Month: February 2023

Hi Joe,

I work in a growing startup, and my role has evolved to become about Marketing Operations.

The problem is I’m the only MOPs person in the company.

As a one-person team, I’m overflowing with deadlines and requests to get campaigns moving.

There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to execute more ambitious projects.

There’s simply more work to do in MOPs than I can handle alone. How can I get help? Where do I even start to manage everything?

Thanks,
All Alone Alvin.

Alvin, I empathize with your situation.

Even in more mature companies that consciously try to add a marketing ops role, it’s tough to handle an incredibly busy function alone.

I’ve certainly felt the strain of being the lone MOPs person in my company.

Work can become a frustrating and isolating experience without the support of a team or the resources to do your job effectively.

On top of that, your organization may lack an understanding of your role and the challenges you face.

You might feel lost and overwhelmed, but there’s hope. Having grown my one-person MOPs function into an actual team of people, I can say that it’s definitely achievable to no longer be alone.

1. Find your community

Patience is definitely a virtue here. It’s going to take some time to build up the department and get the help that you need.

Even before you reach that point, there are ways to find a sense of community where you can go for help and guidance, including:

• Marketo user groups
• dedicated MOPs channels, and
• online product forums.

2. Build your case for growth

Longer term, you’ll want to focus on building a compelling case to grow MOPs in your business.

For your boss (and their boss) to get on board, your argument needs to have sound financial logic. If hiring someone or working with an agency helps you do more profitable, productive work, then the dollar investment makes sense.

To that end, marketing operations contributes more to growth as your business nurtures it.

Investing in brain power and technical expertise is the only way to move from executional campaign work to advanced projects that drive productivity and revenue like:

• attribution
• lead scoring, or
• tech stack audits.

3. Collect data

Of the many tools in your stack, you’re likely using just a handful to run campaigns — and that’s time-consuming enough as it is.

The smartest way to use your time is to investigate your stack’s different functionalities. Find out where your data points come from.

Investigating the functionality of your tech stack helps you do two things:

1. Surface good data about how your campaigns generate leads and revenue.
2. Identify areas of opportunity for a new hire or agency to take on particular responsibilities that can fuel the growth of your business.

For your boss, the conflict is between what MOPs can achieve with technical maturity and the limited hours in the day you have to get there.

You’re at a bottleneck right now regarding what you can do. You can advance your case for help by focusing on analytics and reporting.

Key takeaways

Being the only marketing operations person in a growing startup can be overwhelming.

However, by building a sense of community, making a compelling case for growth, and collecting data, you can move from being a one-person MOPs team to a fully functional department.

It takes time and effort, but with patience and determination, it’s definitely achievable.

By investing in technical expertise, moving from executional work to advanced projects, and leveraging the data points from your tech stack, you can fuel the growth of your business and get the help you need.

You’ve got this,
Joe Pulse

Hey Jo,

For the past month, I’ve been working late almost every night.

I’m stretched thin across all the reporting and maintenance I have to do in a given day, and when I’m not on the clock, I’m still thinking about work!

It seems like there’s always more on my plate. More processes to improve, more leads to bring in, and more requests to handle.

The MOPs world seems to reward this level of activity, but I need to take it down a notch.

What can I do to stop burning out? How can I get time back for myself?

Thanks,

Always On Alex.

Alex, you did the right thing reaching out.

In the past, I’d fallen hard for this mentality of “MOPs never stops.” I thought “no” wasn’t an option, so I said “yes” to everything.

Soon, I was skipping lunches to catch up with reports. All of my reading outside of work was about Marketo. I’m pretty sure I was even dreaming about lead lifecycles.

Sales needs more opportunities, there’s never too much revenue for the business, and every other MOPs influencer has a blog and a podcast.

With that much energy around me, I felt I needed to spend every spare hour catching up, being “productive,” and doing more.

I really didn’t. Neither do you.

Here’s how you take back control of your time:

Structure your goals

There is always something you can improve on in martech, and it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew.

Got a big project on your hands? Break it down into small, achievable goals.

Come up with a plan and agree with your boss on what you’ll deliver and when.

For day-to-day tasks, reach out to your regular stakeholders and figure out workflows that mutually fit. Ordering your tasks based on urgency and time demands helps too—just factor in some meeting-free slots for yourself to really focus.

Ask for help

It’s impossible to know everything there is about a tool or have the time to do it all.

Speak with your manager about the budget for extra headcount or an agency to spread out the work.

Agencies are more likely to be within your reach, so it’s worth talking to other departments about their agency needs; you could score a better deal by approaching one with multiple streams of work.

Say “no” and “yes, but…”

Be tangible about how much time a task takes, the knock-on effect of taking on new responsibilities, and the resources and sign-off you’ll need to do something well.

If a request brings something you don’t have the time or expertise to handle, “no” creates a boundary that helps everyone.

You get to focus on your main priorities, and that task goes to someone more suitable. Voicing the output consequences behind each responsibility sets clear, accurate expectations.

Give yourself space

Near the end of the day ask yourself ‘what am I really excited to do tonight?’

Put the laptop away when you’re back from the office; get up and move around if you’re working from home. What are you watching, reading, or listening to that you can’t do at work?

Whatever your hobbies, do them not because they’re “useful.” Do them because you want to.

Remember: eat right, sleep well, and look after yourself. There’s more to life than the grind.

You’ve got this, (and if you need any help, let us know).

Jo.

Hi Joe,

I want to understand more about marketing technology, but I don’t know where to start.

The tools we use at my company, like Salesforce and Marketo, have so many functionalities and data that I feel like I might break something if I start playing around.

The martech space moves fast and it’s hard to get a handle on where the industry is going.

I’d feel more confident in my job if I knew how to get the best out of the tools we use, and understood the outlook of martech as a whole.

How can I start to build that knowledge? Where do I find the time?

Thanks,

Martech Mark.

That drive you have to learn is a great thing, Martech Mark.

When I first started using Marketo, I wanted to be productive from day one. At first, I thought that meant sticking just to what we knew at our company. Like you, I thought experimenting would lead to “breaking” things beyond repair.

I’m happy to say that wasn’t the case.

Understanding martech

Tools like Marketo don’t have the easiest learning curve, so you might not get it right away. That’s not the end of the world.

Take a few hours each week to read up, play around with tools, post in communities, or whatever grabs your interest. Here are some places to start:

Free trials and versions

Many tools out there have free versions (e.g. Hubspot, Salesforce Lightning Platform) or at least free trials (e.g. SAP Marketing Cloud) to experiment with.

So if you’ve got a certain piece of tech in mind, check out what build you can get on the house.

Online courses

LinkedIn, edX, Coursera, and other learning platforms have a mix of free and paid courses to try out, covering a breadth of technologies.

Product spaces

Official company spaces provide a range of free resources, from the videos and courses on Marketo University to the forums in Salesforce’s Trailblazer Community.

Online communities

Chances are, the tool you’re learning has active communities on Github or Reddit—and dedicated MOPs communities can help you steer your course.

News and blogs

Sources like MarketingTech and ChiefMartec publish news and analysis of the latest movements in the martech world.

Use resources as sandboxes

You’ve got free reign to mess around. It’s all about trial and error.

Once you get going, document all the things you do and hear that are useful to your learning including:

• your observations
• how a tool benefits your work (does it make a process faster? Improve analysis?)
• where a tool falls short of helping you meet certain goals.

These notes are lessons that can help the whole team learn.

As you say, the martech space moves quickly. Trends rise and level out, upstart tools get acquired, and if you’re exploring a new capability area, there’s no guarantee the tool you learn will be one the industry settles on.

For that reason, don’t stress about where the market’s heading. Focus on the tech that interests you and helps you achieve your goals.

You’ll pick up transferable skills that apply across technologies. Like learning a language, it gets easier after the first one. Just keep going.

You’ve got this — if you need any help, drop us a line.

Joe.

Hey Jo,

I’m drowning in deadlines at work.

The pace has been particularly fast for a while now, with multiple campaigns and events happening at the same time. I’ve got lots of different tasks on my plate, and it seems like I’m always playing catch-up to complete them all.

I need to manage my workload more effectively, but I’m not sure where to start. What can I do to keep on top of my deadlines?

Thanks,

Deadline Dana.

Dana, it’s good that you’re asking these questions.

After several years as the only marketing operations person in my company, I understand how tricky it can be to catch your breath. When your day-to-day involves a constant scramble to meet deadlines, you’re left with little time or energy to reflect on why that’s the case.

Learning how to manage your workload effectively with conflicting deadlines and priorities is an indispensable skill.

From my experience, you want to think about ideas like how to:

• structure your work
• communicate with your team, and
• stay on the same page using the systems you have in place.

5 ways to manage deadlines:

1. Plan in advance

Rushed turnarounds tend to arise from poor planning. While your team may be eager to get the ball rolling with campaigns, don’t implement without a solid plan in place.

Start with a target launch date, then budget how much time you’ll need to sort out all the steps, dependencies, and approvals to make that viable (be generous).

Share that plan a good distance ahead of your deadline, and you’ll be ready to deal with any setbacks.

2. Prioritize your tasks

List all the responsibilities on your radar ahead of each day. Then, focus on the most urgent items to keep your projects on track.

Start with any low-effort tasks that take less than 15 minutes. This strategy can shorten your list and make you feel accomplished.

Then switch gears to take on the more demanding work. The less pressing items on your list are good candidates to put on the back bench or delegate.

3. Have ongoing check-ins

Proactively reach out to your colleagues to figure out ways of dealing with heavy deadlines.

Schedule regular chats with your manager about bandwidth. Talk about where your time’s spent and what your capacity is.

Also, schedule progress updates with your stakeholders on what’s on track and what’s at risk. This gives you an opportunity to surface any workload issues and collaborate in good time on a solution.

4. Get outside help

You only have so many hours in the day.

Outsource any tasks you don’t have the resources to handle effectively.

Getting time back for more important tasks is money well spent. (Psst… see how we can help).

5. Implement transparent systems

To prevent excess deadlines from coming all at once, your tech should make it easy to understand where your teams’ activities and requests fit together.

A central project management tool, campaign calendar, and dedicated channel to submit requests can all accomplish this.

You’re in a stressful position right now, but you can easily turn it around. The more proactive you are with planning and communication, the better you’ll get at keeping deadlines under control.

You’ve got this,

Jo Pulse.

Follow us on LinkedIn to never miss an update!