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

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? These two first steps help lay the foundation for all other processes that will be put in place.

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: Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer * Email marketing examples: Mailchimp, SendGrid, or Constant Contact * Customer relationship management (CRM) examples: Salesforce, HubSpot, or Zoho * A/B testing examples: Mutiny, Optimizely, or VWO This is by no means an exhaustive list. Depending on your go-to-market motion, you may also have tools for ABM, data visualization, analytics and other specific use cases.

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 for reporting. So from my perspective, this is determined by the size of the company and the capabilities of the individual.

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 across the campaign. I recommend assessing the needs of your organization based on your current stage and near-future goals. Then, consider restructuring the team as necessary to accommodate evolving needs during scaling.

The direction for this question is specific to your business. The degree of centralization and decentralization is based on your business's goals, the structure that is best suited for your business at a given time, and available resources. What I recommend is considering the support needed for your goals based on the current stage of your business. This will help guide what should and shouldn't be centralized, understanding that these considerations can and will change over time.

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 documenting these responses is to bring clarity and crispness to the process, fostering alignment across stakeholders from the campaign's inception.

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 point of understanding where your target audience likes to go for information. This approach is particularly helpful for being more prescriptive in channel selection.

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 of business nowadays. * No tracking, no campaign. Should you not launch a campaign if full tracking is not in place? How do you leave room for creativity while still being responsible with the budget?

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 building in rituals around kickoffs and retrospectives so that everyone understands what worked and what didn't.

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 across different geographies, if applicable to your organization.

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 but related, I am a big proponent of low-investment and time-bound experiments. In this scenario, once I have collected enough positive signals, I then use this data to inform a more fleshed-out campaign as I have the data to support it.