3 skills you need for a successful career in martech — Darrell Alfonso // Amazon Web Services

Quotes

• “I am the Global Marketing Operations Manager for Amazon Web Services and we are really a centralized team. I am part of ten differentmartech administrators that supports thousands of marketers, globally.” -Darell “The largest of the team is Marketo, it’s our main platform. To give you an idea of the size, there are 1200 active Marketo users across the globe working for AWS deployingcampaigns on a daily basis. The role that my team plays is supporting them with the tools that they need, the processes, teaching, training, and evaluating different types of tools to better execute at marketing and service our customers.” -Darell “So your role is essentially to provide the martech support for the 1200 people that are using martech tools to promote AWS. You are a marketing vehicle within the organization.” -Ben“I do think that there is a base level to get into MarTech as a career. For example, everyone needs to have a good understanding of data and of databases and how they work. A base level of understanding marketing, especially digital marketing and overall understanding of how sales and marketing work together as well as being able to just be organized.” -Darell “If you are working as a marketing operator, you have to know how a database works, the basic principles of marketing, and you have to be organized enough to get a campaign off the ground.” -Ben “The first principle is the affinity for business impact. Second is the ability to develop strong relationships both internally and externally because really it’s the people behind the marketing and the marketing technology that make the difference. The last one that I feel strongly about is excellent documentation skills.” -Darell “The big part that a lot of people miss about martech is that the point is to really enable marketers to automate processesand in order to do that, they need to have a good understanding of what the technology/tool is, how it fits in the overall martech stack and how to utilize it to the best of their ability.” -Darell “One of the differentiating factors in Amazon’s culture is, during meetings we are not allowed to use PowerPoint. We actually have to create a six-page document about what the meeting is about or what the project or the goal is about. For the first 15 minutes of an hour-long meeting, everyone actually reads the document in silence and then the discussion starts afterward.” -Darell “Until I started to participate and write my own narrative, I found just how helpful the documentation process is for two reasons: One is, it actually clarifies your own thinking really quickly and you’re not really able to hide the important decision-making points behind nice, flashy visuals. Often times you find quickly that you can challenge your own thinking by trying to put it on paper.” -Darell“The second piece why documentation is important is it quickly allows everyone, all stakeholders to get on the same page and to have all of the relevant information so you can actually participate in productive decision-making or brainstorming discussion.” -Darell “The process or the exercise of going through and listing out all these different points, I think is extremely beneficial.” -Darell “This one comes from Scott Brinker, and there’s this pyramid of marketing technology which is people, processes, and technology. I think of developing relationships in two different ways. One is internal, to actually forward the programs and the martech that you are implementing and developing relationships externally, with the right consultants or firms to help you with the more complex integrations.” -Darell “I had a conversation with the Global Head of Market Strategy at Salesforce. He analyzed 16,000 companies if I remember correctly, and the number one trait for organizations that are successful is they have executive buy-in. I thinkit speaks to what you are talking about getting everybody on the boat, and getting them to row in the same direction is one of the most challenging parts of the success in marketing and martech solutions.” -Ben “You actually have to have everyone on the same page and that is very much a relationship-driven challenge.” -Ben “I think what separates the really good martech professionals from people that are just doing the job is the sort of trying to guide and strategically manage all of the marketing technology toward a positive business outcome.” -Darell “I think this is the biggest challenge of martech. There are so many tools and the technology can be so sophisticated. It seems that there is an endless list of potential for optimization, opportunities, and tools that you can implement to try to build your stack and optimize it and it can be overwhelming.” -Ben“We have something called the Amazon Leadership Principles and there’s 14 of them. At first, I thought it was some sort of platitude thatwe put on the site but more and more I see leaders let those principles guide their decision-making.” -Darell “I think certifications go a long way especially nowadays when you are going to be competing with a lot of candidates that are looking for these coveted roles, it’s nice to have those golden stars on your resume.” -Darell