GTM Operations (GTM Ops) vs Marketing Operations (MOPs): What’s the difference?

Marketing operations has been around for over a decade. The shepherd of marketing tools, technology, and data - marketing operations is heavily involved in marketing automation and related tooling. Typically the purchases and administrators of marketing tools. Incredibly important function to a smooth-running marketing team. But, at the end of the day, mostly focused on serving the marketing team. The sales of course has Sales Operations and more recently customer success as Success Operations.

GTM Operations has been on the rise since 2023. Leading startups such as Mural, Bill.com, Vercel, and Carta have all adopted GTM Operations functions (or similar scope such as GTM Technology or GTM Systems).

Fueled by shifts from “grow at all costs” to efficient growth, companies have started to consolidate independent teams - Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, and Success Ops, under a unified team called GTM Operations. The purpose of this team is the same as independent teams - tools / technology, strategy, data, administration, and more - however often with more collaboration across the lifecycle and less management overhead.

Sangram Vajre of GTM Partners often says “You don’t have a sales problem. You don’t have a marketing problem. You don’t have a success problem. You have a GTM problem.” I think this is true for Operations as well. Unified teams can better support each other and therefore the business.

In short, the difference between GTM Operations and Marketing Operations is that GTM Operations looks across the entire customer lifecycles – marketing, sales, and success – whereas Marketing Operations is mostly focused on the marketing component of operations.

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