? Why should you go back and do this assessment? When does having a weak core really become a problem? Like I said, we can put our bodies through a lot of stuff, especially when you're young, but then over time, like with your systems, as they start to get more sophisticated, if you're running with a poor foundation, it's going to cause issues.

So you might even have this problem really where if your organization saying, "Hey, we need to be here. We need to have all these sophisticated processes in place," you need to be able to articulate, actually, maybe you just started and you're finding all these issues with your core. I need to address this and prioritize it and make it run smoothly so we can get there.

Crissy:

Otherwise, there's just going to be so many errors or where you get hurt in the long run, because we can't do it properly. Or even some big initiatives can have this become an issue, so if you're trying to roll out a ABM strategy, well, how can you do that if you're going to just going to run into errors the whole time or have some issues? So that's really the reason why you should care as a marketing ops leader or have your marketing and ops team address this core.

Charlie:

Yeah, and it's hard to do that, I think, sometimes.

Crissy:

Totally.

Charlie:

A lot of people, they want to just keep moving forward, but really, I think the point of this is to recognize when you need to take a few steps back to work on your core, so then you can figure out what you ... You can build a foundation to build the stack of your dreams or go do a highly sophisticated ABM strategy without just causing yourself a ton of problems down the line.

Crissy:

Yeah. I think when we're busy, and everyone is, but we're firefighting then, and we want to get out of that. So making sure you have this strong core makes it so that you don't have to always be in that firefighting mode. And that just makes your whole team look more strategic, because you're not always just running around with your heads chopped off. You're actually-

Charlie:

Yeah, why does marketing operations ... I feel like we've just accepted that's what it's like to work in operations. It's like, "Okay, we've been doing this now for so long, and we've just decided it's always crazy. Everything's always on fire, but it's fine." I think what we're trying to really portray with Forward, generally, especially with this one, this video, is that it doesn't have to be like that, or at least you should be working for it not to be like that anymore.

Marketing operations isn't a new thing anymore. It's been going on for a long time, and we need to be able to get the respect of the other teams and the CMO and the other parts of the business, but we're only going to get there if people think that we've got our shit together.

Charlie:

If all we're dealing with is all of these symptoms of a weak core throughout our stack, then we're really not doing ourselves any favors. We're doing ourselves a disservice and the business of disservice, and the core of the whole marketing operations function as a service.

So if we take the time, we identify where we have weaknesses in our core, we fix those weaknesses, we really can then build out what we want and then really define and build out the strategy and work on the strategic initiatives that the business has for us beyond just firefighting every day.

Crissy:

Yeah. I think sometimes that could even be ego in the way too, or just like that wanting to not admit that there might be some areas for opportunity. I came up with some of this concept too from my own personal experience. I got pregnant.

I had issues with a weak core. I was wanting to go and run six miles easily because that's what I was doing before, but when you do have a weakness or there's not that core function, or maybe even there was an issue there, but it just was never addressed, but then there's a big event that happened that then brings up those issues, we want to fast forward that change.

Crissy:

So yes, there might be a setback with having to go back to your core foundation, but your comeback is going to be way stronger than the impact of that setback, and you're going to build something that's going to totally scale. I know it's so hard to hear that, but really, this is going to be so important for elevating your team and how they work and how the whole other part of marketing really views your group, and just going to make your job just more enjoyable.

Crissy:

So I hope this was beneficial for you guys, and as you go through and look at your whole marketing ops strategy this year, potentially keeping in mind this concept of a strong marketing ops core and how you can then articulate that to the rest of the business if you want to make this a priority for you. So if you have any questions, definitely feel free to reach out to us, and yeah, we'll see you on the next episode of fwd: thinking.