What lies ahead for marketing operations? How can it become more strategic and impactful?

Darrell Alfonso has spent the past ten years answering these questions through his work at companies like AWS and Indeed. He's also dedicated himself to moving the discipline of marketing ops forward as an author, teacher, speaker, and thought-leader.

In this episode, he shares his vision of how marketing operations can encompass both strategy and technical expertise and describes how MOPS practitioners can level-up in their careers.

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About Today's Guest

Darrell Alfonso is a 2x Marketo Champion, course instructor, Author of "The Martech Handbook", and frequent speaker and thought-leader.

He's held marketing and operations leadership positions at Indeed, Amazon Web Services, Hitwise, and the American Marketing Association.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/

Key Topics

• [00:00] - Introduction
• [00:58] - Darrell's definition of marketing operations: the art and science of executing great marketing. Key pillars: planning and strategy, technology management, process design, analytics, business alignment.
• [02:48] - Evolution of marketing ops from being tech-centric to business-centric.
• [04:59] - Challenges of that evolutionary process. Potential discomfort within ops of moving into a role where they have revenue accountability. MOPS people have an allegiance to craft, but should focus on what the business needs.
• [07:43] - Risk of feeling powerless or misunderstood. Need for operators to better communicate our value.
• [09:25] - Darrell's background in communications and how it's impacted his career. The importance of communication within operations and how it's helped him grow as a leader. Internal communication is not about being self-promotional. It's about playing together effectively as a team (analogy of a sports team).
• [14:43] - How Darrell's role combines both strategy and operations. Strategy is the set of choices we make in service of an objective. Tactics at one level of the business become the strategy for the next level. Discussion of how this applies within Darrell's current company.
• [26:08] - Description of Darrell's team and how it functions. How marketing technology sits within a separate Business Systems function.
• [29:46] - What Darrell's ideal org structure would look like. Pros and cons of separating tech into a Business Systems group. Need for technologists to have technical leadership. Similar issue applies with SDRs and whether they report into marketing or sales.
• [36:25] - Building a personal brand in marketing operations. Benefits and how to do it. Difference between personal branding and cultivating an audience.

Resource Links

• The Marketing Operations Handbook: A Complete Guide to Marketing Operations - Darrell referenced this book, by revenue operator Michael McKinnon, several times during the episode.

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