By Bob Van Rossum 

Building an effective online marketing team is all about creating flexibility.  Best practices dictate you bring the function in-house yet create a team that can change as fast as the market.  Best structure is to hire a full-time employee who knows enough about each area drive maximum ROI from the team and bring in contractors to execute / implement.  Contractors provide flexibility in a world that is changing rapidly.   Traditionally contract staffing has been associated with only execution/implementation as a way to retain flexibility and reduce costs.  Increasingly organizations are realizing that they can also bring in executive level interim marketing talent from a Creative Director to a Digital Strategist to maximize your online presence and / or use of analytics. 

Online marketing teams are different depending on industry but ultimately all organizations need some basic functions.  With the proper strategy and execution, your marketing dollars will go farther online than they can in any other form of media.

Digital Marketing Strategy

Strategy matters, too often the interactive world is filled with the “ready, fire, aim” approach and significant dollars and opportunity are lost in the process.  Depending on the size of your organization you may need a strategist full-time or an interim practitioner, not a consultant, to come in and move your organization forward.

Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing

It is amazing how few organizations are really doing this well, considering the potential ROI from doing it properly.  This is the most cost effective form of advertising available in any medium and the longer you wait to institute best practices, the harder it will become to get results. 

Your SEO / SEM expert(s) will provide both natural and paid search services, to maximize awareness / leads from a minimum possible investment.  Including but not limited to, keyword advertising / ranking, keyword bidding, copy optimization.  Doing so across multiple platforms, while reporting on success / ROI and managing continual improvement. 

Online Media Buying and Planning

The complexities of online media buying, planning, tracking and reporting are daunting, here there is no substitute for experience.  The latest in online advertising options include geographically and behaviorally-targeted marketing.  The challenges of building and launching a successful online ad campaign have grown as have the rewards of doing it properly. 

E-Mail Marketing

A well thought out e-mail marketing team, starts with the realization that subject matter experts are needed and in great demand.  The ability to take outside lead lists or an internal database and design, test, deploy, measure results and make necessary improvements is critical to long-term success.  And that’s not all, reviewing creative to make sure messaging is consistent with core brand and CAN-SPAM compliant, while being a project management guru is a lot to handle.  So in a nutshell: bring in the best to set strategy, plan and measure to maximize revenue.

Public Relations (Online)

This is much more than someone to write, manage and publish online content.  This position is responsible for online messaging, including using guerilla marketing to leverage social media.  It is also important for organizations to have someone who can help them to understand what makes content newsworthy.  In a rush to be online, too many organizations are publishing content for content’s sake. 

Analytics

It is vital to measure, adjust and ultimately continually improve.  Proper analytics gives you the knowledge and power to increase revenue and build a better online brand.  Proper analytics programs include, online tracking, predictive analytics and segmentation, strategy, execution and reporting.  Big question is do you have someone who can interpret the data and merge your online and offline analytics to properly focus your overall marketing mix?

By Bob Van Rossum 

Having an agency (ad, pr, digital, etc.) is great if they are truly presenting you with something unique.  If you are doing tremendous mass advertising and your agency has incredible creative then you are in the right place.  Unfortunately getting an ROI from your agency partner is becoming increasingly difficult and certain pieces of the relationship structure work against it.  The distance between you and your agency presents challenges with communication and speed of execution.  Truthfully only 20 percent of organizations using an agency really need one.  The remaining 80 percent of companies gain a competitive advantage utilizing top talent on a contract basis to insource your agency. 

Top Reasons to Insource your Ad Agency:

1. 35% – 40% Cost Savings:  Why pay your agencies rent in addition to your company’s rent?  Looking at an agency’s overhead and markups, it’s easy to see how you can insource and push money to the bottom line. Or use this to your advantage to do more marketing and increase your top line. 
2. Higher Quality Marketing:  When you hire an agency, you are really hiring one or two people and paying for others you were unable to select, but have a real impact on the work.  As part of our insourcing model, you select exactly who you want for each role.  This provides greater depth and breadth of experience resulting in better work.  If you have someone who is no longer able to provide the level of work you require due to changing needs, you are able to immediately bring in someone new who can.    
3. Confidence:  The CMO who insources their marketing shows tremendous confidence in themselves.  What you are saying to the others on the Senior Management Team is you do not need to lean on your agency like a crutch.  You having confidence in yourself in turn is rewarded by the organizations increased confidence in you.  A natural byproduct of providing additional ROI.
4. Flexibility:  All areas of business are going through massive change that is simply magnified in marketing.  Utilizing on-demand marketing talent provides you the flexibility to turn on a dime.  Giving you the freedom to bring in new resources as your marketing mix changes, your business grows or needs to cut costs or a new area of expertise is required.  It is significantly easier to change out one or two team members as your needs change than to switch agencies and get the new agency up to speed.  In the end you are buying an opportunity to get the work done and saying good-bye to a fixed monthly retainer. 
5. Knowledge:    Imagine a marketing department and agency relationship with zero knowledge gaps.  Completely possible when you insource the agency, retaining the right to bring in the knowledge you need for only the time it is required.  From top creative talent to digital strategy to execution, you can have all the talent you need inside your four walls without the commitment to them as employees. 
6. Velocity:  What a treat to walk down the hall and talk to your Creative Director.  Opening up communication and encouraging collaboration between what has traditionally been your agency and what is your internal staff decreases the time it takes to get great work done.  The inhouse agency will hit the mark the first time more often. 
7. Better Communication:  In addition to increased velocity, having the MarketPro team at your location increases their ability to interact with your team and gives them access to knowledge about your company that it is impossible for someone at another location to have.  This increases the quality of the work, speeds up execution all while saving you about 40%.