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Marketing Ops Specialist: roles, responsibilities, salary, and hiring

If you gave your marketing team $10,000 where should they spend it and what ROI can you expect in return? 

What qualifies a lead to achieve MQL status? Does everyone in your marketing team agree on those parameters?

When CMOs and marketing departments struggle to answer questions like these it’s a sign that they need to invest in marketing operations. 

Bringing on a qualified marketing ops specialist is a must for any scaling company who is moving beyond manual processes and needs their marketing tech (MarTech) stack to accurately report the current state of their marketing campaigns. 

Let’s break down (almost) everything you need to know about this increasingly important marketing ops role and whether or not you should hire an in-house marketing ops specialist or if it makes more sense to hire a RevOps agency for your growing company.

What is a Marketing Operations Specialist?

A marketing operations specialist is a member of the marketing or RevOps team who spearheads the design, implementation, and optimization of marketing processes to maximize their ROI and efficiency.

Think of them as the swiss army knife of your marketing team: they’ve always got the right tool for the job. 

A marketing ops specialist thrives in situations that blend both imaginative thinking with process execution and is an excellent trouble-shooter and problem solver.   

Within the marketing team they support their colleagues by educating them on marketing ops processes and best practices while ensuring standardization of those processes to maximize efficiency.

They also play a critical supportive role to leadership by ensuring that they have access to accurate data and reports which drive better decision making. 

“The demand for marketing ops is through the roof thanks to the explosion of Product Led Growth and the Inbound movement, but the supply of talented marketing ops professionals simply hasn’t caught up.

For many companies, hiring Sales Ops first and then figuring out marketing ops later carries a huge cost.”

Taft Love

Founder, Iceberg Ops

The Responsibilities and Duties of a Marketing ops Specialist

The specific roles and responsibilities will depend on each company, however a marketing ops specialist will generally carry out the following duties: 

  • Manage a company’s MarTech stack
  • Create and enforce marketing processes and workflows 
  • Collaborate closely with other departments like Sales Ops and Acquisition on CRM projects, architecture, data flow, and processes
  • Oversee A/B testing
  • Campaign and source attribution data tracking
  • Set-up 3rd party integrations to core marketing systems, such as a CRM
  • Identify problems and inefficiencies in current processes and workflows and design solutions 
  • Measure ROI of marketing campaigns
  • Oversee marketing technology throughout the funnel, from campaign, to lead, to sales, and admissions
  • Create accurate reports to assist leadership with decision making
  • Allocate team resources 
  • Lead the adoption of new tools and technologies and ensure standardization of these across the department 

Must-have Reporting Software for a Marketing Operations Specialist

A marketing ops specialist will use various software to pull in different types of data across the marketing funnel. They also need reliable project management software to keep their workflows organized. 

Top Software used by Marketing Ops Specialists: 

Average Salary of a Marketing ops Specialist

Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect to pay a marketing ops specialist in a variety of countries and cities based on data from Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and other open data sources. But keep in mind that these figures are just rough ideas, there can be quite a few outliers that bring up the national averages and many different roles might be considered “marketing ops specialist” that have been included in these round-ups.

breakdown of marketing ops specialist salaries
  • USA:
    • New York: $90,191
    • San Francisco: $93,715
    • Chicago: $86,318
    • Austin: $67,977
  • Europe:
    • Spain: €35,532
    • France:  €43,826
    • Germany: €49,999 
    • Ireland: € 47,500
    • Sweden: kr 391.418 
    • Poland: zł 65,990
  • UK:
    • London: £47, 000
    • Bristol: £39,504
    • Edinburgh: £48, 310
  • Australia
    • Sydney: AUD $143,852
    • Melbourne: AUD $139,834

How to Hire a Marketing Operations Specialist

When it comes to welcoming a marketing ops specialist onto your team you have two options: hire in-house or contract an independent RevOps team.

Hiring an independent RevOps team for your Marketing Operations is the perfect solution for growing companies who aren’t yet ready to invest in a full-time, in-house marketing ops specialist. Not only will it cost a fraction of the price, but they can start implementing solutions much faster and you get access to a team of experts, not just one. 

But if your company is ready to bring on a new hire then you can start your search by looking close to home. 

Do any of your current marketing team members show a great aptitude for analyzing data, spotting issues in your processes, and driving efficiency?

Then they might be in for a promotion.

Investing resources in upskilling your current team can pay back dividends, especially as your new hire already has extensive knowledge about your company, customers and what issues may be holding back the marketing team. 

But training one of your team members takes time.

It will take them a while to be ready to tackle the root causes of your marketing ops issues while also maintaining the everyday tasks of their role: remember that this is a long-term investment. 

Another downside to hiring in-house is that this person still needs someone to learn from. Throwing a current employee into a marketing ops role without providing them with access to a more experienced marketing operations specialist is like asking them to build the plane while they’re free-falling. 

If you prefer to hire someone outside of your current team, then you can advertise for the position on a variety of platforms, usually for a small fee. 

Here are just some suggestions:

But before putting out ads for the new role you’re hiring for, you have to know what to put in the job description. 

Marketing Operations Specialist Job description Template

Your marketing ops job description isn’t just a place to dump a lot of facts about requirements and aptitudes, it’s also a great opportunity to highlight your brand values to help you attract the best-fit candidates. 

Your job description template should include 4 sections: 

  • Introduction about your company 
  • Duties and Responsibilities 
  • Requirements and Qualifications 
  • Benefits of working at your company 

[Your Company] is Hiring a Marketing Ops Specialist

[Introduce your company and the mission you’re on. Bear in mind you want a new hire to share your core values and be excited at the prospect of working with you].

Our marketing team is expanding and we’re looking for a marketing operations specialist. You’ll apply your laser-focused analytical skills to help us develop smooth and effective marketing processes and reporting systems that provide key insights to help drive decision making.

You’ll have the opportunity to work in a [describe your workplace atmosphere here] with supportive colleagues and plenty of opportunities for growth during your career with us. 

Reporting to: CMO, Marketing Ops Manager, VP Marketing [whichever is relevant for your company].

The Role & Responsibilities: 

  • Plan and execute paid and organic media campaigns as well as email marketing campaigns 
  • Measure success of marketing campaigns and find ways to improve for future campaigns 
  • Conduct and analyze A/B tests 
  • Innovate and test new approaches across multiple channels (e.g. targeted account-based marketing (ABM))
  • Educate team members on best practices of MarTech 
  • Create accurate reports and dashboards to measure the success of marketing campaigns using [software your company uses] 
  • Create lead nurturing processes
  • Work collaboratively with other departments and key stakeholders to ensure 100% alignment across different teams’ activities
  • Propose new processes and procedures in order to make the marketing department more efficient

What we’re looking for: 

  • Bachelor’s degree or above in a field related to marketing or business administration 
  • Experience in Salesforce/HubSpot [other CRM] 
  • Experience in [YOUR INDUSTRY] 
  • Someone highly analytical who has an eagle-eye attention to detail 
  • Someone who displays excellent troubleshooting and creative problem solving skills and knows when to act quickly
  • Strong quantitative and qualitative analytical skills 
  • A team player who thrives in bringing harmony and collaboration across different teams 
  • Someone who has initiative and drive who isn’t afraid to implement new solutions 
  • A multi passionate learner who enjoys learning about a wide variety of different topics 

Compensation and Benefits: 

[Include some information about salary and company benefits like dental care, health plans, and employer contributed 401K].

Apply today [include a link to your application form]. 

Nail Your First Ops Hire and Avoid Costly Mistakes Most Startups Make

When you’re ready to hire in-house for operations, what should you look for? What combination of skills will make the biggest impact? How can you make a smart hire today and support a long-term hiring strategy? This white paper steps through:

  • Categories for a first operations hire
  • Recommended interview questions
  • The exact evaluation matrix Iceberg uses to hire for its own team

What does a Marketing Operations Specialist have to Say? Meet Iceberg RevOps team member Natalie Eadie

We stole a quick interview with our very own marketing ops specialist, Natalie Eadie. Learn more about the everyday work of her role.  

What tasks are you usually working on on a day-to-day basis?

It is a truly diverse role, sometimes I’ll be working on reporting and dashboards, other days I will be consulting and advising on the MarTech stack and rolling out new solutions.

Working closely with the sales and marketing teams is key to ensure aligned definitions and processes, as well as executing campaigns for the team. 

Natalie Eadie, Marketing Ops Specialist at Iceberg RevOps

What core skills does someone need to be a great marketing ops specialist?

  1. Problem solving – being able to think through issues and enjoy digging into inexplicable problems
  2. Inquisitiveness – ops spans such a wide space, so knowing a little about a lot is key to success
  3. Team player – this role is highly engaged with IT, Marketing, Sales Ops and in some organizations, procurement

What does a successful day in your role look like?

A great day is when you can deliver a successful campaign based on client needs rather than technical limitations and then have the data on-hand to do robust reporting and showcase the success.

What challenges does your role help solve?

It identifies the right technology, strategy or process to help the marketing team achieve their goals based on analytically derived campaigns and learnings.

44% of marketers say: “Better measuring of the ROI of our demand generation initiatives” was their top priority for 2021.

How We Help Marketing Ops Specialists

Your in-house marketing ops specialist may know exactly what they need, but solving client problems and managing day-to-day operations take priority over improving internal operations. 

This is where Iceberg RevOps steps in as your marketing ops partner. 

We work side by side with marketing ops specialists to set up efficient systems that are aligned to the marketing team’s strategy. This means they can stop putting out fires and focus on improving the marketing team’s performance.

Iceberg can help your marketing ops team with a wide variety of tasks such as:

Our services are entirely bespoke to your needs which means no matter what your current setup, Iceberg will build a custom plan that solves your specific marketing ops woes (and gets you results in days, not weeks).

Reach out and contact us for an obligation-free call to see how we can support your marketing operations. 

To Hire or not to Hire a Marketing Ops Specialist?

Of course we’re a bit biased over here at Iceberg, but there’s a reason we’ve dedicated ourselves to RevOps: because every scaling company needs solid marketing operations so they can continue to grow. 

We’ve seen the chaos caused by flaky data, poor processes, and clinging onto manual ways of doing things when hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars can be saved by setting up reliable marketing operations. 

While it’s easy to say you should hire your own marketing ops specialist right away, it also might not be feasible for your budget right now. You may also need your marketing ops problems fixed as quickly as possible, and new, in-house hires will not be able to deliver dramatic changes in a short period of time. If that’s the case for your company, then contracting a professional RevOps team may be the smartest move.

But what’s clear is this: if you don’t understand where to best invest your marketing budget, if your marketing operations are still largely siloed, and your team’s time is spent fire fighting with broken system instead of getting on with their jobs, then it’s time to invest in scaling up marketing operations.

Related content: the pros and cons of working with a RevOps agency and how to protect your business

FAQs about Marketing Ops Specialists

What is the difference between marketing ops and sales ops? 

Both of these roles are under the umbrella of revenue operations (RevOps) and share a common goal: to help client-facing teams reach their goals. 
However, a sales ops specialist works on the operations of the sales department and a marketing ops specialist works on the ops of the marketing department. That being said, a perfect setup is when both of these teams communicate regularly with one another.

What skills should a marketing ops specialist have? 

A marketing ops specialist should be very detail oriented and as this role is heavily involved in analyzing data, they should be highly analytical. However, they should still have enough creative drive to be able to use that data to make innovative decisions about how to improve marketing campaigns. They should also have great CRM skills and be able to effectively transform data and numbers into a narrative on how to improve marketing operations.

What are some examples of marketing operations?

Some examples of marketing operations include: 

Data management: making sure data from sources such as a CRM are in order 
Executing a go-to-market strategy 
Workflow process development: designing and implementing new processes and making sure the appropriate team understands how to implement these 
Performance Analysis: measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns

What are the benefits of hiring a marketing operations specialist?

Hiring a marketing ops specialist means you can more accurately understand which marketing campaigns are working at bringing in more qualified leads to your sales team (and which aren’t). 

Without this data it’s hard to know how to improve upon past marketing campaigns to maximize ROI. Investing in marketing operations will also ensure that your entire marketing team is working at their most efficient, saving you time, money, and resources which are lost through process and workflow failures.

Keep Reading and Improving Your RevOps Knowledge

Iceberg is a revenue operations consulting and implementation agency that owns the strategy and execution of critical sales and marketing operations projects so companies can scale faster with the right resources for a fraction of the cost.

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