Director of Marketing Operations (DMO)

A new position is showing up in the ranks of more and more marketing departments: the DMO, or Director of Marketing Operations. This position isn’t meant to take the place of the CMO – on the contrary, it’s usually CMOs who are proposing this new title as a way of linking upper leadership and daily operations more effectively. If you’re in the business of selling to marketing decision-makers and not quite certain what the DMO is responsible for – or how to make them your ally – here’s a crash course on what you need to know.

Down to Details

There are many arguments for a DMO, but what they often come down to is that upper management requires a new role: The CMO is focused on the broad picture, lower management is focused on operations, and there’s no reliable funnel to move and define important details about company marketing to the top. In this way, the DMO operates as a master of the details, able to take all the marketing data produced and synthesize it for the CMO or use it to make various decisions. If this role is not being fulfilled in a company, marketing leadership decisions will not align with marketing operations, which is how damaging mistakes get made. The good news? If a company you’re selling to has a DMO, they likely have a better handle on their pain points, analytics, attribution and other details that allow you to qualify their needs more efficiently. They can require less hand-holding on the part of vendors, and make valuable business partners who come to the table with productive input.

 The Ability to Connect Marketing to ROI

Ideally, the perfect, sleepless CMO would be able to handle all ROI activities and defend marketing budgets with ease. But CMOs often have their hands full with other decisions: They want to see ROI data, but they don’t want to oversee its creation and accuracy. This is why a Director of Marketing Operations can prove useful: They have greater capabilities to tie marketing efforts to ROI. This includes understanding what aspects of marketing to measure, what goals require the greatest focus, what metrics to use, and how to present data in the boardroom so that the marketing budget can be effectively displayed and defended.

 Sales and Marketing are (Believe It or Not) Different

It’s time to talk about alignment: company leadership varies greatly when it comes to having a CMO, CSO, DSO, DMO, or none of the above. But lack of proper communication between sales and marketing is such a perennial problem that it tends to exist no matter what chairs are present. A Director of Marketing Operations is in an excellent position to find these communication problems, narrow down the issues, and mandate a solution. For that reason, the DMO can also be a powerful consensus-builder in decisions affecting multiple departments.

New Adoption Decisions for Marketing

Adopting a new platform, medium, campaign or deal is a big deal for marketing, and as ground-level workers know, it takes a significant amount of planning and rollout scheduling. Who is in the best place to understand exactly what new tools marketing needs, how much they should cost, and how quickly they should be implement? Hint: It’s often not the CMO. Quick to realize this, CMOs are creating DMO positions that have a better view of day-to-day marketing work, and can hand adoption decisions based on their practical, budget-oriented viewpoint. As a result, there’s less chance of wasting time or money when the need to adapt arrives. For sales folks, this may appear to present a challenge of sorts, but in reality, the DMO is someone who won’t waste your time. Their ability to evaluate possibilities with both the broad strokes and finer details in mind is an asset.

If you’re looking to connect with Marketing Operations decision-makers like the DMO, Winmo is a great place to start your prospecting. Request a demonstration.