Why Modern Marketing Doesn’t Work Without Strong Marketing Operations
By Anne Neilan, Practice Director Marketing
For a long time, I never thought of myself as a “marketer.” I assumed marketing was all about brand, campaigns, and creative flair - the opposite of my analytical comfort zone. But as marketing has evolved, so has my understanding of what it requires. Modern marketing isn’t just creative; it’s also deeply operational.
Today’s marketers juggle data, technology, personalisation, compliance, and measurement - often simultaneously. None of that works without a strong marketing operations foundation. Once I came to this realisation, embracing my “marketer” identity suddenly made a lot more sense.
Marketing Operations: The Engine of Modern Marketing
Marketing operations is often misunderstood as “the backend” - the technical glue or admin layer behind the scenes. In reality, it's the engine room of high-performing marketing teams.
It’s the capability that ensures:
Your tech stack is integrated and stable
Systems communicate reliably, not just theoretically.
Required data for marketing campaigns is readily available
Customer data is usable, well-structured, and aligned to the needs of marketing execution
Personalisation lands the way it’s supposed to
Not as chaotic one-offs, but as a sustainable, scalable capability.
When these foundations are solid, marketing teams get to focus on strategy, creativity, and performance. When they’re not, teams drown in troubleshooting, manual work, and inconsistent customer experiences.
Where Businesses Often Go Wrong
Across organisations, the patterns of failure look surprisingly similar. Most issues aren’t caused by technology itself, but by how it’s implemented, governed, and adopted.
1. Buying new tech without supporting people and process
Brands invest in sophisticated tools but overlook the operational guardrails needed to make them work. Without clear ownership, enablement, and workflows, tools become expensive clutter rather than value drivers.
2. Prioritising personalisation before fixing data
Everyone wants advanced targeting, segmentation, and dynamic content - but few have the data discipline required to support it. Strong personalisation is impossible when data is inconsistent, incomplete, or poorly connected.
3. Underestimating the change management involved
Marketing operations is as much a people shift as a technical one. New processes require new habits, new roles, and new cross-team responsibilities. Without structured change management, even the best-designed solutions fail to gain traction.
Personalisation Is About Better Operations, Not More Tech
As businesses push deeper into personalisation, many assume the solution is more technology. In reality, personalisation simply exposes whatever operational weaknesses already exist.
If your data isn’t clean, personalisation amplifies the mess.
If your processes aren’t defined, personalisation adds more complexity.
If your platforms aren’t integrated, personalisation highlights every gap.
Strong marketing operations isn't a “nice to have” when scaling personalisation – instead think of it as the prerequisite that determines whether personalisation will actually work.
The Function That Turns Strategy Into ROI
Modern marketing is equal parts brand, data, and technology. But it’s marketing operations that bring those elements together into something that actually performs.
A strong marketing operations capability:
accelerates campaign delivery
reduces manual effort
improves customer experience consistency
increases the ROI of existing technology
gives marketers the confidence to innovate, not firefight
Without it, strategy rarely makes it into market effectively - and outcomes suffer quietly in the background.
This is why I’ve fully embraced marketing operations as core to marketing, not separate from it. It’s not the “boring backend.” It’s the infrastructure that makes modern marketing possible.