What Should You Refine & Optimize In 2022?

With the influx of technology in the marketing world, marketers have gone from wearing multiple hats to hundreds of hats within a business operation. It is one of the few roles in a business that gets slapped with the title of Company Magician. Marketers are lead generators, conversion specialists, copywriters and journalists, social media experts, Google experts, analytics experts, bookkeepers, in-house psychologists, website managers, WordPress faux-orders (fake coders), paralegals, executive assistants…yes…this list actually does go on. 

One hat that can be remarkably time-consuming and daunting is the role of housekeeper. And what needs more housekeeping across all marketing departments? Marketing operations. 

With so many campaigns, so much data (or lack thereof), cross-departmental processes, software and systems, and leadership looking to you for direction, it can feel extremely intimidating to set aside time to clean house. More so, it can feel a little counterintuitive to refine operations when your role is always so focused on increasing bottom-line revenue. Below, and with the help of Forrester’s Planning Assumptions 2022 Report, we outline key areas in your marketing operations to prioritize in 2022. 

Synergy Across All of Your Departments

Business and marketing leaders have been saying this for a long time: a company is most effective at growth when traditionally separate departments are integrated and work seamlessly together towards common business goals. Cross-functional alignment is key here; in fact, according to Forrester’s 2021 Global Marketing Survey, the majority of senior-level marketers said that “improving marketing alignment with other functions” was the missing piece to better supporting marketing’s role in their company. 

At a basic level, your sales and marketing teams should be working hand-in-hand. Taking that a step further, customer insights and problem-solving should be happening across all departments including customer service, operations/fulfillment, and product. 

FOCUS ON:

• Improving transparency and feedback between sales, marketing, customer service, and fulfillment. Teamwork makes the dream work. 
• Building out a cross-department communication system to get everyone on the same page, all the time. 
• Establish processes for easier decision-making across hierarchies and functions by empowering and positioning your teams better.

Prioritization & Reliability of First-Party Data

A couple of months ago, we wrote about the necessity of a central data hub for your company. And I cannot beat a dead horse enough: the increase of your customer list needs to be a consistent marketing objective. Especially as we move towards a future marketing world where we have to rely on first-party data over third-party data. 

According to VP and Research Director of Forrester, Cristina De Martini, the “depreciation of third party data is inevitable” so “marketing operations must wear the hat of data steward, developing routines and practices that address data deprecation actions and ensure a companywide focus on first-party data for contacts and accounts.”

Having first-party data that you own as a company means putting the control of marketing in your hands. It allows you to not have to solely rely on paying for third party data through Google or Facebook. 

FOCUS ON:

• Setting up a cadence for cleaning up your database or CRM: updating contacts, removing unqualified users, and analyzing your audience segments. 
• Adding tools to your tech stack to help you better understand your First-Party Data.
• Building out marketing channels that use your first-party data including email marketing drip campaigns, lookalike audiences, and sales email sequences. 
• Investing in a data expert to help you navigate Google Analytics.

Redefine Your Metrics for Success

Trust me: I understand your pain when it comes to vocalizing the value of marketing to a leadership team that has never taken so much as a marketing class, let alone has an active Facebook account. This is arguably the most challenging part of our jobs. 

Ready to start wearing your Data Analyst hat? It’s time to redefine your marketing metrics and start educating your team on how to measure marketing’s impact on your goals of growth. We all know that most leadership expects your marketing metrics to measure how many leads came through the pipeline and how much revenue was attributed to each channel. But this system fails the marketing efforts, fails the sales team, and most importantly, fails the growth of the company. 

Why? According to De Martini, “it under-represents marketing’s value, and this underrepresentation almost always leads to misinterpretation of data that suggests a reduction in the marketing budget.” Additionally, De Martini writes, that focusing on the source of the lead or the revenue causes competition between sales and marketing, rather than enabling the two teams to work cohesively together. 

De Martini suggests, and we couldn’t agree more, that the new lagging KPI for success should be an overall revenue lift for any opportunity type that can be attributed to marketing and sales. 

FOCUS ON: 

• Rethinking your marketing metrics and KPIs
• Articulating and building out a KPI tracking system to communicate marketing’s success
• Continued education with the leadership team including presentations or internal emails to help their understanding of the value

Last Thoughts

At the heart of refining your marketing operations and business, the system is your customers. With a well-oiled business machine, you can simply serve your audience better, listen to their needs and understand how to optimize their journey with your company. According to one senior-level marketing executive, “Until you focus on the entire buying group experience, you are locked into the machine of lead generation instead of creating emotional connections.”