Should You Consider Marketing-as-a-Service?
The role of marketing is shifting and evolving across organizations, and many forward-thinking CMOs are using Marketing-as-a-Service as a way to focus on core competencies and gain competitive advantages.
Customer demands are rapidly increasing, speed to market is paramount and marketing is now multi-disciplinary. In essence, the “Art of Marketing” and the “Science of Marketing” have merged. The industry is also more technology driven than ever before, expanding beyond its traditional realms into a new, digital environment
“Buy vs. own” Your Marketing Infrastructure
With marketing teams being overworked and understaffed, bleeding-edge marketing leaders are creating scenarios where they “assemble” marketing components on demand.
Does this imply that all of marketing or the entire marketing function can or should be operated “as-a-service?” No, not at all. But the strategy could be an effective backbone for the marketing departments of the future.
Core vs. Non-Core Skills
Successful marketing leaders realize that marketing expertise is finite and not universally available inside most organizations. There is a need to define what’s core to an organization (and should be handled in-house) versus the skills that are “non-core” and could be acquired outside.
Technology as the great equalizer
New, increasingly cloud-based marketing tools are available, easy to use and often run by third parties. Think of cost efficient alternatives to traditional models, highly automated and increasingly operated outside of your firewall.
Most marketing leaders today face a few key, real-life questions and challenges. They wonder how they can:
- Provide meaningful, increasingly real-time data and insights to our business?
- Develop customer journeys and create memorable customer interactions?
- Closely align sales and marketing tactics through CRM and marketing automation?
- Create compelling content – repeatedly, quickly and in a cost effective manner?
- Engage and interact with prospects and customers via social channels?
- Measure customer net promoter scores and business impact?
Of course, every business is different, but leading-edge marketers will have to choose the “core” vs “non-core” nature of their respective marketing functions. In many cases, marketers can “hire, rent or buy” the necessary capabilities, skills and resources as part of a bundled service from third parties.
This provides the flexibility to operate only as much marketing infrastructure as necessary and to coordinate across business units, geographies and third parties on one single platform. As such, it helps solve the speed to market and affordability question so many marketing leaders face today.
Marketing-as-a-Service, if deployed in the right strategic context, will continue to increase performance, scalability and flexibility, providing CMOs and their companies with the necessary momentum to outperform competitors. Keep in mind, however, that CMOs and heads of marketing cannot and should never outsource insight or core capabilities.
Matt Preschern is CMO of HCL Technologies.
