In a report by Gartner1, a staggering 75% of CMOs say they’re being asked to do more with smaller budgets. In fact, the share of marketing budgets from company revenue has fallen from 9.5% to 9.1%.
After each budget season, marketing operations (MOps) leaders might face the threat of even fewer resources for headcount and MarTech investments, which make creating, measuring, and reporting MOps ROI a daunting task.
This underscores the importance of value articulation. Here are some strategies you can implement to showcase MOps impact to the Board.
1. Define how intangible levers contribute to tangible results
A lot of what MOps accomplishes remains intangible to the C-suite. Another Gartner2 study found that marketing innovation makes up a sizable 20% of marketing budgets, yet, 91% of marketers struggle to measure its impact.
Spotlighting data points such as conversion rates and traffic along with tangible levers (pipeline acceleration, revenue, etc.) then seems like the natural choice to put in front of the Board. But without making the connection, these results exist in a vacuum—and justifying the need for more budget and resources becomes harder to do.
Instead, start quantifying and communicating the impact your tangible levers bring. After that connection is made, it’s clear how MOps teams are able to arrive at that ROI and why more resources are needed for it.
These intangible levers and their correlating story could include how:
- Standardized and scalable processes maximized marketing output—broken down by the number of successfully completed projects for each quarter
- An innovative MarTech solution facilitated the production of more quality leads, targeted content, greater prospect visibility, etc.
- A wide technology enablement strategy supported a wholesome, complete overview of the buyer’s journey
2. Be purposeful with innovation and MarTech implementation
Amid the surge of new MarTech tools, largely driven by advancements in AI, the average number of tools used by marketers in the middle of 2023 soared to a staggering 13,0802, according to research by ChiefMartec and Martech Tribe.
MOps leaders enticed by the rapid proliferation of AI software might, if they are not careful, find themselves in the middle of a MarTech wasteland.
When that happens, they are far more likely to deal with inconsistent customer-to-brand experiences, poor utilization, and disjointed MarTech stacks that hurt cross-collaboration and keep ROI at an all-time low rather than enjoy the true impact of generative AI on fueling efficiency and productivity.
At 2X, for instance, we’ve developed an “AI council” dedicated to pioneering the use of AI platforms and tools for its effective, continued application enterprise-wide. An approach like this helped the team experience:
- 33% faster ad creative production vs. stock imagery
- 40% faster video production
- 30-50% reduction in build for most content types
Before writing off MarTech investments or innovation in the spirit of minimizing costs, shift the attention to appointing a change agent who is able to take ownership of implementation, continuous feedback, and optimization.
3. Leverage operational capacity to execute strategy
31% of MOps teams consist of just one person, according to MarketingOps.com3. Regardless of annual revenue (be it below $10 million or upwards of $500 million), 58% of these teams consist of only 2-10 individuals on average.
In that same report, and even though data analysis and reporting emerged as top responsibilities for MOps teams, further data reveals that MOps professionals are still assigned a breadth of other duties—including brand strategy, BDR team management, and content writing.
2X’s own CEO, Domenic Colasante, stresses, “The only way a marketing organization can be healthy and scalable is by having more experts and fewer generalists. The same applies to outsourcing, where you have an internal expert and outsource to executors who can work on their plans.”
Leveraging the marketing-as-a-service (MaaS) model means MOps leaders can finally be behind the wheel of creating long-term revenue and growth impact—without needing to exhaust marketing budgets finding and training permanent hires.
MaaS brings the concept of managed services—which has been used by a host of functions, including IT, HR, Finance, and Accounting for years—to marketing.
Critically important but “non-core” execution and operational tasks are outsourced to a MaaS firm that specializes in performing and optimizing day-to-day marketing work.
Doing so extends your workforce’s capacity, freeing internal teams from day-to-day operational tasks so they can focus on the “core” strategic work they need to be the best in the world at.
Prove higher MOps and MarTech ROI by solving the marketing resource paradox
Every day, MOps leaders grapple with competing directives from the boardroom: drive more revenue, but cut marketing spend. At 2X, we call this the marketing resource paradox, a direct by-product of the “do more with less” mandate.
With 2X, you get access to certified MOps professionals who are expert practitioners in areas such as MarTech management, campaign execution, workflow management, and creative production.
2X, a MaaS provider, is the world’s first-ever Revenue Marketing Resource Center (MRC). We provide MOps leaders with unparalleled transparency into the impact of each marketing dollar spent and make it easier to report tangible marketing ROI to the C-suite.
1 ‘Gartner Survey Reveals 71% of CMOs Believe They Lack Sufficient Budget to Fully Execute Their Strategy in 2023’, Gartner, May 2023, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-05-22-gartner-survey-reveals-71-percent-of-cmos-believe-they-lack-sufficient-budget-to-fully-execute-their-strategy-in-2023
2 ‘AI driving an exponential increase in marketing technology solutions’, MarTech.org, December 2023, https://martech.org/ai-driving-an-exponential-increase-in-marketing-technology-solutions
3 ‘The 2023 State of the Marketing Operations Professional’, 2023, https://marketingops.com/state-of-the-marketing-ops-professional-research-2023/
Zi Yan Tung
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