Every marketing manager that I talk to in the tech industry complains about the same things. They don’t have enough budget and they don’t have enough time (resources) to get everything done. Many tech companies still have an open source agency model for below the line marketing activities, meaning they have numerous agencies that they can use to help them get their job done. What I’ve seen is that many marketing managers insist on dividing up their projects between 4 or 5 different agencies every quarter. Maybe it is their company culture to “spread the wealth” or may it is because they don’t want to put their eggs (marketing budget) in one basket.
I’ve been in marketing at both the client level and the agency side for over 13 years and my suggestion to marketing managers at tech companies is to think from a program perspective, rather than a project perspective. By bundling projects together and using one agency that you trust and love, you can save money and time. Instead of doing 5 projects at $40k a piece to 5 different agencies and having to deal with all the PO’s, project management, etc., use one agency for all of them. Benefits include: Less meetings, less PO’s, economies of scale (you can get a better deal on all of it), tighter control and “one throat to choke”. Many marketing managers are afraid of this because they feel it is more risky. Also they want different creative minds on things and want more choices. My suggestion is to request to have your creative work done by mutliple producers and writers within one agency so that you still get the advantage of multiple minds, but with the cost savings of running it like a program.
Again, think about consolidating projects into single programs and using one agency instead of 4 or 5 for the things that you need to get done. You’ll be happy you did.
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