A Day in the life of a Marketing Operations Manager

Ever wonder what a day in the life of your marketing operations manager looks like?

Marketing operations deals with more than just technology, it drives an organization’s marketing engine.

From technology implementation and integration to deadline management, new program creation, and report generation, marketing operations is the straw that stirs the revenue drink.

So maybe the next time your boss asks you what you did today, just share this blog post with them!

7:30am – Start of the Day

Arrive at the office, login and check on anything that may have happened — or didn’t happen — overnight.

You’ve set yourself up with reports and dashboards to spot any irregularities. Thankfully it’s all normal. It’s a great start to the day, but it’s still early.

8:15am – Preemptive Snack Break

Grab a coffee and a snack for later because you never know what the day will bring. At this point, you pretty much expect the unexpected to happen.

8:35am – Smile for the Boss

The boss arrives and immediately swings by your desk to request some new reports that she thought of during her commute. Add these to the to-do list for later in the day because you have three emails to build that were requested late yesterday afternoon, which need to go out tomorrow morning.

9:10am – Don’t freak out, just stay calm

As you are heads down building those emails, sending tests and QA’ing your work, the content director stops by to let you know that, “the new eBook is ready for launch, how quickly can you spin up the landing page so it can be referenced in a blog post?” (Yikes!)

9:30am – The hour long team meeting

Stop what you’re doing for an hour-long team meeting. Several action items are added to the to-do list.

Just what you needed right?

10:30am – Coffee and that snack from before

Now thankfully, you still have that snack you grabbed earlier. You’re going to need it to power through the next bit. Oh, and another quick coffee run of course.

11:15am – The storm is brewing

All seems quiet until a program manager mentions she needs some reports for her nurture program. Not the same ones you ran for her yesterday. New ones.

12:00pm – Lunch time

Finally, it’s lunch time. You step away from your desk and briefly forget about the onslaught of tasks. You grab your lunch and head outside with your office pals to the picnic table for a much needed respite. Serenity now!

12:55pm – Eye of the storm

Return to your desk with the hopes of having a couple of uninterrupted hours in the schedule to work on integrating a new video technology, which has been on your plate for a couple of weeks and keeps getting pushed aside.

But then you notice some missed messages on Slack. Of course, it’s something that needs immediate attention and can’t be put off. Get out the firehose!

2:05pm – The storm is calming

You extinguish the fire and turn your attention to your task list. You check your email to find two more requests, one for a new program, another for some reports. Add those to tomorrow’s to-dos since you have yet to complete the reports for your boss and you need to approve and schedule the emails you worked on this morning. Phew!

3:15pm – A rainbow appears on the horizon

Take a deep breath. With the emails buttoned up and ready to go, you make a mental note to work with the content director on a better timeline for email build requests, and talk to your manager about the possibility of getting another resource to help with execution.

4:00pm – The sun appears. It’s a beautiful afternoon.

But it’s time for the weekly meeting with sales leaders to review KPI’s and discuss upcoming campaigns. You add a few more items to your to-do list. The meeting runs long by thirty minutes.

5:30pm – End of Day

Today was a good day. Really, it was!

It’s time to hit the road for your commute home, exhausted but determined to make it to yoga for some stress relief!

But the battle isn’t done yet – you still have to make sure the kids have something to eat and have everything they need ready to go for bright and early tomorrow morning.

When it starts all over again. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

At Demand Spring, our client side experience gives us a decided advantage. We understand marketing operations, and how hard it can be when you’re short on resources. We’re certified Marketo experts. We’re here to help when you need us.