Previously, I listed six basic skills for marketers working with marketing, including: generalized understanding of the system, tool management, architectural vision, capacity assessment and tool acquisition.
This article covers the last core skill, organization management and what it means.
Understanding the management of an organization
Managing an organization in martech involves building and maintaining a team that can support the current martech stack while continually evaluating how the organization should adapt over time. This skill is essential because organizational structures in martech are very varied and must evolve both with the technology and with the company using it.
For example, in a small business, martech may be managed by a single person or by a small centralized team. In contrast, larger organizations may need an entire department dedicated to martech. As businesses grow and their marketing processes become more complex, their martech organizations must evolve accordingly.
Marketers don’t need to master all martech skills at once to effectively contribute to resourcing martech teams. However, as they develop their skills over time, marketers can play a pivotal role in helping businesses establish and refine flexible and scalable martech structures, ensuring they grow in tandem with the business .
Dig Deeper: 7 strategies to get the most out of your martech stack
Why is running a martech organization important for marketers?
Martech organizations will include more than just marketers, but marketers must play a key role in:
Decide what the organization should look like (e.g. a single person, a group, or an entire department) and whether it effectively supports the different marketing processes related to the martech stack. Determine how the organization should evolve to better meet business needs over time. Ensure marketers are actively involved in the martech organization, particularly in decisions around how customer data is collected, used for activation, and leveraged to create engagement. Assess whether there is sufficient training on relevant martech platforms to support the daily work of marketers, as well as access to deeper knowledge and best practices.
Marketers must always collaborate with other teams and stakeholders, including IT, operations, sales and purchasing, to help build and maintain this organization.
The role of the marketer here is to represent marketing processes and customer-facing communications activities supported by marketing technology while helping to educate other stakeholders.
Questions to help marketers get started:
Can the organization support its current business goals with its martech stack? (Can it support customer engagement, lead management, or conversion goals?) Is the organization ready to scale with the business? Can it grow or change to best accommodate changes in the technology itself or the business goals behind the martech stack? If the business grows, can the stack grow with it? Is the organization adequately staffed to best support the martech stack? Are there marketing platforms without owners or teams directly involved?
Next Steps for Marketers
Marketers should bring examples of processes and customer use cases that martech should support when discussing the martech organization with other appropriate stakeholders and teams.
Dig Deeper: Role of a Marketing Technology Manager: The Best of MarTechBot
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the supervision of the writing and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
