The State of Marketing Operations

Whether you’re new to the world of Marketing Operations, or you’ve been around the MOPs block, you probably don’t need us to tell you: Marketing Ops has evolved a lot in a very short time.

What was once an obscure, jack-of-all-trades role has transformed into the glue that holds sales, marketing, and finance together.

So, where does Marketing Operations go from here? What are the most pressing challenges faced by MOPs professionals? And most importantly, how can you prepare for the opportunities that lie ahead?

Marketing Operations Trends

The standout MOPs trend of our times? Marketing Operations is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

Yes, some still confuse Marketing Ops with RevOps. Sure, others think it’s simply data management or automation. But forward-thinking organizations now see past these misconceptions, and they’re investing accordingly.

Excitingly for MOPs professionals, this means more opportunities for career progression and cross-functional collaboration:

• 88% of organizations with over $10 million in annual revenue have a dedicated Marketing Operations team or individual.
• 63% of CMOs expect to increase the size of Marketing Operations teams in the next 12 months.
• 12% of Marketing Ops professionals have ascended to the VP or executive level, while 15% are navigating the early stages of their careers in roles like specialist or coordinator.
• 36% say working across departmental boundaries, such as with IT or sales, is the most rewarding part of their job.

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Marketing Operations Challenges

Of course, as Marketing Ops expands into a more defined function, certain growing pains arise.

Sprawling tech stacks just keep on growing, platform integrations struggle to keep pace, and data protection and compliance regulations continue to keep everyone on their toes.

Despite growing investment, MOPs teams have not escaped the mandate to “do more with less” following the layoffs and budget cuts of recent years:

• Almost one-third of Marketing Operations professionals report that they are a one-person team.

• The martech vendor landscape consists of more than 14,000 solutions as of 2024, up from 11,000 in 2023.

• 55% of CMOs cite technical integration issues as a leading barrier to martech maturity.
• 65% of marketing leaders struggle to translate operational data into meaningful insights, while 41% report difficulty navigating large volumes of data sources.
• 74% of organizations state that compliance is a burden.

Marketing Operations Opportunities

Emerging challenges + growing investment in Marketing Operations = opportunities for MOPs teams to do what they do best.

No one can flawlessly analyze and overcome business obstacles quite like a Marketing Ops professional. But, they can’t do it with a substandard toolkit.

For today’s Marketing Ops teams, the most promising opportunities lie in tech stack refinement, data optimization, and enhanced insights:

• Between 60%-73% of all data within an organization goes unused for analytics.

• 87% of marketers report that data is their company’s most under-utilized asset.

• Only 49% of marketers feel somewhat or very effective at using data-informed insights to inform future strategy.
• Only 47% of marketers have a completely unified view of customer data.
• 53% of companies plan to invest in data enrichment and intent tools.

The Future of Marketing Operations

Marketing Operations has come a long way, but its transformation is far from over. If anything, MOPs’ evolution to date has simply set the stage for more innovation to come. Equipped with a consolidated tech stack, advanced insights, and transparent data, the future of Marketing Operations looks bright.

To find out how you can use Salesforce data to tell the entire marketing story, schedule a demo of Full Circle Insights today.