Training, support duties stand out in marketing technologists’ list of responsibilities

MarTech Today's 2020 Career Survey shows 91% of MOPs professionals -- the Operations Orchestrators -- own training and support tasks as well as workflow and processes.

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If you asked more than 200 marketing technologists to list their primary responsibilities, you’d think “operating marketing technology products” would be a more popular response over “training staff.” But, that doesn’t appear to be the case according to our 2020 Career Survey findings.

According to the more than 250 marketing technologists we surveyed, 82 percent listed “training and supporting marketing staff on martech products” as part of their responsibilities, compared to the 77% who listed operating marketing tech products.

Martech responsibilities based on roles

When breaking down job responsibilities by role, 91% of operations orchestrators report training and supporting among their top priorities, along with workflow and processes. MarTech Conference Chair Scott Brinker, who partnered with MarTech Today to produce the survey, drilled down into the survey results to determine which work responsibilities aligned with the four primary marketing technology roles — operations orchestrators (maestros), brand and demand builders (marketers), analytics architects (modellers) and marketing makers (makers).

“You start to get this really fascinating insight into how these different kinds of marketing technologist roles differ,” said Scott during his Discover MarTech keynote on Tuesday.

Training and support were at the top of the list for three of the roles — the makers, the technologists building the sites and apps, unsurprising are more likely to be charged with admin operations and integration responsibilities.

Career Survey Martech Responsibilities

What’s so enlightening here is how “ambidextrous” the martech community actually is. Yes, we are applying our tech-savvy skills to run and manage platforms, but a large part of our daily duties includes helping the rest of our staff — offering guidance and applying our own skills to empower those around us.

How martech professionals are spending their time

When looking at the job responsibilities, overlapped with the marketing tools martech teams are most frequently using, evidence points to just how much of our work is data-driven. Even Brinker noted in his presentation how much time martech teams spend in analytics platforms.

“I was really impressed,” said Brinker in reference to three of the four roles spending at least ten hours a week using an analytics solution.

Career Survey Martech Tools By Role

Per the data, the primary responsibilities being handled by martech teams across the board include:

  • Training and supporting marketing staff using martech.
  • Acting as the primary architect of the martech stack.
  • Researching and integrating marketing tools.
  • Operating marketing technology platforms.
  • Monitoring data quality in martech.
  • Designing and managing internal workflows and processes.

The one area where martech teams are still lacking? Security reviews. Overall, less than 20% of the survey respondents said that performing security reviews of marketing technology products were part of their role. This may be because the larger IT organization owns security issues. But, in light of privacy legislation like the GDPR and CCPA, this is a task more martech teams should incorporate into their responsibilities.

“Security really needs to be everyone’s concern,” says Scott.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Amy Gesenhues
Contributor
Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

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