According to a recent McKinsey & Company study, marketers believe that they are being asked to “do more, with less.” Further, many survey respondents feel ill-equipped to deliver on the expanded expectations of the marketing department.
In what marketers view as a more complex marketplace requiring a “new holistic marketing operating model” their concerns include, but are not limited to:
- Insufficient talent/ capabilities in-house
- Incoherent strategy/ lack of consistency regarding priorities
- Insufficient budget to support resourcing requirements
- Insufficient link between marketing and business outcomes
The seminal question to be asked is: “Where do you want your marketing team to focus their time and resources? Business objective attainment and brand building? Or supplier compliance and performance monitoring? For those organizations fortunate enough to have a marketing operations function, both sets of expectations can be addressed.
Broadly speaking, marketing operations is typically responsible for a range of efficiency enhancing and accountability tasks including but not limited to process optimization, streamlining workflow, performance monitoring and reporting, budgeting and resource allocation, governance, and compliance. In some organizations responsibilities may also include management of the marketing technology stack, data, and analytics.
For marketers that don’t have a marketing operations team, the challenge around driving efficiencies, supplier performance and accountability is more acute. The primary reason is that most traditional marketing teams don’t have personnel with the type or level of experience to provide adequate stewardship of these areas. As such, much of their time and resources are allocated to the strategy development, creative development, audience engagement, and media delivery aspects of their responsibilities.
Of note, eighty percent of the respondents to the McKinsey survey believe that “rigorous marketing performance management” was a “must have.” Unfortunately, only forty percent were “confident in their execution” of those tasks. Shoring up resources in this area must be viewed as mission critical if organizations hope to optimize their marketing investment.
To shore up capabilities in this area, marketers can reach out to their peers in procurement and internal audit and or engage independent specialists with expertise in agency contract compliance and financial management and media performance auditing.
The good news is that co-sourcing responsibility in this area will deliver significant benefits, including streamlined processes, reduced costs, and substantial financial recoveries and future savings. Our experience in conducting agency contract compliance and financial management reviews has consistently shown that marketers can recover substantial financial returns between .5% and 4.5% of total billings, often far exceeding audit costs. Beyond the financial benefits, this approach strengthens controls, mitigates risks, and optimizes marketing ROI through improved contract language, enhanced reporting, and streamlined processes.
Thus, if organizations are truly interested in a more “holistic marketing operating model” they should seriously explore co-sourcing solutions to augment their current marketing team’s capabilities. This is a much-preferred course of action when the alternative may be abdication of these responsibilities.
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” ~ Peter Druker