Every once in a while I stop for a moment and consider how radically different marketing is today compared with just 3 years ago. Looking no further than my desk, it's quite amazing how my job has changed in just that short period of time. Previously, marketing seemed more an art than a science and it stood in contrast to IT, finance and operations - the enterprise functions that lived in a more structured and quantifiable reality than marketing.

Back then, the concept of strategic alignment across organizational lines usually seemed limited to the domain of the C-suite. And they still focus on it to be sure - but now strategic alignment is also a concern of marketing. Traditionally, consumer packaged goods was the leading industry where management engaged marketing in enterprise-wide alignment. It's not surprising considering the nature of the CPG business, and that focus on alignment became known as brand management. As Phil Kotler attests in this short video, good brand management rests squarely on the shoulders of stategic alignment - so the idea is not simply to communicate a brand promise, but to also fulfill that promise with well-orchestrated execution and delivery.

What has changed? Now that the world is increasingly lived online and the advent of social media has tipped the scales of business communications decidedly in favor of the consumer, customer centricity is not simply a concern for soap makers and cereal purveyors - it's essential for all businesses. As a result, brand management approaches that depend on internal alignment are key to marketing success across industries. And alignment increasingly entails marketing and IT, given the online nature of our digital world.

More than ever, great marketing is about spot-on execution that delivers what's promised

It follows then, that not only is it important to align across departments - but also to align within the marketing department through marketing operations management. It's no longer optional - marketing operations management is critical to planning and executing marketing that grows your business. And when you can integrate marketing operations management with marketing automation, adaptive customer experience management, social media analytics and marketing optimization, then you have your hands on all the major levers to engage your market and grow your business in ways that are structured and quantifiably effective.

Marketing operations management enables success because you’ll achieve greater consistency, efficiency and effectiveness by automating and integrating marketing processes and workflows. Key components of that include marketing strategy development and planning, asset creation, campaign execution, and post-campaign analysis and reporting.

With the right approach to marketing operations management, you can plan and develop marketing programs and workflows based on corporate initiatives and deliver confidently at a tactical level with consistent messaging, collateral and execution methods. If you add budgetary views to that operating model, you achieve fiscal control while enabling collaborative planning, allocation and program execution.

In a nutshell, that's how marketing operations management supports strategic alignment. For more details, you might be interested in downloading this whitepaper, Integrating Marketing Operations: How Marketers Can Align Their Strategy and Planning with Overarching Corporate Goals.

As always, thank you for following!