Marketing Operations

Fuel the future of operational excellence

The evolving role of marketing operations

Nearly 49% of marketers have a marketing operations leader in at least one team.

Marketing operations leaders are a growing presence on successful marketing teams. As the complexity of marketing increases and budgets tighten, marketing leaders are placing a greater emphasis on marketing operations. 

Use our 4-step marketing operations framework to:

  • Identify and fix the biggest marketing operational loopholes

  • Frame marketing ops leaders’ current role’s scope and operational KPIs

  • Optimize operational martech to match the needs of your marketing organization

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    For today’s CMO, the expanding scope of marketing and a growing list of responsibilities are major challenges. Time, resources and teams are spread thin, requiring CMOs to focus on high-impact initiatives and also eliminate programs, platforms and partners that do not make material contributions.

    Christopher Ross

    VP Analyst, Gartner

    Align critical marketing skills with overall strategic goals to deliver business value

    Marketing operations is a vast domain and includes a variety of activities. To drive business outcomes, marketing leaders must build relevant marketing skills and identify the right mix of skills to cultivate, aligned with organizationwide strategic goals.
    Bar graph displaying the KPIs for Evaluating the Success of Marketing Operations

    Strategic marketing operations insights
    you can use

    Gartner insights and advice help CMOs and marketing operations leaders to establish a discrete function with operational skills that enable efficient and scalable process excellence and marketing accountability.

    Build a more scalable, flexible, resilient marketing organization

    CMOs and marketers aspire for greater agility, responsiveness and control, but fight operational challenges. Use our research to learn how you can build an effective marketing strategy and marketing team structure that can drive customer engagement and retention.

    Learn More

    Managing the always-on marketing machine

    The always-on marketing machine is a high fixed-cost operation that is more akin to a manufacturing facility than a campaign creation department. Learn how to effectively manage the always-on marketing machine.

    Read More

    Maximize the impact of marketing initiatives with marketing operations

    Gartner research says 49% of marketers have a marketing operations leader in at least one team. Watch our complimentary webinar to discover how a marketing operations leader can help the marketing organization become more effective by productivity, flexibility, and increasing ROI, productivity.

    Watch Now

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    Marketing Operations questions Gartner can help answer

    To improve alignment, execution and deliver value, marketing leaders should create a marketing operations function to:

    • Define, optimize, govern and monitor marketing processes continuously by improving alignment with the business 

    • Facilitate the development and governance of marketing strategy, operational plans and associated budgets 

    • Support and empower your team with tools and technology

    Here are the primary responsibilities of the marketing operations team:

    • Strategy and planning facilitation and effective communications

    • Campaign and lead management

    • Process optimization and governance

    • Data and analytics optimization and governance

    • Marketing technology selection, integration, optimization, governance and adoption

    To manage and optimize marketing operations costs: evaluate people, partners, processes and technologies to determine what can be eliminated, simplified, better-utilized, standardized, centralized, automated or renegotiated in each area. Leverage Gartner’s Cost Optimization resources to help.

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