Running Martech Like a Product: Mike Rizzo on MOPs, AI & Strategic Credibility

ICYMI: Mike Rizzo on why marketing operations must lead the AI era.

“Modern marketing doesn’t happen without technology, and someone needs to run that technology like a product.”

In this episode of 10 Minute Martech, Mike Rizzo, CEO and Founder of MarketingOps.com, makes a clear case for why marketing operations professionals are at a turning point, and why AI might finally give them the strategic recognition they’ve long deserved.

Mike doesn’t sugarcoat the problem: marketing ops is still too often viewed as the team that “makes the tools work,” rather than the team that translates business strategy into scalable, operational reality. AI, he argues, creates both risk and opportunity and without strong ops leadership, organizations are about to repeat the same mistakes they made during the martech explosion of the last decade.

If you care about ROI, alignment or not drowning in disconnected tools, this episode is essential listening.

Mike’s Big Idea: Marketing Ops Should Run the Stack Like a Product

Mike’s core belief is simple but radical in practice: your go-to-market tech stack should be managed like a product, not a pile of tools.

That means:

• Clear ownership
• Defined outcomes
• Lifecycle thinking
• ROI accountability
• And alignment across marketing, sales and customer success

Without this mindset, AI adoption accelerates fragmentation instead of impact.

Mike Rizzo’s 10 Memorable Moments on 10 Minute Martech

1. Marketing Ops Isn’t Seen as Strategic—Yet

What keeps Mike up at night is credibility. Marketing ops professionals should be strategic leaders, but perception hasn’t caught up to reality.

2. Martech Created the Role and the Problem

The martech boom created marketing ops out of necessity, but positioned them as implementers of “magic tools,” not strategic translators between business and technology.

3. AI Is the Inflection Point

AI gives ops professionals a chance to step forward as leaders who understand both how tools work and how businesses actually operate.

4. Data Still Sits at the Center of Everything

Mike is blunt: AI doesn’t fix bad data. Ops teams who understand data flows, governance and architecture become indispensable in an AI-first world.

5. We’ve Seen This Movie Before

Low barriers to entry and hype-driven buying are recreating the same silos that martech consolidation was supposed to solve. History is repeating itself faster than ever.

6. ‘Anyone Can Buy a Tool’ Is a Real Risk

With consumption-based pricing and credit-card purchases, teams can spin up AI tools instantly, often without coordination or oversight.

7. RevOps Didn’t Fully Solve the Problem

Mike calls out an uncomfortable truth: in many organizations, RevOps became SalesOps 2.0. Leaving true orchestration unfinished.

8. Slow Down to Speed Up

Mike’s advice is counterintuitive but clear: begin with the end in mind. Small, intentional bets tied to ROI beat rushed experimentation every time.

9. Consumption-Based Pricing Changes Buying Behavior

AI tools feel easier to adopt, but costs can spiral fast without clarity on triggers, usage volume and desired outcomes.

10. AI Makes Ops More, Not Less, Important

As automation increases, organizations need people who can design systems, connect tools and think long-term. That’s marketing ops at its best.

Mike’s Martech Hot Take

AI will widen the gap between organizations that treat their tech stack as a product and those that treat it as a shopping list. Without ownership and strategy, AI adoption will accelerate chaos. With strong ops leadership, it becomes a competitive advantage.

Mike’s Recommended Reading List

• Scott Brinker
• Frans Riemersma
• Daryl Alfonso
• Martech.org
• MarketingOps.com community and events

• Watch on YouTube

• Listen on Spotify

• Find it on Apple Podcasts

Next Up in the 10 Minute Martech ICYMI Series!

Elizabeth Edwards, Founder & CEO of Volume Public Relations, joins Sara to explore how AI, affective science and rising expectations around trust are reshaping modern marketing, and why credibility matters more than ever in an era of generative search and offsite reputation signals.

Full Transcript: Mike Rizzo

Here’s the full transcript to keep you transfixed. Every insight, every quote, unedited and unforgettable.

Sara Faatz: I’m Sara Faatz, and I lead community and awareness at Progress. This is 10 Minute Martech.

Mike Rizzo: These new models should force people to stop and think about, well, where do we really think this is going to make an impact? Which is a really valuable exercise for the organization that’s buying the tool, because then they’re going to try to tie it back to ROI and say, hey, I’m going to make a bet. I’m going to put a stake in the ground. This is what I want to implement.

Sara Faatz: That’s Mike Rizzo, CEO and founder of MarketingOps.com. Let’s get started. Well, Mike, thanks so much for joining today. Let’s start with, what’s keeping you up at night right now?

Mike Rizzo: Marketing operations professionals are not seen as strategic leaders, and they should be. That’s predominantly what keeps me up at night. It’s establishing this credibility for them.

Sara Faatz: Why do you think that is? Why do you think marketing ops people aren’t seen that way?

Mike Rizzo: I think it’s sort of propagated by the sort of like where we’ve come from as a tech ecosystem, right? This like explosion of marketing operations technology that happened, or sorry, marketing technology that happened in general over the last decade plus sort of created this environment for marketing operations professionals, at least in the B2B sector to sort of like be born. And they stumbled and fumbled their way through just like implementing things that were sort of sold to us as magic. And then they became the people that just like make that tool work. For whatever reason, that shift hasn’t really happened yet where everybody takes a step back and go, hey, wait a minute. Modern marketing doesn’t happen without technology. And someone needs to run the technology and someone needs to be able to translate the language of our business to the technology. And that’s not just somebody that’s hitting send on emails, right? That’s like a fundamentally different role. And for whatever reason, we just haven’t seen a full shift in the perception of what these professionals are capable of.

Sara Faatz: With that profession being clearly misunderstood right now, how do you think AI plays into that? Is that making the problem worse or is it, do you think it’s an opportunity or a turning point to show the true value of marketing ops professionals?

Mike Rizzo: Yeah, yeah. I’m glad you asked the latter part of that. I think this is a tremendous opportunity for, it’s really actually for the practitioners themselves to step up and take a leadership role in saying, hey, I actually know how these technologies work. And I also know how your business works. And now I know how to use AI to get the tools to do the things that I want it to do. And if you don’t know how the tool works, which you don’t, because that’s not your job, you’re going to struggle a little bit with the way in which AI can interact with your ecosystem. And then really, it all comes back down to the data, right? And we’ve all been talking about this data. I almost hate the word data now because it’s said too much. But really, it’s a tremendous unlock opportunity for leaders to turn to the practitioners who know how these tools work to say, how do we go faster? What do we need? What are the requirements? And let them go do the things that they’re really, really good at and provide strategic value to an organization with AI as sort of the unlock. I think what’s also troubling about this era that we’re in is we’ve seen this movie before. And unfortunately, when all the technology exploded onto the landscape, we rapidly saw a new sort of emergence of different categories, right? So there was Martech, and then there was SalesTech, and now there’s CSTech and all these other things. And we created these silos of technology sectors to try to address very specific pain points. And then RevOps was born. And RevOps was like, oh, yeah, this is the orchestration layer.

Mike Rizzo: It’s going to connect all these things. It should be those three functions at a minimum, MOPS, SOPS, and CSOPS. And it was like the answer to who is running this tech stack, right? Right. Lo and behold, RevOps actually is just SalesOps 2.0. In most cases, I would say 98% of the time, that ends up being the truth, which is frustrating for a lot of us, but still tends to be the truth. And yet here we are, AI is on the scene, and it’s actually more accessible than previously because the buyers before had to go through some crazy hurdles to be able to pay for an entire annual subscription and all this other stuff. And now today, a sales rep can whip out their credit card personally or even professionally if they have an expense budget and just buy a Clay tool to go do enrichment and stuff. And it’s creating these silos again, in fact, completely disconnected environments where the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. And again, for the organizational leaders out there, that’s a really big problem. You need somebody to run your GoToMarket tech stack like a product. And that’s what we’re working hard on here at MarketingOps.com is certifying our members to say, I am a certified GoToMarket product manager, and I’m going to help you navigate this landscape and create alignment between all of these capabilities that we have access to across all of the AI and all of the SaaS products that we bought. But it’s just like, why haven’t we learned from our past experience? Why are we seeing this happen again? It’s like crazy to me.

Sara Faatz: How much of it do you think is that people are trying to move so quickly? Do you think that that’s playing into it? Like, I don’t know if you’re seeing this, but we see a ton of people like, I don’t want to say panic, because that’s not the right word. But there’s this excitement, but there’s also a fear that they’re going to miss out if they don’t do something. So everybody’s trying to not just get on the AI train, but accelerate their business because of it. But I think it’s causing a lot of, at least in my opinion, it’s causing a lot of what you’re experiencing. And then I think you also just have people not learning from their mistakes. But I’m curious what you’re thinking there.

Mike Rizzo: Yeah, yeah. No, it’s a good question. There’s a couple of things, right? Unfortunately, there’s a lot of layoffs in the B2B sort of SaaS and tech sector in general. They laid off a lot of senior talent. And I think what we’re experiencing is it’s just so easy to get started. And there is sort of a FOMO thing happening. And so we do need the more senior talent and our board members and our executives to remember that there are people that have seen this movie before, and they can help you see around a corner that you aren’t aware of yet. But the reality is, I’ve used this talk track so many times that I almost feel like I’m just like beating on the drum and nobody’s even hearing the beat anymore. But begin with the end in mind, folks. The other thing that I say, I borrowed it from the movie, aim small, miss small, or slow down to speed up. These new models should force people to stop and think about, well, where do we really think this is going to make an impact? This idea of consumption-based pricing and stuff is completely changing the game for people. It feels a lot more accessible, and it is in a lot of ways, but it also can get out of hand really, really quick. And that requires you to slow down and really think about how you want to implement it, which is a really valuable exercise for the organization that’s buying the tool. Because then they’re going to try to tie it back to ROI and say, hey, I’m going to make a bet. I’m going to put a stake in the ground. This is what I want to implement. Anyway, sorry, I’m rambling, but I think it’s exciting.

Sara Faatz: Yeah, it is exciting. And I think we have mutual friends in Scott Brinker and Franz Riemersma, and they released back in May, I think, their Martech map and State of Martech. And there were 15,000 some odd pieces of marketing technology. That is insane, right? And the biggest growth from that came from AI tools, right? So when you stop and think about that for a second, even if you say it’s easy for everybody to grab, how do you know that you’re even using the right tool? What are some of the unintended consequences of implementing that tool? So to your point, you can pause and think with the end in mind and still be way ahead of the game. Actually, you will be ahead of the game if you actually take that approach, right? Because if you implement something and haven’t thought it through, there are some risks in that, right?

Mike Rizzo: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I had this wonderful conversation with a community member of ours. She had posed a question in one of our Slack channels about purchasing an AI solution. And the long and the short of this is it’s incredibly difficult for this individual to figure out how to buy. We’re very used to being able to buy on a subscription basis and just have access to all the tools and it created a lot of bloat. We talk a lot about consolidation, getting ROI out of our tech stack and all that stuff. Well, the consumption-based pricing is going to change that for people, right? A lot of the AI models are built on this or AI tools, rather. And so again, it’s really slowing down, being very, very intentional about, okay, we’ve decided, by way of example, we’ve decided perhaps that our organization wants to do an outbound approach to high intent visitors. And so at which point do we want LLMs to step in and enrich data and equip our team with the right type of outreach message? Is it at the point of ingest when they visit our website on the very first visit? Or is it after they’ve watched three or four of our videos or downloaded an ebook? There’s very different trigger points, in which case the volume can go from very large to very small. And it’s like this really difficult exercise to go through. And this individual’s going, like, I don’t even know where to begin with this thing, right? Like, I don’t have the time for this. And so it comes back to this, like, resourcing problem of, like, you’ve got these great experts who want to solve this problem for you, but you need to equip them with the right resources and people, like humans, to go solve what AI can help you scale. And so it’s a really exciting time to be in Martech.

Sara Faatz: Right. No, I love that. That’s great. So let me ask you, where do you go? You mentioned your Slack channel, and we’ll definitely make sure that we put a link to that for anybody who’s listening who’s a marketing ops professional. It’s a fantastic area. So if people haven’t joined, they absolutely should. But where else do you go for inspiration or information?

Mike Rizzo: Where else do I go for inspiration or information? I do follow some other leaders in our space. You mentioned Franz and Scott Brinker, of course. Those are natural folks to follow. They’ve been pillars in our community for quite some time. Daryl Alfonso is an individual that I follow as well. He’s involved in our community. And then I’m largely attending these events, right? These various local meetups and things. Some of them are ours for our community. Others are put on by, gosh, what is it? The Marketing AI Con, MAICON. Those types of groups, I’m trying to insert myself in as many of those places as I can. Martech.org is often full of great information as well. So I tend to try to pick up on some of their content.

Sara Faatz: That’s great. And I know you talked about events. You run a great Mopsapalooza. I had a chance to go a couple years ago. It’s a fantastic event. Definitely check that out as well. Well, thank you so much, Mike. It’s been great talking to you today.

Mike Rizzo: Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And yeah, for those of you who haven’t heard of MarketingOps.com, we’d love for you guys to come check us out. I’m there. You can Slack me anytime or you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m floating around. So happy to be a part of the conversation.

Sara Faatz: Listeners, thanks for tuning in. Make sure you like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, I’m Sara Faatz, and this is 10 Minute Martech.