Marketing Operations is the Ugly Step Sister to Creative Marketing

Content Marketing, Creative Writing, Copyrighting, Graphic Design, Data Visualization.

These are the bells of the ball in terms of marketing. Everyone wants to talk about their creative and innovative ideas. But what happens after that? How do these magical ideas actually work?

That's the stuff I find so interesting - The Action.

Many people call the action steps marketing operations. It is exactly what it sounds like... the way we operate our marketing person, team, or department. All of the little processes we follow to be "on brand" and share consistent content goes into your marketing operations.

My work background has trained me to be very creative in finding solutions. From barter marketing with Broadway show tickets and community building with classical concert tickets to text message marketing, I've seen and tried quite a few marketing methods. People have always told me how creative I am, which is nice. In some ways, it was that feedback that led me into the world of marketing - it was a creative business.

Over the past 5 years, I've run my own small business in Austin, Texas (yeehaw!). The service offerings have ranged all over the realm of marketing, because that's what consultants often do. We offer whatever service we think we can until we figure out the thing we're best at doing, then we narrow the focus to that one or few things.

Professional Development Patterns

I noticed a pattern in my working style throughout the past 5 years of being in business - I really like things to be organized and make sense. While I thoroughly enjoy a great brainstorming session where we come up with creative solutions, one of the places where I shine is creating an actionable plan with those cool ideas. Despite people telling me how creative I am, I realized that my power actually comes from a sense of organizing the creative chaos.

If you're working in a marketing agency or something similar, you may notice the patterns of your coworkers. Many people working those agencies consider themselves to be "creatives" who are changing the world. This puts a weirdly big pressure on most of us. First of all, it is a strange way to think about yourself. Second, it creates an unrealistic expectation about what we can accomplish.

You are invited to pause today and think about your own patterns at work.
Do you enjoy coming up with big ideas and then walking away?
Or are you more interested in seeing something come to fruition?

If you're an action-taker like me, then you want to see the magic happen rather than walk away. Look into marketing operations and see if you'd like to explore professional development training in that area of expertise. There are businesses who really need marketing operations support, so you could genuinely contribute to others that way.

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When I'm not reading or ranting on Steemit, I lead operations at Beckmann Collaborative