As economic uncertainty continues to cloud over and the threat of new competition from alternative business structures looms, how might you achieve marketing efficiencies?
Note the reference to achieving efficiencies, rather than cost savings. It’s easy to achieve cost savings in marketing, and many companies have done this by slashing or stopping spending of late.
However, not marketing comes with its own risks, as it creates an opportunity for your competitors to get ahead of themselves.
One way to improve efficiency is to consider outsourcing the marketing function. This is not just an option for large companies; in fact, it also offers many opportunities for smaller businesses, especially during a period of growth.
Outsourcing is sometimes associated with the loss or transfer of jobs to an outside provider. However, in our experience, there are a number of circumstances where outsourcing offers an ideal solution, with no loss of jobs. For example:
a) Start-up, which needs a limited amount of support in the early stages.
b) The growing company, who wants to try a dedicated marketing role without taking on the headache of job responsibilities.
c) The company with some low-level internal marketing support that you want to speed up, without the expense of a senior appointment.
d) The foreign company, which needs support on the ground to offer the strategy and campaigns carried out by its local marketing team.
e) The regional marketing firm that is having difficulty attracting or retaining marketing staff of sufficient caliber and is fed up with paying recruitment fees.
So, let’s consider the advantages.
clear direction
In order for your outsourced provider to meet your marketing objectives, these must be well thought out, agreed and communicated.
Sometimes this can be done in advance and provided to potential vendors as part of the selection process. Alternatively, establishing your strategy and developing your marketing plan could be the first goal for your chosen vendor. Either way, one result of the process is a clear sense of direction.
focus the mind
Have you noticed how a meeting with an outside provider can be treated more seriously than an internal meeting, particularly one where the provider charges by the hour? In my experience, marketing decisions are more likely to be made and actions completed before the next meeting.
Internal marketing meetings rarely seem to have the same focus, and there’s the frequent excuse of being too busy with clients when stocks don’t move.
Making the financial commitment to hire a third-party provider to drive your marketing also requires a commitment of time and energy from the management team to make things happen.
Focus on core competencies
Since non-billable hours are a rare commodity, they must be spent wisely for maximum impact and focus on customer-facing relationship-building activities that will directly generate profitable new business.
Outsourcing any non-core business support activities to a specialist provider will free up your company to focus on its core business of providing legal advice. What is the opportunity cost of the time employees spend on marketing activities that could be outsourced at a fraction of their pay rate?
Access to in-depth expertise
One of the challenges of appointing an in-house marketing manager is finding the right person with the right mix of skills.
We often come across companies where the customer database is a mess, as the secretarial team claims it’s not their responsibility and the marketing manager seems to think this kind of administrative task is beneath them. Only the largest companies can justify employing someone to manage customer data.
Similarly, we see secretaries who have been promoted to a marketing position based on good organizational skills in event management. However, when it comes to writing a press release, managing the media, writing or proofreading articles for the website, different attributes are required. Customer satisfaction research or a major tendering exercise falls back into the lap of partners.
Successful marketing requires a wide range of competencies and small businesses need someone who can put together a marketing strategy early in the year and is happy to execute on it as the year progresses. One day they may need to write an important bid, the next they may need to print delegate credentials for an event. We often joke that outsourcing covers everything from strategy to stuffing envelopes.
service continuity
Many law firms suffer from fairly frequent turnover of marketing staff. Few people decide on a career in marketing with the legal profession in mind, and even fewer find that it gives them the career path they want and doesn’t stay long.
Frequent staff turnover can result in a lack of project continuity. Advertising, recruiting, and onboarding a new marketing executive is itself a significant waste of resources that could be directed elsewhere.
Outsourcing your marketing function makes this someone else’s problem.
Access to efficient systems
Marketing (legal services) should be the core competency of your chosen provider and accordingly they will have developed their own systems and procedures to ensure that each task is carried out as efficiently as possible.
Just as you have templates and precedents for certain contracts, we have templates for marketing plans, budgets, sales pipelines, event management plans, bids, directory entries, and more. We have quality control processes for press releases, publications and web content. We have database updating systems, customer satisfaction reviews and event monitoring.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, when you can buy a tried and tested system.
We also keep up with developments in marketing tools and software, such as website content management systems, cloud CRM systems, and email marketing. Buying external expertise means you don’t have to worry about selecting the right software, as it will come as part of the service. You also won’t have to worry about supporting that technology.
Performance management
If you are having problems with your provider, possibly due to dissatisfaction with your account manager or failure to meet certain targets, then it is important to give them an opportunity to improve the service (just as you would wish a client would afford you a second luck).
Depending on the size of the provider, then it may be relatively easy for them to change the team serving you and resolve the issue.
Compare this to having to manage the poor performance of an employee marketing director.
ease of exit
If you find out that you want to discontinue the agreement, there should be a clear and direct notice period set out in your contract. It’s probably a lot easier than firing marketing people.
making it work
An issue that often comes up when discussing outsourcing is that of location and the disadvantage of staff being located off-site. Any large company with multiple offices is unlikely to have a marketing person in each office and they work with a matrix of responsibilities.
Of course there are advantages to having someone working in the same office, however proactive salespeople have to make time for marketing anyway and the right mindset means location isn’t really an obstacle.
worth exploring
For any business wondering how to finance additional business development activities, outsourcing is worth exploring. It can provide you with an efficient and experienced marketing resource at a predictable, usually fixed cost, without any of the headaches of employment.
An employee may be the better option over time, but in the meantime, outsourcing could be the ideal solution to help you accelerate your marketing and business development activities.
