When considering the strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of marketing or sales, businesses often find themselves torn between two extremes: keeping everything in-house or outsourcing all marketing tasks. For most companies, the reality lies somewhere in between, with at least some aspects of marketing being outsourced.
Navigating the marketing landscape
There are various reasons for opting to outsource marketing:
- Necessary Evil: Marketing is often seen as a necessary evil that someone has to handle, ideally by cutting costs without compromising quality.
- Seeking External Expertise: Companies want to bring in external perspectives and expertise, especially for brand development or campaign-specific activities.
- Flexible Professional Business: Simply put, some companies prefer alternative approaches to utilizing talent instead of recruiting, either due to resource constraints or the specific skills required.
The pitfalls of traditional outsourcing vs. MaaS
It should come as no surprise that traditional outsourcing of marketing, where marketing is handed off to someone else, is often seen as an inadequate solution, except perhaps in the “Necessary Evil” scenario, where the how is less important than the result.
Traditional marketing outsourcing can be compared to throwing the steering wheel out of the car window on a highway when you’re tired of driving and waiting to see where you end up. It’s better to ask a friend or partner to take the wheel while you navigate. This is also where Marketing as a Service (MaaS) comes into play.
MaaS is more about partnership and integrating additional expertise into your operations rather than outsourcing marketing entirely. The concept of MaaS can vary depending on who defines it. Broadly speaking, its purpose is to provide buyers with marketing expertise while adding flexibility to financial operations and expert recruitment and utilization. This, in turn, enhances performance, quality, and achievement of business goals.
Key ingredients for effective MaaS
At Aboad, we view MaaS as a way to seamlessly integrate into our clients’ organizations, like a booster rocket integrated as an integral part of the whole operation. It allows for scalability and reduction of workload and tasks as needed.
How to Achieve Effective MaaS? You’ve probably had a bad meal before. Just like food, the palatability of service-based marketing depends on the ingredients and the cooks.
The essential ingredients for this service delivery model include:
- Dedication
- Proactiveness
- Successful Communication
The service provider should be committed to the client company’s objectives as if their people were working in the company themselves. This ensures that the work doesn’t stall, even when the client lacks expertise or time for guidance. It also entails proactively identifying data-driven areas for improvement and working on them collaboratively.
A collaborative approach for partnership
It’s not about the buyer knowing what they need; it’s about what they want to achieve, with the service provider handling the rest. Effective communication is crucial to ensuring that the entire process runs smoothly, just like in any organization.
In our view, our role is to be a part of the client’s company and fight for its success, even though we have different logos and business registration numbers. The focus should not be on where most billable work is done but on the goals. After understanding these goals, you should allow us the flexibility to act in accordance with our values.
Many claim to offer MaaS, but not all are serious about it
Many companies claim to offer marketing as a service on their websites, and they probably do to some extent. However, the problem lies in the fact that it’s often a trendy diversion from their core business. It’s like a motorcycle manufacturer selling cars on the side. Would you trust Suzuki as a four-wheeler?
Years ago, at Aboad, we realized that MaaS is not just another service among many; it’s the core of what we do. Either you do it entirely or not at all because the flexibility it demands and offers requires the service provider to be completely adaptable.
This is why we are pioneers in MaaS, and it’s why clients and experts prefer working with us – because we don’t just play at MaaS.
Get to know the shared victories we have achieved with MaaS partnerships >
Together towards success
Outsourcing marketing may not be the answer; bringing a partner on board is. Marketing, like other challenges, won’t be solved by simply pushing it out of sight. When marketing plays a crucial role in your business’s success, it deserves the right kind of development, which is best achieved through collaboration.
It’s not just your company or our company; it’s us together – that’s the right approach for achieving the best results. Sometimes this goes as far as inviting us to your company’s holiday parties, which is a great honor but by no means obligatory.