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Marketing operations professionals are the unsung heroes who work daily with technology and data to drive pipeline, hit revenue targets, track lifecycle stages, and convert customers — cornerstone goals for every company. It’s no wonder that more than 80% of companies now have dedicated marketing ops, up from 65% last year.

These are some of the key findings in a new report 2022: State of the Marketing Ops Pro from MarketingOps. Is marketing ops the new data wrangler? Looks like it.

“I believe that the secret sauce of a marketer's success is heavily dependent on understanding the customer journey plus experience and going digital, and that can't happen without the backend systems that link everything together, and the data, which is fueled by marketing operations,” says Vivian Chan, global campaigns director at ServiceNow, on MarketingOps’ Ops Cast Episode 12.

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Marketing ops teams are growing as the owners of systems, policies, procedures, and the smooth functioning of the tech stack, says MarketingOps. According to the report, the top five marketing ops job responsibilities are:

1. Developing and implementing software or system integrations/management

2. Designing, implementing and optimizing operational policies and procedures

3. Evaluation of and needs-identification for tech stack

4. Data analysis/synthesis/reporting

5. Software training and documentation

For more on marketing ops technology tools, as well as a breakdown of titles and compensation, be sure to check out the MarketingOps report. 

The CMO Council’s report The High-Velocity Data Marketer also underscores the rising role of data to drive revenue and the need for marketing to have the right skill sets to make this happen. Nearly 80% of marketing leaders say data, analytics and insights are very important to winning and retaining customers, but 62% are only moderately confident (or worse) in their data systems. 

The CMO Council found that the top three barriers to data access are insufficient technology (i.e., MarTech), lack of data management processes, and data control lying elsewhere. System silos and a skills shortage also hold back high-velocity data marketing.

There’s no question that marketing leaders need to improve their speed and focus on data marketing. Part of the challenge is that the type of “relevant” data has changed. Predictive buyer intent data now tops the list of most relevant marketing data signals, even above historical sales.

“There are four key types of data — demographic, firmographic, behavioral, and intent,” says Amanda Thomas, senior marketing operations consultant at Etumos and a Marketo champion, on Ops Cast Episode 10. “With the go-to-market strategy, whether it’s launching a new product or campaign or a retargeting initiative, you need to look at that data first. 

“So, marketing ops teams need to make sure the data is being collected and find any data that you’re missing.”

Related: Get ahead of the disruption! Become a CMO Council Member today!