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How to establish a new martech role

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How to establish a new martech role

Although I’ve spent most of my career in roles and functions adjacent to marketing technology, I’ve only been truly dedicated to martech during the past few years. I formally entered the martech space when I was asked to create a new role at my previous employer, Western Governors University (WGU). 

It took a while for my former boss and me to flesh out a job description and select a job title. That required researching various job postings to see what other companies were doing regarding what we had envisioned for my role. A few years later, I moved to my current gig at Zuora.  

Thankfully, my WGU job title — marketing technology manager — and description matched up with what Zuora was thinking. Nevertheless, persistent confusion about what “marketing technology” and “marketing operations” mean hints at some need to standardize martech role terminology.

At both WGU and Zuora, I’ve had to originate my martech maestro/orchestrator role. In addition to figuring out my duties and the associated skills, I’ve also had to help my colleagues become familiar with the new position. There are certainly some valid questions: What’s a marketing technology manager? What do they do? How do I interact with them?

This is no easy task. It requires support and help.

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Job title and description

At the time, it seemed like a great opportunity to select my job title and create my own job description at WGU, but it was challenging.  

That’s why I feel that martech job descriptions are still too nebulous given the growing maturity of the field. When considering what the employee and their employer want to accomplish with the new role, using Scott Brinker’s marketing operations job type framework is helpful – especially when considering if it’ll fulfill a T-shaped (jack of all trades) or I-shaped (specialist) function.

Read next: A closer look at MarTech role types and T/I-shaped individuals

Leadership backing

Perhaps a big key to success is leadership backing for the new role. Leaders should also assist in educating others about it.  

For instance, when a marketer is looking for a new technical tool, they should consult with the marketing technology manager, so they should be referred to the marketing technology manager. That referral educates and enforces the importance of the new martech practitioner.

That’s a great time to start showing the role’s value to their work. If the requester doesn’t have a solution identified yet, offering them a directory site like G2, Gartner Digital Markets, CabinetM or TrustRadius is a great way to show them that a marketing technology manager can quickly find viable options.

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The position is typically created after a marketing department has matured somewhat. In that case, the broader organization has likely also matured to establish some bureaucracy — for better or worse. 

Instead of simply picking a solution, appeasing Legal, and arranging payment, the marketer now faces numerous processes like IT security reviews, privacy evaluations, multi-step procurement processes, and stakeholder buy-in; buying and renewing technology is a lot more complicated than in the past. These are tasks that a marketing technology manager could take off of the marketer’s plate to focus on what they’re assigned and paid to do.


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RACI is a useful tool

A useful tool for establishing a new position and educating others about it is a RACI chart. RACI stands for: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. It usually lists different generic duties and tasks in the rows and different generic roles (martech manager, stakeholder, IT, etc.) in each column. In the cell that associates a duty or task with a role, one of the letters from the RACI acronym is listed to show what is expected of that role at that time.

While one can introduce complexity into the RACI framework, its beauty is tied to the fact that it is pretty easy to get an operational grasp of the concept. Thus, creating or interpreting a RACI chart doesn’t take a lot of effort.  

When creating a RACI chart for a martech role, it helps to group tasks under general categories — buying new tech, retiring tech, renewing contracts, researching solutions, etc. Not only does this help make the chart digestible, but it also helps people place tasks into context better.  

For instance, the same task may exist in different categories, but the RACI distribution may differ. When it comes to finding a new solution, a stakeholder will likely kick off the process while the marketing technology manager may kick off a renewal or optimization process.

Challenging but doable

It is challenging starting work in a new position, and there’s more complexity when originating that role at the organization. However, it is best not to proceed alone. Some frameworks can help guide job description drafting. Leadership should help and advocate for the new role. Further, tools like the RACI framework can help simplify a seemingly daunting process.  

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Given all of this, take input from the community instead of reinventing the wheel, which is unnecessary and can cause further confusion amongst practitioners.


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


About The Author

Steve Petersen is a marketing technology manager at Zuora. He spent nearly 8.5 years at Western Governors University, holding many martech related roles with the last being marketing technology manager. Prior to WGU, he worked as a strategist at the Washington, DC digital shop The Brick Factory, where he worked closely with trade associations, non-profits, major brands, and advocacy campaigns. Petersen holds a Master of Information Management from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Brigham Young University. He’s also a Certified ScrumMaster. Petersen lives in the Salt Lake City, UT area.

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Petersen represents his own views, not those of his current or former employers.


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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

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