Category Archives: Marketing

Navigating & Keeping Up with Digital Agency Landscape: Part I


In this three-part series of articles, Kathleen Jordan, Associate Director at Source One Management Services will take a look at the complex digital agency landscape and provide insights on the process of agency sourcing: considerations when sourcing, vast digital agency options, and the need for bridging the gap between marketing and procurement departments. Kathleen Jordan is a strategic sourcing subject matter expert with a wide range of experience in the marketing category who works closely with marketing professionals and helps alleviate challenges encountered when overseeing agency relationships.

Defining Your Requirements

The marketplace for marketing services is anything but easy to navigate. It is complex, and crowded with a wide range of agency options available to fulfill any marketing support requirement. Niche and full-service players exist, some agencies operate independently, and remaining ones are owned by a holding company. Sister agencies compete against one another or may team up to offer a comprehensive service offering. Mergers and acquisition are relatively frequent and can consequently lead to conflicts of interest. Overall, there are a number of considerations when you are seeking out an agency to support a new marketing channel or upcoming product launch. And these considerations should be known even if there is no forthcoming agency search or new marketing tactic on the horizon to support. Marketing professionals and their sourcing colleagues must always be aware of the current state of the marketplace for marketing services to remain competitive and innovative, especially when it comes to the digital space.

Digital Marketing continues to evolve due in part to the various technologies that apply to digital tactics. Advanced technology and digital marketing as a whole have reshaped the way consumers interact with brands, and digital agencies have emerged to support the various digital channels and technologies that exist. It is vital for marketing professionals and their sourcing counterparts to recognize this and determine what type of expertise they wish to obtain to supplement their internal marketing team and fulfill a specific scope of work. Digital Marketing Depot’s whitepaper titled “Digital Advertising Agencies 2014: A Buyer’s Guide” (download required) serves as a great resource for marketing professionals, defining various types of digital agencies and how and when they should be engaged. Overall, the report provides an accurate snapshot of the current digital landscape and guidelines on how to effectively work with digital agencies across the various service types.

The initial starting point is validating the need to conduct a digital search. Consider:

  • Is the marketer unsatisfied with their current digital shop and looking to transition?
    Review and consider the performance of the current agency. Common reasons for dissatisfaction include: missing deadlines, under-delivering, and poor communication, especially when several agencies work together on a project.
  • Is a new digital channel under consideration that would lead to an increase in scope, impacting the current retainer model?
    When looking to implement a new digital tactic, consider the potential for scope creep. This can occur when a project is poorly defined and can end up consuming allocated budgets.
  • Is there an upcoming product launch in which the consumer base has a strong digital presence?
    Review the campaign you plan to implement. Are the tactics you plan to use offered at your current agency? Is it something a specialty agency would be better suited handling?

Once the objectives are clearly outlined and the scope details are ironed out, the agency selection criteria should be established. This criteria will dictate the search in its entirety and should tie directly to the scope requirements. For example, if the scope is strictly website development, a social media monitoring agency is not nearly the right fit.

With these activities complete, you can move on to agency selection. We’ll explore this topic in-depth in Part II of this three-part series.

Thanks Kathleen!

Organizational Damnation 54: Marketing

So far we’ve tackled the organizational damnations of Logistics and Legal, but these are just the beginning. Today we’re going to tackle one of the biggest organizational damnations of all: Marketing. Like Legal, Marketing is one of those evils that the organization can’t live without, but Supply Management often can’t live with.

While it’s true that marketing is usually necessary to create demand for the products and services the organization produces, which in turn necessitates the demand for the raw materials, components, and services that Supply Management exists to source, it’s also true that sometimes when marketing creates that demand they use advertisements that are misleading as to the capabilities of what is being sold or promises that are unrealistic and, sometimes, those advertisements are outright lies and those promises are impossible to keep.

For example, let’s say the organization is selling a new phone. Marketing might claim it runs on a faster network (when, in reality, none of the carriers that support your phone support the faster network protocols), has a processor that is 30% faster (even though every independent benchmark only has it 10% faster and the design specifications indicated that the expected performance improvement was only 20%), and uses next generation RAM because it supports a faster MHz (even though it’s current generation RAM).

In this example, marketing is being almost realistic by stretching the truth with only a few small lies. If the organization is not as lucky, marketing might have the gall to say that your organization’s product is an effective cure for the common cold (because no one in the study caught a cold during the one year preventative trial), even though there is no evidence to that effect. (If the control group happened to be in an isolated community and were selected because they were the fittest of the group, it’s a biased study.) This is an example where marketing did not even attempt to be realistic in their claims.

But it might not stop there. Marketing might promise functions that are full of bugs, features that are still in development, and delivery schedules that would be unrealistic even if the design was complete, all the R&D was done, the team was fully staffed, and all of the resources that are required are available. As a result, Engineering will be freaking out and demanding that Supply Management find it better materials, new suppliers that can complete the work that is required in the time-frame that is available, and more talent to fill its ranks. This could be a very tall order on a very short notice.

Moreover, it’s an order Supply Management will have to fulfill for the organization to meet its obligations, maintain its brand integrity, and stay profitable. As if Supply Management’s job wasn’t hard enough to begin with.

Magic & Logic (i.e. Marketing & Procurement) Through the Years [2014] (Collected Links)

PREAMBLE

Magic & Logic

The Creative Challenge

Efficient Sourcing in Marketing

How Do You Support Marketing and Get a Grip on Agency Lifecycle Management?

Too Many Marketing Fingers in the Procurement Pie?

BONUS

the doctor’s Marketing 101 for Small to Mid-Size Supply Management Solution Providers

Industry Average in the IT vertical, depending on the source, is between 7% and 15% of revenue, which usually includes (dedicated) marketing or PR staff (if you have any), and usually excludes sales staff and C level executives. I generally recommend that you start with a budget that is at least 10% or revenue, quickly scale up to a budget that is 15% of revenue within a year as you build into the full breadth of your first full-on marketing efforts, and then, as you become more visible in the space, scale back down to 10% of revenue after a couple of years.

Thus, if you were a 2M company, you’d start with 200K as you wouldn’t do much in the early (planning) stages, but ramp up to 300K in the next budget. At this size, you probably wouldn’t have a full time marketing exec (or if you did, she’d have other duties w.r.t. pre-sales and sales as well), just some (part time) support resources (that don’t eat up too much of the budget, as you need six figures for activities).

So how would you allocate the budget, which should be mostly reserved for external activities?

I typically recommend a mix of:

  • brand presence — for long term brand building,
  • thought-leadership (white papers, etc.)) — for mid-term traction, and
  • events (online and offline) — for short term (one-time) (qualified) lead generation.

Budget-wise, this means you want a bucket for events and webinars, a bucket for thought leadership (white-papers, website, etc.), a bucket for advertising (maybe some print, but mostly web), and a slush fund to augment each bucket when the right opportunity presents itself or you’re doing a major promotion of a new product.

You can split it evenly, 25/25/25/25, or tip it towards what appears to work best in your targeted verticals. I always recommend at least 20% for continued brand presence (as constant visibility is the foundation of brand awareness), as most companies underemphasize the importance of this, and at least 20% for thought leadership, as most companies underemphasize the importance of this as well, but the specific split will ultimately be tailored to what works best in your target verticals.

Generally, I start a recommendation with:

  • continued brand awareness on a well trafficked niche site (i.e. blog)
    with occasional direct print marketing campaigns
  • (at least) one webinar in alternating quarters
    advertised through a different channel each time (to gauge true audience) (magazine e-mail list, society list, etc.)
  • one thought leadership piece / white-paper in alternating quarters
    which should come before the webinars and at least two external or sponsored per year
  • at least one event in each geographic zone you do business in each year;
    i.e. one event in Europe, NA, and/or Australasia each year that reaches a significant portion of your target audience; if no event fits, hold your own; for a few thousand in room rentals and food costs at a local hotel, and speaker expenses, you can gather all of your potential customers in the area, put on a great show, and get all the qualified, hungry, leads for yourself
  • campaign specific promotions
    extra brochures, PR support, thought leadership, event expenses, etc. tailored to specific verticals

That’s it in a nutshell.