AMA: Observable Head of Growth Marketing, Erika Barbosa on Campaign Operations

First and foremost, the tools need to support your goals. You could have all the tools available, but they may not align with the desired business outcomes. Once you have aligned your goals and requirements and have a set strategy for foundational purposes, only then should you consider investing in additional tools. With that being said, here are a few examples for best-in-class campaign execution: Project management examples: Asana, Trello, or Monday.com Social media management examples: Hoots ...Read More

Based on my experience, campaign operations usually fall under marketing operations. However, this may largely depend on the stage of the business. For startups, it may make more sense to include this under demand generation until the company scales. For enterprises, it may be more appropriate to establish a dedicated campaign operations department. This team would focus solely on the coordinated execution of campaigns across all departments, ensuring deadlines are met, and tracking performance ...Read More

From my experience, campaign operations fall under marketing operations except with smaller teams such as startups. For example, I work at a startup and drive the majority of the campaign operations as they are needed for my programs. Since I have experience in this it actually works in my favor. For larger organizations, I’ve worked with MarOps teams where they define and execute what is needed and I am just informed. In this scenario, it allows campaign operations to be centralized and uniform ...Read More

I love this question. Oftentimes the question is what you should focus on, but what we should not focus on is equally important. I recommend not focusing on: Perfection. Perfection is probably one of your biggest enemies. This is both professionally and personally. Growth at all costs. Gone are the days of “growth at all costs”. We need to be smarter and be more results driven. Volume without quality. Similar to the concept of “growth at all costs”, volume without quality can put a company out o ...Read More

First and foremost, I believe it starts with clear goal setting. The goals and desired business outcomes should help drive the processes that need to be put in place. While it may sound simple, it is a powerful first step to document standard processes (e.g., campaign planning and tracking) and definitions. This essentially functions as your foundation for all other work. Another critical process is data and reporting. How will performance be measured? Is there buy-in across the marketing team? ...Read More

I highly recommend building rituals around campaign briefs, kickoff meetings, project check-ins, and retrospectives. Essentially, you'll want to consistently convey what is working and what isn't working on a regular cadence. This not only helps inform future strategies but also aids in developing organizational alignment and creating an effective feedback loop. It's also important to document these feedback loops for future use and to disseminate performance across the broader team. Separately ...Read More

Utilize your personas, jobs to be done, ideal customer profile, etc., as the basis for your research. Begin by documenting the goals you aim to achieve with this campaign. Based on these documented goals, determine the target audience that will drive the desired business outcome. Typically, you want to narrow down your target audience for the campaign to be most effective. If you attempt to reach everyone, you'll likely dilute the potential impact of the campaign. The rationale behind documentin ...Read More

First and foremost, I prefer to define how we are going to measure success. What does success look like? It's helpful to define the overarching goal, but I recommend getting everyone on the same page at the inception of the campaign regarding how that goal will be measured. You should also consider how long you'll run the campaign and whether that is a sufficient amount of time to gauge success. Furthermore, how will you track your pacing toward the goals of the campaign? Lastly, I would suggest ...Read More

I would start with historical data, if available. Based on past trends, you can identify your safe bets, as they have proven to be effective over time. Suppose you are in more of an experimentation phase. In that case, I would focus on identifying where your customers and prospects trust and prefer to get their information. Consider testing these channels with low-budget investments to see if you can generate positive signals that you could then double down on. I always like to go back to the po ...Read More

I recommend starting by modeling out the forecasted results. Once you have these estimates, you can better determine the contribution by each channel, which will help you allocate the percentage of spend accordingly. I would also consider reallocating the budget once you have data and a better understanding of performance. If a channel is not working, ideally, you should be able to shift the budget to a channel that is performing well. Lastly, you'll also want to consider how this is factored ac ...Read More