Primary responsibilities:

• Creative oversight of all marketing work and campaigns
  
• Strategic campaign planning
  
• Execution of strategic plans and campaigns 

Secondary responsibilities: 

• Performance measurement 
  
• Technology and process optimization  

Other responsibilities 

• Data analytics and reporting

Optimizing marketing operations is vital in developing an effective marketing strategy for your business. To do this, marketing leaders must be able to operationalize strategic marketing plans. That means identifying areas requiring input, including technology, processes, talent and strategic direction, and executing a plan to get them working. Marketing leaders must gather and deploy the resources, people, processes and tools that power marketing capabilities aligned with strategic plans. They must also execute those plans effectively and efficiently. 

There’s no denying that marketing is an increasingly critical pillar of any business. Without the right strategic marketing approach, product and service offerings are at significant risk of failure. If you want a more effective marketing strategy powered by an optimized marketing operations scope, Gartner has the tools and resources to deliver growth to your organization.

Of the organizations surveyed for research, it was reported that almost one-quarter of outgoing marketing budgets is being spent on external vendors and agency services. Although external service providers are important to a marketing organization’s function, there are ways to optimize outgoing costs that don’t impact business revenue. 

In-housing has been a major area of focus for optimizing marketing spend and has been a proven cost-saver. Upskilling existing staff and strategically hiring talent to fill specific skills gaps are effective ways to make activity more cost-efficient and enhance in-house process management. 

Understanding the value that different types of marketing service providers offer enables marketing operations managers to ensure that they deliver an optimal mix of in-house talent and outsourced expertise that is flexible and scalable to the changing needs, processes, revenue and capabilities of the organization.

Marketing leaders in the evolving digital landscape need to optimize their organizational structure and transform their existing project management approach using agile marketing practices to build a more scalable, flexible and resilient marketing organization. 

The most sustainable and effective strategy is to design a marketing team capable of strong internal and external collaboration — one with the talent to lead, contribute and cooperate simultaneously.

For greater flexibility and agility within marketing organizations, marketing team members should be able to “toggle” among roles, filling gaps where required on individual campaigns or projects. That means they should be capable of leading one project, contributing to another, and planning or collaborating on multiple initiatives.