Marketing operations plan template
Regardless of size, all businesses have some form of marketing operations strategy in motion. Read on to learn how to have yours in place.
Marketing is a key player in any business, as it ultimately helps companies sell their products or services. To increase revenue, marketing must be an essential channel that is consistently implemented to reach that end goal.
Marketing operations is a highly beneficial function of a marketing organization.
A marketing operations team serves as overseers of the entire marketing process. Regardless of whether you have a large or small marketing team, every business benefits from having marketing operations to strengthen the flow of their digital marketing efforts.
To obtain a broader definition of what marketing operations are and why you need them for your organization, read on.
What is marketing operations?
Marketing operations, or marketing ops, is the function of overseeing an organization’s marketing program, campaign planning, and annual strategic planning activities. It can be broken down into two foundational elements:
1. People and processes
In marketing operations, team members are decided based on skills and goals — essentially, who is the right person for the job?
Let’s look at some of the people you need on your marketing ops team and what they do.
Strategists
A strategist plays a key role in marketing operations management. They:
- Collaborate with the business management team to align marketing goals and business objectives
- Gather data and create performance reports for management
- Collaborate with marketing specialists to develop buyer personas
- Track ROI of current marketing efforts
Project managers
Your project manager will handle various elements of the marketing campaign. They:
- Oversee the execution of marketing campaigns
- Monitor spending
- Track deliverables and update stakeholders on project statuses
Content creators
The next subject matter experts (SMEs) needed on your marketing operations team are your content creators. This team may be comprised of writers, designers, animators, videographers, illustrators, and so on. They:
- Create engaging marketing copy for landing pages, blog posts, case studies, and other marketing materials
- Create graphics and custom illustrations to support any written copy
- Build new webpages
SEO and digital marketing specialists
SEO specialists ensure continuous web performance using a variety of tools such as Google Analytics and user experience heatmaps. They:
- Perform keyword research to optimize marketing efforts
- Conduct website and UX audits
- Manage email marketing campaigns
- Aid in persona development
- Create data-driven briefs to support content creation
2. Technology and data
The technology your business implements has the potential to improve the efficiency of your workflow and scale up your marketing operations. But above all, technology enables your key people in the marketing operations to gather vital data and enhance processes.
Marketing operations plan template
If you want to increase your marketing ROI, then developing a marketing operations plan template is key. The good news is, we’ve created a ready-to-use template that will serve as a roadmap for you as you begin to develop your marketing ops plan.
Step 1: Identify your purpose with marketing operations
Without clearly defining the purpose of your plan, you won’t be able to measure success effectively. For instance, do you need to solve the needs of your customers? What about your stakeholders?
Once you understand your purpose, you can simply begin by creating a positioning statement. A positioning statement will essentially provide a clear description of how your marketing ops team will function to satisfy a particular need.
It may say something like, “Marketing operations will work cohesively to improve marketing activities, increase ROI, and create workflows that improve efficiency and directly impact the bottom line.“
Step 2: Determine what resources you will need
The necessary resources for effective campaign planning include analytics and reporting, tech stack management, compliance and project management.
Analytics and reporting
- Reporting tools
- Data visualization software
- Guidelines
Tech stack management
- Tech roadmap
- Set of tools
Compliance
- Outlines and templates
- A review and approval platform
Project management
- Communication tools
- Templates and outlines
Step 3: Outline the KPIs for your marketing ops
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essentially the key targets businesses should track to make the most impact on their strategic business outcomes. These key targets support the business strategy and help your teams focus on what’s most important.
Organize a list of the most important targets that you’ve determined for your company. Here are a few marketing KPIs you can rely on to measure the efficiency of your marketing operations:
- Marketing ROI
- Cost per lead
- Revenue per employee
- Marketing output
Step 4: Implement necessary software and tools
Most of your planning and groundwork should be in place. Now, it’s time to begin implementing all of the necessary software and tools needed to aid in the marketing process.
This will ultimately depend on the size of your marketing tech stack.
A marketing tech stack is a group of technologies that marketers use to conduct and improve their marketing activities. The tools and technologies implemented will be unique to your business needs. Here are some examples of tools and technologies companies leverage in their tech stack.
Step 5: Routinely assess marketing ops performance
During this step, your marketing ops should be up and running, which means it’s time to start evaluating its effectiveness.
So, how can businesses properly assess the success of their marketing operations? The answer is by using your KPIs.
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t just do one initial assessment of your marketing ops performance. It will be important to schedule regular review sessions where you can monitor your marketing operations and make changes as required.
