Marketing operations, building a MarTech stack, and ensuring data visibility and security in a growing startup :: with Kelly Jo Horton and Sol Cates

In this episode of Ventures, my guests Kelly Jo Horton (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyjohorton/), Sol Cates (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sol-cates-649736/) and I discuss marketing operations from a startup and enterprise perspective. We dive into Kelly Jo’s story entering the space, the need for a marketing operations expert as early as possible in a startup, how to avoid technical debt with your MarTech stack, why to setup a centralized command center, and how/why to retool a broken MarTech data infrastructure.

Visit https://satchel.works/@wclittle/ventures-episode-37 for detailed notes and links to resources (videos, articles, etc…) mentioned. 

You can watch this episode via video here. 

In this episode we cover the following:  

1:47 - Sol tee-up and introduction of Kelly Jo

2:58 - Kelly Jo personal intro, background, brief career story, tech history, and overview of marketing operations.

8:04 - What was the career path that Kelly Jo thought she was going on in the early days and how/why it pivoted.

14:47 - Where did in Kelly Jo’s career did she turn toward data and marketing operations?

17:48 - In the hypothetical example of a 3-person team (technical, business, and creative), how should they think about setting themselves up for success to learn from their data.

20:32 - Until the archetypal founder team has the money to hire a senior marketing operations expert, what should be the foundational work that the team should do in order to not rack up too much technical debt with their data.

23:01 - Does Kelly Jo have a recommended MarTech stack for early stage founders?

26:44 - Valuing a marketing operations expert. More discussion about an ideal stack from an enterprise angle for B2B work. 

35:15 - Comments about the quantity of strong female leaders in marketing operations. 

35:43 - From an enterprise angle, what are the common problems that Sol sees on the marketing operations side of things? 

37:40 - The importance of having a centralized command center, at least the admin functions. 

41:02 - Identifying yet another hole in startup capabilities (tech/marketing). 

42:55 - Customers buy business outcomes

43:38 - Resetting the marketing operations team/stack, what is Kelly Jo’s experience of retooling a marketing operations team and associated software tooling? 

46:02 - Yet another “type of CMO to hire” in startup land.

46:33 - Where can people find Kelly Jo and Sol online? https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyjohorton/, https://www.mopspros.com/mopstalks, https://www.linkedin.com/in/sol-cates-649736/