Marketing isn’t suffering from a lack of tools or ideas — it’s suffering from operational entropy. Every new tool, tactic and workflow adds complexity, and complexity compounds friction. As your system grows, so does the drag. In my career, I’ve seen several reasons for these failures or lackluster results, but so often it’s not a failure of strategy, ideas or tools. It’s simply a law of systems.
The velocity of today’s business growth is littered with chaos (rightfully so), and the only way to scale without chaos is to find and fix the bottlenecks that build up behind the scenes. Here are three MOps bottlenecks you need to fix now before they slow everything down.
1. Stakeholder bottlenecks
Stakeholder bottlenecks often seem like a people problem and are among the most frustrating to solve. They usually show up in the form of:
- Slow or unclear approval processes: Your content is ready, but it’s stuck in legal or with a VP who only checks email on Fridays.
- Lack of education or buy-in: When stakeholders don’t understand the campaign goals, targeting or martech, they delay decisions or change direction midstream. This often happens when they know a tactic or tool, but lack real insight into how it works.
- Reactive reporting demands: Suddenly, someone wants to see last quarter’s results broken out by 17 segments, and your ops team spends three days cobbling it together manually. Or worse, asking for campaign performance tracking things you never knew they wanted before the campaign launched.
Real-world example
A recent project ground to a halt because of cybersecurity requirements and email verification for the data we intended to use. On the surface, it seemed simple. But behind the scenes, we were tangled in technical approvals and risk policies.
Gaining buy-in for the required tools and systems took more than explanation. We needed a step-by-step visual diagram highlighting the bottlenecks and making the pain points visible. That transparency opened the door for better dialogue, and now that part of the campaign is gaining momentum without costly delays.
How to address stakeholder bottlenecks
- Setting clear approval SLAs for each campaign phase.
- Including key stakeholders early, with visual summaries or short briefs.
- Educating executives on the why, not just the what, behind campaign and data decisions.
- Show and tell (don’t just tell). Don’t be afraid to ask why.
- Check for understanding, don’t just assume.
Dig deeper: 6 marketing team silos you need to break down, and how to do it
2. Tech bottlenecks
You’ve got the people aligned — now the tech stack is the problem. AI and new tools mean the problem isn’t going anywhere. The sooner you fix these bottlenecks, the smoother everything runs.
Unfortunately, martech stacks are a patchwork of tools, workflows and integrations at best and a Frankenstein of technology at worst. Marketing and sales tech stacks rely on everything working just right. But:
- APIs or integrations break or falter: A platform update disconnects your HubSpot sync, and no one notices until a campaign’s leads aren’t registering. Or a Zapier connection throws errors, but the person responsible is on PTO for a week.
- Dirty or incomplete data: Missing UTM parameters, outdated lifecycle stages or mismatched personas lead to irrelevant personalization and bad reporting. There are several times in my career that we have all the campaign criteria, assets and details nailed down — but the data is the issue slowing it down.
- Manual data dependencies: If you need someone to export a CSV every week to build a report, you’re one PTO day away from flying blind. Know what you need to report on in advance, and this gets a lot easier. I always ask, “What do you hope to see once this campaign is live?”
Real-world example
I’ve seen teams assume “HubSpot integrates with Tool XYZ” — but what “integrate” means varies wildly depending on the technical fluency of the team involved. One team may assume it’s bidirectional sync, while another may expect real-time custom object syncing.
In one instance, no one had clarified:
- Which direction the data should flow.
- What the second-order effects might be.
- Who was accountable for managing that flow.
That uncertainty led to broken automations and gaps in reporting.
Make sure to ask these three simple questions before green-lighting any integration:
- What do we need this to do?
- Who can validate that it’s technically possible and test our assumptions?
- Who will monitor and maintain it?
How to address tech bottlenecks
- Build alerts for key integrations and data flows. If you’re on HubSpot Enterprise, you can be notified of workflow errors (a feature I love!) instead of relying on the needs review tab.
- Run quarterly QA audits on lead capture, workflows and attribution paths.
- Invest in centralized documentation of tech connections and logic flows — MarketingOps.com has excellent resources to do much of this.
Dig deeper: Why the future of marketing depends on a smarter MOps function
3. Process bottlenecks
Once you’ve aligned the people and the tech, what’s left is often the messiest piece: process. Even with great tools and intelligent people, broken or fuzzy processes create friction:
- No clear handoffs: For instance, Marketing builds the email, but who’s testing it and running QA? Sales owns the lead, but who’s following up? And what templates should they use? Product data is featured in the email, but who is responsible for ensuring accuracy?
- Duplicated or shadow workflows: One person is using Slack, another is in Asana and ops is using spreadsheets. Nobody sees the whole picture. Regardless of tech stack, this is an issue plaguing organizations. It’s never 100% solved and always constantly moving, but it is critical to have a source of truth (SOT) for all campaign-related planning and performance.
- Undefined campaign planning structure: Campaigns get kicked off in meetings, but no one captures dependencies, timelines or roles. Create standard SOPs and review them twice a year.
Dig deeper: 5 ways AI can save MOps hours every week
Real-world example
In a recent campaign, we generated a substantial volume of MQLs that sales would accept as SQLs once they acted on them. But something wasn’t working — leads were slipping through the cracks.
Even with training, not all reps knew where to look in the CRM. To solve it, we built a daily report that surfaced MQLs that had been handed off but not acted on within the SLA. That visibility led to productive coaching and follow-up, and performance improved dramatically.
How to address process bottlenecks
- Map your campaign lifecycle start to finish: idea → live → report.
- Assign clear roles. (The RACI model works well here.)
- Use shared templates and centralized campaign briefs to avoid rebuilds from scratch.
Operational excellence is a competitive advantage
Most teams obsess over the message, the design and the offer — and they should! But even the best campaigns will falter if your operational foundation is shaky. If you want to improve overall performance, audit your ops layer first.
- Where are you consistently delayed?
- What breaks repeatedly?
- Where does your team experience friction?
Creating campaigns has never been easier with AI tools and automation platforms everywhere. But execution without friction? That’s still rare, and that’s your edge.
Operational excellence isn’t just important; it’s mission-critical. The teams solving today’s stakeholder, tech and process bottlenecks will outperform tomorrow.
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