Know-How Exchange : Other

Kathy,

I would advise you to use your developing your strategy and the criteria of what makes a good firm for each area - PR, collateral material, PPC, web development, social network development, etc. Give a weight to each equivalent to the importance to you and add some other criteria like ease of management of the firm, openness to using your graphics person, openness to working with other firms and you, and so forth (given appropriate weight also). Send out some RFP's, do some interviews, and make a quantitative decision. Some small firms may be able to do it all. But some specialty firms may be relatively easy to manage collectively.

I've worked with several specialist small firms in manufacturing companies and have had good success. The thing you find in small firms is that they are more willing to take other input and marry their work around that to make the output appear integrated. Do-all firms tended to present compromises in quality and actually, flexibility. But, as I mentioned above, I went through an evaluation process to look at the best situation before making the decision.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

A few comments, but I'll lead off with full disclosure that I work at a large agency.

First, you are asking for a very diverse list of requirements. I think it might be possible to get this from a single agency, but I doubt that you will find a small agency that can actually handle all of this. There are far too diverse areas of expertise needed that it's doubtful that any agency could really be good at all thest things plus have experience in your specific industry. No offense to Pat above, but likely you'd be better off finding multiple agencies that are experts in a single area versus just okay a number of areas (jack of all trades...expert at none). You seem to have an aversion to having multiple agencies probably because you assume it'll eat up more of your time. In that case, assign one of the agencies as lead and pay them to manage the other agencies and bring their work forward.

I'm not advocating a large agency for the sake of size either, but rather that they are likely to have this diverse expertise, but likely they won't. They'll spin you a good tale, but likely won't be able to deliver on at least one of your requirements.

My final question is what you're going to be doing. Once you pass along all of this stuff to an agency, what does it free you to do? For example, you mention you don't have time to write case studies and read the trade pubs, well, if you don't who's going to. I'd be careful about "outsourcing" leadership in your area to an agency. Hiring all these people should give you more time to focus on more high level strategy development and leadership in the space that'll ultimately lead to the bigger leaps and bounds of growth. Point is, make sure you're hiring all these people for the right reasons and that you're delegating the right stuff out.

Final thought on your graphic designer....I think many agencies would balk at some arrangement with this person. That is, if this person is going to be doing all the design work for an agency to simply send to a printer, there's probably an issue. Also, consider that as good as your designer is, he or she isn't better than 5 or 6 designers all working together at an agency. I'd instead let the agency design and do their work and make your designer act effectively as your company's creative director. Let him or her guide the work, help with brand identity, creative briefs, etc. Might be a better use of that person that them doing the actual work.

JMR

If you work in manufacturing or automation, I can provide some advice on getting articles into the publications. Not only have I been successful for myself I have been successful for clients.

Hi again, Kathy!

First, I also favor small agencies and freelancers. There are a ton of good ones out there as experienced marketers realize they can get better paid and add more value on their own than they can working for one employer.

If I were you, I'd hire a marketing consultant to come in, review the current marketing programs and make suggestions on where the additional funds would have the greatest impact. (BTW, I am not a consultant so no hidden agendas here.)

I've spent more than 20 years in marketing in my industry and I still do this every now and then just because it helps to get fresh ideas and have someone as a sounding board.

Make sure you choose wisely, however. There are a lot of good consultants out there who have long, successful track records. There are also some that just aren't suited for consulting. Do a decent background check on their career and references. No sense in paying good money for bad advice.

You also need to get someone who is balanced. They should understand web 2.0, but they also need to understand positioning, sales support, competitive analysis, or anything else that is defined as "marketing" in your organization.

Make sure you've tied marketing goals to sales goals so you are focusing on those tactics that will have the greatest impact on the organization. https://themarketingsurvivalist.blogspot.com/2008/07/bridging-gap-between-s...

Once you've got a good idea of where the funds can make the greatest impact, I'd start with the "quick wins". What's easy to do that will still have an impact? Then work up from there to those things that are tougher but still have a big impact. Hold off on those "experimental" things like blogging until you've shown everyone that you're making good use of the additional resources.

BTW, I like how you're thinking about using external resources instead of hiring FTEs. Too many marketing departments burden themselves with internal hires when working with vendors can keep you agile.

All the best!

Melissa

Reading between the lines of your query - as you sure you will be the person that will be making those decisions?

If your management wants to "beef up marketing" they might want to hire a VP marketing or whatever - that may be you or may be someone else - perhaps a good idea to get a readout on that before you get too far ahead of the program.

Not trying to be cute here - but I've seen what happens at startups when they get a lot of fresh money - and sometimes it's the VCs who insist on those changes.

Assuming you'll be in charge for the next cycle - you might want to get a clear readout of management's priorities and expectations for what they want to see for results. From that, I would suggest developing both a rolling six-month and one year list of goals/objectives and then revisiting that once a quarter.

No matter how much money you get - helping sales to develop revenue will be a goal - either explicit or implied.

So it would be a good idea to sit down with sales and find out what they expect from the marketing effort. Most sales forces these days have some sort of process - and usually based on a form of solution selling. By keying the marketing program into the touch points of the solution selling process, you can have sales regard marketing as being a valuable support to their efforts - something that can come in handy at budget time.

I would be careful about getting too involved in separating leads versus opportunities and other semantic issues. That's sales' job - if you get too far involved in qualified lead generation then you will own it - and they are always looking for someone to blame when they don't meet quota. Keep the lines of responsibility distinct.

I developed some marketing/PR programs for two very different manufacturers - one was a food manufacturer with regional distribution, the other specialty eyewear with national and international distribution (both B-to-B.) Both were successful - the food manufacturer got buyout inquiries (which I was told was the goal) and the eyewear manufacturer had doors opened for their distributors' sales people. I had focused on trade publications for the content I had developed and also, could respond quickly to the media and in a custom fashion.

That brings up the issue that you mentioned of the digital marketing, web 2.0 and 3.0, SEO, etc. The key to all of that is that it is necessary to have a lot of quality content to populate your web site, PR and marketing/sales support efforts. That's not as easy as many think. Most agencies outsource their writing to freelancers, who are usually former journalists. They write journalism copy - not marketing copy. You can spot it a mile away - you need to read to the fifth paragraph (or further) of the press release or the case study to get to the 'vision statement' (what problems they solve for their customers and why their customers buy - this comes from solution selling.) Good marketing copy will lead with that statement.

This also impacts search engine optimization - the search engines look at the content of the web site for the number of occurrences of the words of the search terms - so it's hard to fake it with tricks. The more content that addresses the issues of concern to the buyers- the more hits.

Google Ad Words is a mixed bag. It works for some services and products and not for others. That being said - it's a marketer's (or market researcher's) dream with all the analytics. However - it takes a lot of time to evaluate the results on a continuous basis and it is necessary to constantly tweak the campaigns. If you outsource that - I would watch it very carefully - most Ad Words consultants get paid as a percentage of the budget - so they want it it be high - and stay high.

As far as conventional advertising goes - unless you have a very large budget - it would be difficult to see how it would be of use to you. Buyers are inundated with so much messaging that they ignore advertising.

You didn't mention trade shows - for many industries - trade shows are still the single most effective place to meet buyers, scope out the competition and find out what is happening in the industry. Your sales force can tell you which, if any, of those shows are of value. Many trade publications have special 'show issues' - which would be targeted for your PR efforts -especially new product introductions.

All of this leads to the basic question - how do your prospective customers get the information they need to make buying decisions? The answer will tell you where you want your messaging to be. You can start with a Sales Autopsy [sm} - a diagnostic approach to successful sales. I wrote an article on the technique with a checklist - you can find it on my web site at www.geibelmarketing.com/autopsy.htm - I use it all the time - if I do between three and six autopsies for a client - the marketing plan pretty much falls out of the results.

If I can sum it up - content (actually, messaging) is king - all else leverages it. Make sure you have the kind of powerful marketing messaging content you need - then leverage the other marketing tools to get your message out to the prospective buyers. Work with sales to follow up. Hopefully, both the 'top line' and bottom line will grow.

Good luck.