The Marketing Operations Strategist - My new 30/60/90 Day Marketing Operations Ramp Up Plan

Hey! 👋

Exciting news: I’ve released my 30/60/90 day marketing operations ramp up plan! Check it out here and keep reading to hear my thoughts on why I put it together the way I did.

But first, a word from our sponsors:

Okay, now on to the content. 😄 If you scrolled past the link above, you can open my onboarding plan here and follow along as you read my statements below.

Much of my content effort this week went into finalizing the ramp up plan, but I wanted to add a little more commentary here to help get you ready to use it.

I thought about the phases of onboarding as 3 stages:

• Know the people + strategy

• Know the business + provide everyday value

• Deliver strategic value

30 days: Know the people + strategy

The new people that you work with should be your first focus because relationships = the most important aspect of our day to day work in marketing operations. If people don’t like us or trust us, everything will be 10x harder than it needs to be. Because of this, you want to create a stakeholder roadmap and corresponding communication plan so you can make managing these relationships as seamless as possible.

However, I also needed to balance that with the need to prove value, especially in this competitive job market. That’s why I highlighted the importance of creating documentation as you go, which can be relatively low-lift as you move along in your onboarding but can be a huge boon for a company that is lacking in documentation.

If this is your first marketing position, you might spend more time learning some of the basics on lead scoring, lead velocity, and general marketing terms when you first start out — so your mileage may vary depending upon your level of experience and role.

60 days: Know the business + provide everyday value

Now that you’ve started to build the relationships, you should focus more energy on technical aspects, like martech, data, and analytics. If you’re in a leadership role, you will also want to perform an audit of vendors and contractors so you know where you stand with each. You’ll want to position yourself to start taking ownership of smaller day-to-day tasks during this stage. You’ll also want to start creating a roadmap of strategic projects you should look at over the first year.

If you’re unsure of what a field audit is, for example, check out the how-to links in the 30/60/90 day document…but also stay tuned for my Marketing Operations Master Playbook course, where I will be going more in-depth on many of the topics mentioned. 😎

90 days: Deliver strategic value

90 days in, you’ll want to start working on your first strategic project, as well as contributing in a larger way during strategic conversations. You’ll want to transition into taking over all aspects of your role and mentoring others on areas within your skillset (where applicable). If you’re a leader, you’ll want to develop a team walking deck and roadmap so you can advertise your team’s skills, accomplishments, and projects on deck.

Check out the doc for more detail, and keep in mind that this is a live doc — I will continue to edit it to keep it relevant. I hope this is helpful as you think about how to set yourself up for success in your next marketing operations role, or even in your current role!

What would you like to see here?

I don’t feel like people are loving the book recommendations as much as my nerdy self would — so what do you want to see here instead?

Learning resource of the week:

Helpful(?) AI tool of the week 🤖

This week is less of a recommendation from me and more of a curiosity and request for personal experiences — are any of you currently using Fathom AI notetaker? I’m looking to start using one of these notetakers now that I’m out of the mega corporate world and would love to hear your experiences. I’ve heard really great things about Fathom so far, but I know there are other competitors out there too. I’m not only looking for opportunities to streamline and automate my own workflow, but also for ways I can use and then share with you all to help you adopt AI to make your lives easier as well. 🧠

What I’m up to/what I’m studying

Thank you all so much for responding to this section with witty anecdotes and thoughts! I still need to get back to some of you due to time constraints, but please know your comments are read and so appreciated. 🙏 This week, I’m doing some final touches for my Italy trip and polishing my MOPs course (I know, it’s been a long time coming…but I promise it will be worth it! Also it was WAY more intense to create a course than I thought it would be, candidly 😅). Stay tuned for announcements here in the newsletter soon!

Also, is anyone watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu? Because holy smokes, it is so dramatic and fun to watch! 🥤 

Dear Sara ✍️

New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.

Here’s my answer to a question from last week:

Love this question…as we see traditional B2B marketing automation platforms start to lose ground due to lack of innovation, I’ve also been keeping my eye out for up-comers. I think we are headed towards more of a hybrid model — in my observation, B2C companies tend to use Braze, but I also am seeing some companies use Inflection, or a more simple email tool in combination with a robust CDP like Segment. Finally, I’ve been impressed by ActionIQ…though it is quite expensive for B2B companies.

This is not the most straightforward answer, but I do think it is the most accurate…use tools like builtwith to look at overall market share trends, and then compare that to the types of companies that you want to work for.

Make sure you don’t niche down too far (think: only healthcare tech companies, for example), but if you decide your heart lies in B2C I’d look at the B2C market share and let that help me decide where to focus my energy.

What else do you want to hear about from me?

I have a bunch of content lined up, but I want to hear from you — did you enjoy this issue? Is there anything specific you’d like to hear my take on? Please do reply to this email with any and all feedback! 😄

Til next time,

❤️ Sara