We all spend time and effort in tracking the customer journey. We also work hard to identify any problems customers might experience when interacting with our companies and try to solve them quickly before they contemplate defecting to a competitor.
Historically these challenges have been addressed by different internal departments – sales, operations, customer services. But marketing also plays an essential role in helping each of these departments improve business processes and maintain company growth.
At a time when budgets are squeezed, and companies are having to fight harder than ever to succeed and to differentiate against the competition, marketing is the business-critical piece of the jigsaw that should be top of the agenda and outsource solutions can help.
The First Step in This Discussion is to Look at a Simple Customer Journey:
Traditionally:
- Sales work in sections 2,3,4,6,7
- Operations works in sections 4,5,6
- Customer services work in sections 4,5,6,7
A business has the existing departments working across all these sections except part 1. Typically, that is where most organisations view where marketing works, alongside helping the sales sections and to make sure everything looks the same.
The Truth is Marketing Works Across All Sections!
So Why is it That Marketing Isn’t Always Given the Recognition It’s Due?
For many organisations, with long-established sales, operations and customer service departments, the assumption is that they’ve already got marketing covered by staff working in these areas. They fail to see why they need a separate marketing function. Those companies that do have a dedicated marketing resource, tend to limit their activity to advertising, branding or outreach campaigns.
Even those that are keen to take a more strategic approach to marketing consider it to be a complicated and expensive exercise. A fully functioning marketing department can employ researchers, strategists, designers, writers, tech specialists, account/customer service managers, sales enablers, and so on.
Quite simply, the cost of hiring all of these people can be high, resulting in a lack of investment, many departments being understaffed or not fully equipped to achieve the desired results.
This raises the question:
Why Not Outsource Marketing?
Typically, an outsourced marketing department can save an organisation both time and money, creating a highly efficient work environment.
Even when an organisation has a marketing department, The Digital Connection Agency (The DCA) believes that outsource marketing services are vital contributors to success.
Why? Marketing has changed dramatically over the years, and it’s easy to see that digital transformation is the catalyst for this change. The internet has “nichified” marketing into a myriad of specialities. Online marketing, inbound marketing, SEO, SMM, SEM, content marketing, mobile design, web analytics, e-commerce, blogging etc. … There are a dazzling array of marketing strategies, tactics and specialities that have come to the fore.
So the next question to ask is:
Are You Willing to Secure Additional Headcount to Employ Specialists, or Would it be Easier to Outsource What You Need, When You Need it?
The answer is simple: buy-in resources on an ‘as needed’ basis.
Deciding what to outsource and to whom, might seem like a complicated or daunting process if you haven’t outsourced before but it doesn’t need to be.
For each marketing speciality, a company needs to ask:
- How do I start evaluating what the company needs from marketing?
- Which specialities will fill the needs of this company’s marketing demands?
- How much time will it take to implement?
- How much will it cost?
- When will the company see results?
- Who in the organisation can do this?
- Do they have the time to do it?
- Should the company do this in-house or outsource it?
Challenging questions to answer, but they aren’t impossible.
The answer is simple: buy-in resources on an ‘as needed’ basis.
Deciding what to outsource and to whom, might seem like a complicated or daunting process if you haven’t outsourced before but it doesn’t need to be.
For each marketing speciality, a company needs to ask:
- How do I start evaluating what the company needs from marketing?
- Which specialities will fill the needs of this company’s marketing demands?
- How much time will it take to implement?
- How much will it cost?
- When will the company see results?
- Who in the organisation can do this?
- Do they have the time to do it?
- Should the company do this in-house or outsource it?
Challenging questions to answer, but they aren’t impossible.
Here Are a Few Things to Consider When Trying to Answer Those Questions:
New technologies, faster communications, and software innovations are exploding at a rapid pace. No one employee, or even a group of employees, can keep up with these new concepts, much less learn and implement them. Yet, the competitive environment dictates that a company must keep up. The marketing agency has world-class expertise (or can shoulder the burden of hiring them) to develop creative strategies, which allows a company to fulfil its mission as an outsource service provider.
Being the first company to bring a new product or service to the marketplace successfully provides a significant competitive advantage. This surprise advantage forces the competition into scrambling around playing catch-up. Not only is the company generating revenue while the competition is “on its heels”, but a company’s resources are also now dedicated to innovating the next higher level of products or services to keep the competitive advantage. Using outsource solutions like a marketing agency can provide the resources to deliver that competitive advantage by providing a company’s products and services to a targeted audience cost-effectively and quickly.
Conclusion
As an agency, we offer the tools, and the expertise to support, run and build the marketing function for any given business.
The DCA model is simple. We work with your brand, company or team to provide outcomes. To do this, we split our time into three types of job:
- Tasks
- Utilising our Tasks approach is an easy way to get the support you need. The DCA bills by the day for Tasks but all tasks are fixed costs there won’t be add-ons.
- Projects
- Do you have a more significant project you need doing? The DCA can take projects of any size on. We settle on a project cost, and then we deliver.
- Long-term Commitments
- Are you thinking about needing long-term marketing support? The DCA can provide that. Typically, the DCA will roll out an initial retainer of £1000. Allowing us to see if we are the right fit for your goals.
