Marketing Operations, Sales Operations, CS Operations, Revenue Operations, Campaign Operations, Go-To-Market Operations, Go-To-Market Motions, Sales Motions, Go-To-Market engineering…
A long list of terms all trying to explain how customers are attracted and products are sold. Try searching online for any one of them and you’ll find definitions all over the place.
It’s tricky, because those terms try to explain how marketing, sales and customer teams operate or should operate. If that is not crystal clear to everyone involved, it can affect (marketing technology) decision making.
To make the right technology decisions, you need vision and clarity. Confusion needs to be avoided at all times.
So what does RevOps and GTM mean and how does it relate to marketing technology?
How it started: Marketing, Sales and CS Operations
In the early days of modern B2B go-to-market, every function ran its own playbook. Marketing focused on campaigns ( brand awareness, demand gen, events), Sales concentrated on outreach, pipeline building, and closing and Customer Success (CS) focused on customer satisfaction, onboarding, renewals, and upsell campaigns.
As more and more technology for Marketing, Sales and CS became available new teams were formed to manage the processes, tools and insights for each discipline: Marketing Operations (or Marketing Ops), Sales Operations and CS Operations.
What is Marketing Operations?
Marketing Operations (MOps) emerged as marketing’s answer to complexity. MOps teams owned campaign execution infrastructure: marketing automation platforms, data hygiene, campaign reporting, lead scoring, and funnel analytics. Their goal was to enable marketers to run programs at scale with process consistency and measurable outcomes.
What is Sales Operations?
Sales Operations (Sales Ops) focused on pipeline efficiency and sales productivity. They managed CRM systems, territory planning, forecasting, compensation models, and sales process governance. While MOps automated campaigns, Sales Ops streamlined selling processes.
What is CS Operations?
As Customer Success became a core B2B function, CS Operations followed. These teams designed processes and systems for onboarding, renewal tracking, adoption scoring, customer health dashboards, and expansion campaigns. CS Ops focused on customer retention and customer growth beyond the initial sale.
But the result of separate teams was a disconnected customer experience and an inability to measure impact across functions. It was easy for teams to operate in silos with their own team roles, tools, data, and KPIs. Marketing measured MQLs, Sales measured pipeline and revenue, and CS measured customer satisfaction and renewals.
The rise of RevOps
As organizations matured, leadership realized that fragmented operations meant fragmented data, disjointed customer journeys, and conflicting KPIs. Revenue Operations (RevOps) emerged as an integrated approach to unify Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, and CS Ops into a single function.
The goal of RevOps is to align all revenue-related functions to a single set of metrics, systems, and processes. Instead of separate operational silos, RevOps created a shared foundation for growth.
What is RevOps?
At its core, RevOps is the discipline of aligning people, processes, and technology across marketing, sales, and customer success around one goal: revenue. It provides the foundation for growth by standardizing data, harmonizing processes, and centralizing tech governance.
Where MOps, Sales Ops, and CS Ops optimized within each discipline, RevOps optimizes for revenue across disciplines.
Image source: https://www.sixandflow.com/marketing-blog/the-role-of-a-revenue-operations-manager
Go-To-Market versus RevOps
What is Go-To-Market (GTM)?
A Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy is how a company brings its products and services to market. It defines who you target (ICP, personas), how you reach them (channels), and how you engage and convert them (motions). GTM is the execution layer that sits on top of the RevOps foundation.
What are Go-To-Market (GTM) motions?
GTM motions are the structured ways an organization engages the market. Examples include:
- Inbound motion: capture and convert demand via content and campaigns.
- Outbound motion: proactive sales outreach into target accounts.
- Product-led growth (PLG): product adoption as the primary acquisition driver.
- Channel/partner motion: leveraging partner ecosystems.
- Account-based marketing (ABM): orchestrated, high-touch engagement of key accounts.
Companies may run multiple motions in parallel, and they evolve over time depending on strategy, market conditions, or growth stage.
RevOps & GTM: What it means for Marketing Technology
If there is one thing to keep remember about RevOps and GTM it is probably this: RevOps is the foundation; GTM motions are the layers built on top.
RevOps ensures consistent data, processes, and technology across Marketing, Sales, and CS.
GTM motions can only succeed if they run on top of this solid infrastructure.
Without RevOps, every GTM motion risks creating yet another silo with inconsistent data and disconnected tools.
Marketing Technology Foundations for RevOps and GTM
To support RevOps and GTM effectively, martech must be organized in two layers:
Martech Foundation Layer for RevOps:
- CRM as the system of record
- Marketing automation platform (MAP)
- CS/customer engagement system
- Data integration & governance (CDP, iPaaS, data warehouse)
- Analytics & BI layer
- Enablement tools (sales engagement, knowledge bases)
This layer is stable, shared, and aligned across Marketing, Sales, and CS. It doesn’t change every time the GTM strategy shifts.
Martech Motion layer for GTM on Top of RevOps Foundation
The martech motion layer is GTM-specific and depends on the combination of motions in use by your organization. Examples are:
- ABM platforms & intent data tools (for account-based motions)
- PLG analytics & in-app engagement platforms (for product-led motions)
- Partner management systems (for channel motions)
- AI tools for personalization, orchestration, or prospecting (depending on motion)
These are more flexible and can be swapped in/out depending on which GTM motion the organization prioritizes. They are layered on top of the RevOps foundation, not replacing it.
The table below lists a number of GTM motions and typical capabilities:
| GTM Motion | Characteristics | Example Typical Martech Capabilities |
|---|---|---|
| Product-Led | Self-service, low price, quick adoption, mostly freemium or free trials | Product Analytics, In-product engagement |
| Founder-Led | Content and promotion predominantly shared by the company founder | Podcast and video production and distribution, social content production and scheduling tools, publishing or newsletter platforms |
| Community-Led | Leverage customer groups to drive growth. | Community platforms, social media engagement, publishing or newsletter platforms |
| Inbound-Led | Demand and lead generation via content, search, social, events, referrals | Marketing automation, lead management, event and webinar tools, social media planning and creation, inbound personalizatoin |
| Outbound-Led | Active prospecting by SDRs | Prospect list building, enrichment, outreach automation and personalization, sales intelligence, intent/signal-based selling |
| Account-Based | Strategic focus on high value accounts | ABM targeting and DMU plays, intent/signal-based selling, Inbound personalization. |
| Partner-Led | Selling through partners | Partner Management and Enablement Portals |
| Direct to Consumer | Selling directly to consumers | Email, social, search with feed management and shop integrations |
| Marketplace-Led | Selling through platforms | Marketplace and product feed management |
| Retail-Led | Selling through physical stores and webshops | Omnichannel marketing and loyalty management |
| Subscription-Led | Customer access via monthly payments | Subscription management, retention, email marketing |
| App-Led | In-app sales | Push notifications, in-app analytics and testing |
| Hybrid | (combination of GTM motions) | (combination of capabilities) |
Attention points
RevOps is a logical evolution of combining marketing, sales en CS operations. It provides a structural backbone for growth while GTM motions are the flexible plays organizations run on top of that backbone. Marketing technology must reflect this dual structure: a stable, integrated foundation plus a modular GTM layer that can evolve with strategy.
When making technology decisions, make sure to keep the following in mind:
- Don’t confuse motion with foundation: Without a RevOps backbone, GTM experiments collapse under siloed data and inconsistent processes.
- Beware of tool explosion: Each GTM motion may require new tools, but without RevOps governance, the stack becomes fragmented.
- Adaptability is key: GTM motions and tactics change, but you martech foundations should not.
- Measure end-to-end: sucess requires consisten KPIs across Marketing, Sales and CS
- Culture and team align
It is certainly not easy, but if you get this right it will help your organization to scale predictably, adapt rapidly and to align around the customer.
