Marketing Operations Case Study

Summary

You have all the pieces, but how do you put them together? In this case study, I detail how my team and I approached the implementation of marketing automation principles to greatly improve marketing operations in a global, regulated industry. 

Situation

A medical devices company had all of the pieces necessary to build an integrated marketing automation ecosystem but hadn’t connected all the pieces. The disparate systems included:

  • Website analytics

  • Website forms

  • Email via Marketing Automation System

  • Webinars

  • Sales Enablement Platform

  • Customer Relationship Manager

  • Trade shows

  • Social Media

  • Blogs 

Our marketing strategy was delayed and diminished due to a lack of optimization in our marketing operations. We knew something needed to change. 

“Our marketing strategy was being delayed and diminished due to a lack of optimization in our marketing operations.”

Task

There was an opportunity to use our marketing automation system as the centralized hub for marketing behavioral data. This allowed us to simplify the short-term integration need to a single connection between the Marketing Automation System and Customer Relationship Manager to enable the aggregated data to inform our global sales team. 

Action

The Global Digital Marketing Team worked together to:

  • Replace existing web forms with forms built in and routed to the Marketing Automation System

  • Improve link tracking across all channels by standardizing UTM codes

  • Implement a new webinar platform with improved engagement tracking

  • Commission a simple app to track trade show attendance

  • Build branching email automation for key product lines

  • Rebuild the content taxonomy within our Sales Enablement Platform  

  • Redesign blogs in a new Content Management System compatible with our analytics tools

  • Build out our failure response processes to improve the rate of automation optimizations

  • Handoff Social Media Marketing to our Public Relations team to ensure consistent content creation

Results

All of these changes and optimizations allowed us to track individual customers throughout our very lengthy sales cycles. After some trial and error, we developed a lead scoring system that improved engagement across the board. We also gained improved channel effectiveness data allowing for more efficient spending across all marketing channels. The new webinar system highlighted the need for investment into production quality with the company building a television-style sound stage. The foundation that we built led to substantial investment into sales and marketing operations, including the creation of new divisions to own each function.

“…we became too effective, too quickly, and overwhelmed our sales teams with new leads.”

A negative effect is we became too effective, too quickly, and overwhelmed our sales teams with new leads. While we handed off the leads in CRM and provided why we felt the lead was qualified, Sales simply did not have the time or resources to review each lead, which led to the creation of a Sales Operations team to improve data tracking and lead routing.

Lessons Learned

The implementation of all of this came during a very tenuous time at this company. The Global Marketing Communications function went through three Vice Presidents, three Directors of Digital Marketing (four if you include my time as Head of Digital Marketing), and many channel managers. These actions were all done with a rotating cast of participants with only a few of us remaining as constants. 

“…identify and praise my team’s “accelerators,” the members working to develop the often unseen processes and efficiencies that enable improved operations.”

I credit this initiative as my first experience leading a team through the chaos of business. Through all the noise that was going on around us, we maintained positive progress toward our goal of improving the way we approached marketing as a unit. Of course, we were not recognized for improving our marketing operations from baby steps to walking that ultimately allowed the next teams to run. However, this created an awareness in me, as a leader, to identify and praise my team’s “accelerators,” the members working to develop the often unseen processes and efficiencies that enable improved operations.

Position: Head of Digital Marketing

Industry: Medical Devices

Keywords: marketing, marketing operations, corporate operations, software operations, managing up, leadership, cross-functional leadership

  • It is rare to find a leader who has an innate strategic mindset and is an empathic people enabler; something Brent does very well. I have watched Brent first hand coach people to excel beyond their own expectations while simultaneously having a strategic mindset which will have positive impacts for the organization for years to come.

    P. Naine

  • I worked with Brent at Elekta for several years in his marketing and IT roles. Brent was a very detailed and effective leader at Elekta.

    T. Valentine

  • I worked in the global marketing department with Brent when he was the Head of Digital Marketing at Elekta. He brought a fantastic perspective and balance to the team in his digital marketing role by understanding – and helping us all learn - all aspects of digital marketing strategies and tactics and how the application of these tools would work for Elekta.

    M. Joiner

  • I had the pleasure of working with Brent when he stepped up to become the digital marketing leader at Elekta. He provided my agency with a clear strategy for an integrated campaign across multiple channels, quickly responded to removed barriers to execution, and effectively communicated project status across critical stakeholders.

    S. Farina