So we have Marketing-as-a-Service now. Which is cool. But aside from the most blatant bandwagon hopping possible, what the hell is it? And is it any good?
Because we find ourselves saying it all the time now, we thought we better break it down. Just for our own sanity, if not for anything else.
Marketing-as-a-Service is the delivery of end-to-end marketing by a third party. It is usually seen as a single monthly payment that includes the delivery of marketing services from the initial strategy setting right through to reporting on successes (and failures). It doesn’t require staff on-site or an additional marketing budget.
Marketing-as-a-Service vs a ‘Marketing Agency’
Many businesses will lean on a marketing agency to help them with some individual part of marketing: a design agency, an SEO agency, a digital agency, a telemarketing agency, an experiential agency, an advertising agency…well, you get the picture. There are loads of agencies all servicing disparate parts of the marketing mix. This can sometimes lead to more than a full-time job in aligning all the activities and bringing everyone on the same page. Trying to tie it all up as an end-to-end lead generation and business development strategy that has shiny new B2B customers at the end of it is not without its challenges.
Marketing-as-a-Service vs internal resources
Internal marketing teams are the heroes of the marketing world. Trying to get everything done in a typical working day, while still adapting and flexibly meeting the needs of the organisation as it goes about its business is something that’s never a perfect science. Marketing people and their willingness to do what’s right for the business can sometimes be misused by a business, pulling the marketing team away from their core responsibilities and the progress that needs to be made.
Having skilled marketing resource that gets pulled off in your B2B organisation to support on admin tasks or low value activities is not going to move the needle in the right direction. You’ll see the salary, oncosts, workstation costs, etc and are unlikely to see the expected progress as you do battle between what needs to be done from a marketing perspective and what needs to be done in support of your normal line of business.
When you’re a business owner or marketing leader, and you’ve spent many thousands of pounds and low level activities that haven’t strategically got you to where you need to be, you’ve got to start asking questions.
Moving from best endeavours
What you need to do is move from a ‘best endeavours’ model to delivering end-to-end marketing that gets results. Marketing that just happens without intervention or worry.
You should just pay for what it is you want – the delivery of outcomes, rather than the time spent in front of a computer monitor or the fact the cars been in the car park a certain amount of time.
All of this should also cost you less. In today’s climate, it has to. You can get high levels of activity as part of an end-to-end model of building traffic, generating leads, closing customers for a good chunk less than you’re currently paying.
Check out our recently commissioned white paper. We found that on a like-for-like basis, implementing Marketing-as-a-Service saves on average 20% per annum when compared to even a junior marketing manager hire. And that’s not even taking into account the fact Marketing-as-a-Service does away with the need for the vast majority of your marketing budget, as all the skills, capabilities resources and outcomes are taken care of in a single and integrated end-to-end campaign.
Worth a look? Download our white paper now.
