5 Reasons to Justify Hiring A Digital Marketing Agency by Douglas Karr on Marketing Technology Blog

→ Bureaucracy –While the agency may cost more per hour than the employees do, the time spent focusing on the job at hand makes up for the difference.

→ Access –One simple reporting application we have that all of our clients love costs several thousand dollars per seat… but we purchase 20 seats and provide the reporting as part of our consultation package.

→ Results –If you hire a team, the employer is responsible for the hiring, training, monitoring, and possible firing of the employee. With a digital marketing agency, that’s their responsibility – not yours. If they don’t perform, you find another agency without all the headaches.

→ Efficiency – Because we develop strategies across clients at different stages in their sophistication, we’re able to test with one client and roll out the strategies to all of our clients.

→ Gaps –Hiring an agency provides you the opportunity to maintain your focus, but identify gaps that the agency can fill.

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Marketers are presented with an abundance of metrics. Some metrics measure marketing’s activities: How many marketing campaigns ran last quarter? How many hits did we get from our social marketing content? Who downloaded our app?  Other metrics are outcome based: What was the lead’s conversion rate? How many additional products did the customer leave the store with?  Marketers must understand how activity drives performance to show that the actions they are doing and demanding an increased budget for, is driving desired outcomes. If the connection can’t be made between the activity metric and performance outcomes defined by the strategy, then the metric, the activity, or both will need to be re-evaluated.  Not establishing these types of connections means that high profile company objectives like customer growth or retention won’t be linked to marketing efforts and, well…you’re gonna have a bad time.

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Excerpt...

"The facilitator will focus first on understanding why a system is being considered and the benefits expected for customers and/or prospects. Once these factors are understood, other points that should be addressed include:

-- >  Functional Impact: What impact will the new solution have on the marketing organization and existing processes? What new processes will be needed? Will there be a need for new staff? What impact will there be on other organizations within the company? Has that impact been communicated and committed to?

-- >  ROI: What ROI is required to yield success? In what timeframe does the ROI need to be achieved?

-- >  Risks: What risks are associated with the new solution? What are the risks if the new solution is not pursued?

-- >  Configurability: How flexible and easy to modify does the solution need to be?

-- >  Ease of Use: How easy is the solution to use? How do you want to access the solution (SaaS, private cloud, network)? How much resource availability do you have to maintain the application? What customer support do you need from the solution provider?

-- >  Analytics/Reporting: What type of reports do you need? How do you want to access reports?

-- >  Robustness: How many transactions do you need to process daily? How many do you need to process concurrently? How many users do you need to access the system?

-- >  Integration and Security: Do you need a solution that will integrate with existing solutions in the marketing stack? What are your security standards?"

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Digest...

Here are some points to consider when creating a sales enablement function in your B2B company, or when adding sales enablement responsibilities to current sales and marketing executives.

1. Have A Strong Understanding Of Your Company Culture And How It Impacts The Grouping Of Your Sales And Marketing Teams.

Start actively creating an amicable bond between the department heads and execs.  This may sound challenging, but sales effectiveness research shows that 72% of top performing sales organizations report having strong or outstanding teamwork already in place, so it’s clearly in your company’s best interest.

2. Hold A Sales Journey Pow-Wow.

Set up a comprehensive sales and marketing pow-wow when you’re re-organizing the sales enablement process. Sit down both marketing and sales in one room, and have both departments map out the customer journey together, including buyer personas, and delegate the responsibilities of each department along the way as well. From an analytical standpoint, these meetings should provide measurable insights into both departments — especially as sales enablement research shows that 60% of Best-in-Class marketing teams have extensive insight into sales activities, and 73% of Best-in-Class sales teams have insight into marketing activities and marketing automation.

3. Celebrate Victories Together.

At the end of the month or quarter, both marketing and sales should produce a report outlining their successes. These reports should also note the challenges from that month or quarter, and why they were significant. Send the report out via email and allow employees to take their time going through the report and then schedule a follow-up meeting.  Use this time to discuss that quarter or month and use a whiteboard to agree on three key takeaways from sales and marketing’s efforts and set goals for the next time period.

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Digest...

Three intertwined assumptions limit the efficacy of the traditional model of change:

Change starts at the top. Most change programs are, in fact, catch-up programs. Moreover, risk-averse executives are seldom willing to launch a company-wide change program that ventures beyond the safe precincts of best practice. The result: change programs that are too little, too late.

Change is rolled out. When change is imposed from above, with both ends and means prescribed, it’s rarely embraced. Traditional change programs fail to harness the discretionary creativity and energy of employees and often generate cynicism and resistance. Senior executives talk about the need to get buy-in, but genuine buy-in is the product of involvement, not slick packaging and communication. The alternative: change that’s rolled up, not rolled out.

Change is engineered. The phrase “change management” implies that deep change can be managed, like a large-scale construction project or an IT overhaul. But if change is truly transformational—if it breaks new ground—it can’t be predetermined. When change programs are engineered, the solution space is limited by what people at the top can imagine. A change platform, by contrast, gives everyone the right to suggest strategic alternatives. The advantage: options that are diverse, radical, and nuanced.

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Digest...

Many of the hosted marketing solutions - from Web analytics to email service providers - typically lock up the data behind firewalls. In some cases, they provide an API to access data, but there's a cost for retrieving it. And like the early days of the mainframes, there's little or no operability between hosted solutions. In other words, these systems don't talk to each other without building proprietary connectors. That lack of interoperability between solutions and restricted access to data continues to stifle the industry.

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History does repeat itself, and that's why I believe that openness and flexibility will define the best marketing solutions of the future. Indeed, that evolution is already upon us. Tag management companies have been leading the charge because they enable the marketing team to centralize tag deployment and data collection across every digital marketing application. All tagged marketing data comes through one system, liberating data for the enterprise that generated it in the first place.

An "agnostic" approach to building a marketing platform is so essential:

>> Choose the best solutions for your needs. Don't let vendors hold you or your data hostage.

>> Ensure you have the flexibility to take advantage of advances in data management, visualization, analytics, and personalization without having to rip and replace your entire system.

>> Compare the cost and performance of your marketing solutions. There are an increasing number of good options out there!

Digest...

When assessing potential tech products and services, a set of important criteria should be used. This is what we call business value alignment (BVA) and it’s something that can be done early in the research process, before too much precious time is invested on budget-scoping, assessing and implementing a misaligned solution. BVA refers to the business value created for both the buyer and the prospective marketing tech solution provider.

To arrive at a mutually beneficial BVA, CMOs and marketers should keep the following five steps in mind:

1. Identify Basic Needs and Requirements
2. Create a Blueprint: One of the most effective ways to illustrate BVA is to create a marketing technology blueprint. This is a simple visual diagram that outlines the current technology, systems, processes and data flow, making it easier to identify the gaps, overlaps and chokepoints. The blueprint shows where to improve, bring in new solutions or consolidate existing processes or technology to achieve desired goals.
3. Develop Discussion Points: Give the prospective vendors a list of key goals and ideas in advance to make this an optimal working session. These topics often unveil new insights about the prospective providers, including their culture, how they think and how they work.
4. Scope a Proof of Concept AND a Full Adoption Model: The ultimate BVA test is to put the technology or service to work in the true environment. In addition, sketch out what full adoption will look like as this will help the solution eventually scale.
5. Determine Joint Success Metrics: Ask the internal team and stakeholders what success should look like in one month, a quarter or at the end of the first year. What are the key results to measure ROI?

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