Build a in-house Marketo team

Huihsing_Kiang3 · ‎12-03-2018

Hi all,

I'm building an in-house Marketo team from scratch. Starting from early next year, we'll be expanding to support 5 divisions instead of 1. Currently, I have one specialist under me but I've been asked how many more I'll need with what kind of qualifications. For those managing or leading a Marketing Automation team in in-house, can you please advise how you structure your team and what talents do you keep in your team?

Thanks a lot!

Huihsing

Grace_Brebner3 · ‎12-03-2018

I recently discussed this at a customer engagement session in Auckland so I can share a slide on this topic...

Firstly, disclaimer - this isn't true for everyone and will vary depending on the structure of your team and organisation. But I can say that most of the super users I know meet most of this criteria. So it's a good starting point if you are looking to make a team of super users who are dedicated to Marketo, and not just one person to write emails, one person to handle logic, one person to handle reporting, etc. I call people who meet this description marketing automation unicorns - because they are rare and majestic creatures, and thus the image (which was actually a gif, but you can use your imagination there).

I've also been asked on the back of this whether I would prefer people who have past experience in Marketo or a fresh grad with this skill set. My honest answer is that I would prioritise these skills over past experience; I would rather train someone in the system from scratch who does have the right skills, than have someone with experience but not these skills. Having used Marketo doesn't automatically qualify you to be good at it, to be blunt.

If they've got these skills and the experience then I'd snap them up.

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Grace_Brebner3 · ‎12-03-2018

I agree with Jay; it's really important to have creative people in your team but without exception the people who I see doing the most bold, exciting and effective stuff with Marketo are the people with technical people either in the team or supporting it.

I don't think that every user must know how to code fluently, but fairly advanced HTML, CSS, Javascript and/or API skills is like the magic bullet skill that I really love to see in people. Generally I find that people who have some basic html understanding work better in the email/lp editor. Plus having the skill often speaks to having the right personality/mindset for picking up many of the complex parts of Marketo quickly.

I do think that people who are involved in the strategy and problem solving really benefit from understanding (again, if not being fluent in) velocity, APIs, etc, simply because they significantly broaden the solutions toolkit. Almost every time I've ever thought something couldn't be done in Marketo I've quickly been proven wrong with some of these features.

Practically speaking, I find that lots of day-to-day requests move faster when people in the team can do dev work themselves. Like many businesses, our dev teams are stretched thin and relying on them can slow things down. Honestly, I'm also nitpicky. Especially when it comes to templates. I know the Marketo syntax better than any of our in-house developers do, and while our developers are fantastic, they're really web developers. Email is still html, for sure, but it's really a different ball game to general web development - the rules are different, they're constantly changing, and it's just damn tricky. A lot of the time it's simply more efficient for me to handle as much of it myself as I can.

I would broadly think that you would need to be at a pretty large scale to have a dev resource exclusively dedicated to Marketo, thus why I think most of us find ourselves playing that role as required, or pulling in ad hoc external support as required. If you're not sure about whether this is required I'd personally consider looking at a Marketo partner who can provide this support as required until it becomes clear that the need is there for a dedicated role.

Jay_Jiang · ‎12-03-2018

If you don't have an in-house resource with coding skills, you will be limited in the kind of business problems you will be able solve. or just be able to solve at a slower pace if you decide to outsource.

Depending on how complex your martech stack is, getting the most out of web technologies nowadays usually does mean utilising APIs and webhooks, Marketo is no exception.