Category Archives: Marketing

Navigating & Keeping Up with Digital Agency Landscape: Part II

In this three-part series of articles, Kathleen Jordan, Associate Director at Source One Management Services takes a look at the complex digital agency landscape and provides insight 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.

In Part I of this series we reviewed common considerations for sourcing digital agencies. Continuing on, today we take a look at the vast types of digital agency options and what they mean for a company’s sourcing strategy.

The Many Agencies

One of the most challenging phases during an agency search is building the initial list of agency candidates and ensuring the list meets the basic criteria. Some vetting will be required through an RFI process or onsite capabilities presentations prior to the RFP phase and pitches. When a marketing professional casts a wide net into the digital agency pool, they will find a combination of large full-service digital agencies and smaller, more specialized agencies.

There are agencies that define themselves as primarily social media agencies, whereas other shops are comprised of digital developers — agencies that develop mobile apps, websites, etc. Other agencies are focused on search engine marketing — the leading required service and foundation of digital marketing, in which SEO and paid search campaigns are managed. There are also suppliers that offer analytic services where consultants study the results of a digital campaign and advise where tweaks should be made, tracking against key performance indicators and indicating ROI results. The list goes on to capture various other forms of digital marketing services such as the full-service model, website design and user experience, display advertising, e-mail campaign management, CRM platforms, etc. Todd Wasserman of Mashable wrote an article calling out a few additional agencies on the rise, including:

Viral video factories
Agencies specializing in the development of GIFs, referred to as “the animated billboard for the digital age”
Agencies focused on creating digital IDs for products; for example, ask yourself: What if my washing machine could recommend a trusted local service agent to perform maintenance or address issues when needed? These agencies are looking to make physical things smart, allowing a product to have its own digital profile.

Referring to the ever-changing digital marketing world, Wasserman writes, “this state of flux has swung open the doors for entrepreneurs, usual refugees from big agencies looking to capitalize on new opportunities while their counterparts are riding the TV gravy train to the last stop“. Overall, the digital landscape is continuously shifting, and some brands are already beginning to think about post-digital. Digital Marketing Depot’s whitepaper also notes that “dozens of specialty agencies have launched over the past five years” and the number continues to grow. In addition to Wasserman’s remarks about this trend, Digital Marketing Depot believes that the rise in specialty agencies was “prompted by the mid-market opportunity created by holding company agencies with huge minimum spends, and wireless technologies that have made it easier to start up small businesses“.

There is no right or wrong way to allocate your digital requirements across an agency network. The optimal model will depend on a company’s overarching marketing strategy and internal resources. A marketer may find that their current creative agency that supports their traditional advertising tactics is best suited to handle their digital channels as well. After all, the account management structure already exists and price breaks may be applied if the scope increases.

Regardless of the digital requirement that needs to be fulfilled, marketing professionals should keep in mind that their procurement counterparts can serve as decision support to help identify the agencies best suited to meet the advertiser’s needs. In the final part of this blog series, we’ll explore the need to bridge the gap between marketing and procurement.

Thanks Kathleen!

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.