Marketing has been around for as long as exchange systems have. The role of marketing over the years has seen a lot of shifting in its core driving force. Marketing has undergone a transformation from mere end supply chains and distribution to the creation of deliberate processes that engage in the promotion and manufacturing of products. Marketing operations are becoming critical enough to be tied to funnel metrics like revenue and leads. To help you understand why marketing operations are crucial in every business, we’ve created this brief overview.
The Roles within the Marketing Operations
Marketing operations are responsible for marketing in the general sense, but their influence extends beyond the conventional marketing definition. The core of a marketing operations team is a creative group that focuses on conceptualizing new ideas and products in accordance with trends and demand. After the team comes up with complete ideas, it’s then passed on to another team that secures the material, in addition to testing, branding and designing it. The marketing operations team also tries to obtain the most accurate representation of the demand for a certain product through retailer polls and inventory analysis.
After conceptualizing, designing, and analyzing the product, the marketing operations deem a project initially successful, then it hands it off to the other departments in a company like manufacturing, accounting, and the logistics departments. The roles of a marketing operations team can expand further in some companies to include more control over the late stages of production, such as strategic planning, budget management, quality testing, and other important processes. The broad spectrum of tasks that marketing operation handles make it a viable entity that can overlook the most important business parameters.
Flexibility
While a big corporation may require a huge marketing operations department that can extend to the extremities of the company, small businesses don’t have to reallocate their whole budget to have a strong marketing operations team. As explained on Intelligencebank.com, marketing operations software allows content marketers and creators to manage their digital assets, in addition to streamlining compliances and approvals. Digital asset management, brand guidelines, workflows, and many other essential marketing operations can be integrated into one software system without a huge budget.
Marketing Operations Factors
Even though marketing operations as a term was coined back in 2005, its entry to corporate structure came in late 2011. The integration of marketing operations into company culture was the direct result of thorough planning. Corporations wanted to have a head-start before they produced any product or idea by using the valuable information that marketers depended on, such as demographic trends, competition analysis, and customer experience.
Before marketing operations, it was uncommon for the marketing department to be included in a product’s creation and settling instead on the sole marketing of the final product after it’s done. Making the marketing department share a hefty portion of responsibility in concept-creation and delivery allowed companies to improve their branding and innovative products. It’s not uncommon now to find marketing operation teams handling workflow design, training, and creating company standards that align with the brand.
Achieving Long-Term Goals
The marketing operations department plays an important role in the definition of the long-term goals of the company that aligns with its brand and business structure, in addition to aiding the company with insights that help it stay on course. A marketing strategy that isn’t followed properly will only lead to failed projects, which is why marketing operations have the capability to steer the company in the right direction. Ensuring that projects or investments provide an adequate ROI is also an important role that marketing operations handle. The KPI’s of the company is closely monitored by the marketing operations when it comes to budgets, product distribution, and procurement.
Market Penetration
Even though marketing operations oversees a lot of responsibilities that aren’t always linked to marketing, its focus should never waver from the creative part of marketing. Media campaigns, prints, and events are all a part of the responsibilities that a marketing operations department handles using its own resources and information. A lot of freedom is usually given to the marketing operations to come up with the type of products and the way it’s presented to the market. Using valuable information collected from various departments, marketing operations are able to work before the launch date to eliminate delivery issues.
Marketing operations are a relatively new concept that’s revolutionizing the world of marketing, setting proper standards as it does. Combining creative conceptualizers with statistics-based thinkers allowed the creation of marketing operations departments in major businesses. The growing complexity of products and services forced the marketing landscape to push the envelope to be able to accommodate it.
