The Good, The Bad, And The Beauty Of B2C Marketing Operations
The good: 93% of VP+ B2C marketing and advertising decision-makers say they have a formal marketing operations function, according to Forrester’s Q1 2025 CMO Pulse Survey.
The bad: Many B2C marketing operations functions are usually limited to a handful of marketing disciplines (or sometimes just a single discipline). For example, in Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2025, B2C marketing operations functions are mainly responsible for marketing technology and strategy management (top-ranked response, at 54%), followed by planning and budget management (second place, 42%).
The beauty: For B2C marketing operations functions to mature, they must shift from tactical problem-solvers to integral business decision-makers that enable all of marketing — and not just a portion of marketing. Consider that B2C marketing operations functions can be responsible for a wide range of critical marketing elements and disciplines across:
- Planning and budgeting management: aligning cross-functional revenue planning with marketing investments
- Customer data strategy and management: owning marketing data strategy, stewardship, and team enablement
- Creative development and asset management: driving creative ideation to execution for marketing content
- Marketing technology strategy and management: establishing a martech vision and guiding roadmap development
- Measurement and analytics management: overseeing metrics interpretation, analysis, insight, and forecast modeling
- Process design and agile marketing management: enabling organizational agility and adaptability
- Marketing operations team design: designing the marketing operations function to ensure that the function can accomplish its responsibilities (note that this isn’t a job for the marketing operations function itself)
Where to begin? If you’re a Forrester client, be sure to check out our latest tools, adapted from our B2B marketing research, to help you further your B2C marketing operations function.
- Start by taking Forrester’s B2C Marketing Operations Maturity Assessment to determine your maturity level: beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
- Then dive deep on each discipline and the range of tactical to more strategic responsibilities within each element in our report, Introducing The B2C Marketing Operations Range Of Responsibilities Model.
- Follow on by drafting a marketing operations charter using our template from How To Draft Your B2C Marketing Operations Charter.
More questions? Schedule a guidance session or inquiry with us!
