Corporate marketing groups - especially bandwidth-challenged small-to-mid-sized departments - can be so focused on tactics and fire fighting that they jeopardize their marketing investment. There is a tendency to overreact to events, to tackle symptoms rather than underlying fundamental problems and to jump at the opportunity to please the boss. Many times, this kind of tactical knee jerking may be fatal. Without great marketing, companies won't flourish, especially those in highly

competitive markets. Yet the chaotic nature of emerging or dynamic growth

companies and the tendency to place the marketing burden on too few individuals is

a setup for failure. Promising companies may be left in the dust, or at least

handicapped at the starting gate. Marketing Operations is emerging as an important discipline for improving

performance and measuring ROI in admired technology companies (like Intel, IBM

and Amazon) who have refined and fine-tuned their marketing organization with an

operational focus. Given the demands that these organizations face today, an

innovative approach is central to solving critical issues like results measurement,

bandwidth constraints and creativity limitations, and building value-added

outsourced supplier relationships and effectively managing budget. Many of the

best practices, efficient processes and systems approach from large company

Marketing Operations can and should be applied by emerging companies that are

serious about their marketing investment. Here's why:PROBLEM #1Ill-defined metricsToday, more than ever, corporate marketing departments need to justify their

existence. The need to measure results is unavoidable. However, the instincts and

skills that make an outbound marketing practitioner great-action-orientation,

verbal and written acuity, persuasiveness, the ability to build strong relationships-

often don't translate into an ability or willingness to scientifically and objectively

evaluate success. Add in broken systems and the organization's unwillingness to

pay for marketing evaluation, and it's no surprise that many marketing departments

are unable to define meaningful success metrics. SOLUTIONMarketing Operations ensures that the right processes are in place to establish

meaningful metrics at the front-end of marketing process, enabling the

measurement of success at key intervals, and as each program concludes. PROBLEM #2Slammed resourcesThe prevailing attitude of "doing more with less" can leave key people discouraged,

overwhelmed, near burnout, and eventually, circulating their

resumes. The consequences for organizations are costly mistakes, high turnover,

and collapsed programs when key people leave, and missed opportunities to

leverage the "ugly-stepsister-Cinderella-in-waiting" programs that never get off the

ground because of a lack of ownership. SOLUTIONMarketing Operations addresses these resource limitations by ensuring workload is

effectively allocated, roles are clearly defined, interdependencies are understood,

team members feel satisfied with their jobs and the programs and additional

resources, whether through additional headcount or outsourcing, can be

successfully justified to executive management. PROBLEM #3Sketchy institutional memoryMarketing is dependent on accurate information, a historical view into past

successes and failures, and the ability to recognize patterns that link seemingly

unrelated data points. Unfortunately, knowledge in many marketing organizations is

scattered all over the company. It's in the heads of individual workers, on shelves,

on people's hard drives, in long forgotten filing systems. When people leave, a big

piece of organizational knowledge goes with them. Information loss is a huge

productivity killer for marketing teams. Lost insight that must be regained or

reacquired wastes previous marketing investments. SOLUTIONMarketing Operations facilitates knowledge sharing, an enduring repository of

information and greater decision-making based on fact, as opposed to hunch. PROBLEM #4Constrained creativityThe best creativity comes from many brains working together in collaboration. A

consequence of the age of the "individual contributor" director is constrained

creativity. When the entire creative burden falls mostly on one outbound marketing

person, the ability to think out of the box can be severely impacted. Creative

synergy results from many minds thinking as one. SOLUTIONMarketing Operations enables the creative process to benefit from the synergy of

team. PROBLEM #5Failed supplier relationshipsMost successful companies can point to strong, long-term marketing supplier

relationships as integral to their success. Likewise, a pattern of failed supplier

relationships is often an indicator of marketing department failure, rather than poor

vendor performance. Unfortunately, companies that have had consistently bad

relationships with outsource suppliers often react by seizing control and bringing

everything in house. While this strategy may provides the illusion of control, it lets

marketing managers deflect blame for failures, rather than teaching them how to

manage their outsource suppliers by taking responsibility for the results. In

addition, this strategy won't scale with the growth of the organization. SOLUTIONMarketing Operations helps set realistic expectations and mutual accountability

between suppliers and the organization, increasing the effectiveness of outsource

partners by empowering them to act as an extension of the internal team. PROBLEM #6Lost discretionary budgetsUse it or lose it. Misuse it and lose it anyway. Many corporate marketing

departments are leaving discretionary budget on the table or allocating it to

the wrong initiatives. This discretionary marketing budget "Catch 22" occurs

because:?It's very time consuming to manage the budget effectively, especially in companies

with broken financial systems?Each marketing spend-decision creates more work for the one-person or small-

team

marketing department in terms of project management, measurement, supplier

management, etc. ?Doubt persists about the ability to successfully justify the expenditure to

management?Focus is instinctively on high-visibility marketing activities and C-level executive

"requests" over fiscal management (marketing people are more inclined toward

marketing than finance)SOLUTIONMarketing Operations facilitates implementing the system support infrastructure

and financial management discipline needed to protect precious marketing budgets. PROBLEM #7Narrow marketing mixMany companies align their fate with the success of too few marketing programs.

Whether it's lead generation, public relations, trade shows or advertising, the over-

reliance on any one particular program can derail a company-especially if a key

program unexpectedly loses momentum. In the meantime, programs that could

have had strong leverage never get a chance to prove their mettle and are forever

relegated to the "B" list. SOLUTIONMarketing Operations puts the means in place to launch potentially high-value

marketing programs that would never otherwise get out of the starting gate. The Bottom LineIn a nutshell, Marketing Operations is an organization's best bet to:?Ensure that success can be measured and replicated

?Leverage systems and processes to enable consistently excellent performance?Encourage great marketing departments to stay together?Allow the marketing organization to flourish, despite the unexpected, but often

inevitable, loss of a key employee. Gary M. Katz, APR, is president and CEO of CommPros Group, a Santa-Clara, Calif. -

based firm that provides marketing operations services to help companies leverage

their marketing investment, plus a variety of outsourced marketing program

management services to support lean marketing departments. Gary is a veteran with

more than twenty years of experience in the technology industry where he directed

corporate marketing, communications, public relations, lead generation and

qualification, investor relations, and employee communications programs. He has

served as director of communications for ShoreTel, director of corporate marketing

for Aplix Corporation, senior manager of corporate communications for Insignia

Solutions, and as a director, account supervisor, or preferred subcontractor

for more than a dozen leading public relations and marketing communications

agencies. A past president of Silicon Valley PRSA, he holds a master's degree in

organization development from the University of San Francisco and a BA degree in

public relations from San Jose State University.

Author:
Gary Katz