Are you struggling to implement your marketing projects through lack of resource and expertise?

I haven’t met a marketer who feels they have enough capacity to do their day jobs, let alone find time to proactively take on more workload or explore and champion a new initiative.  So, when a business has a problem to solve or an opportunity to take advantage of, but doesn’t have capacity or those skills in house, consultancy can be a highly effective solution in the short and long term.

Short term augmentation of a team: consultancy can provide additional expertise, skills and bandwidth beyond your team’s current capabilities. A ‘surge’ capacity of subject matter experts who can quickly diagnose and provide a recommendation and strategic framework to implement. For example, we recently worked with a business which was finding it challenging to match its internal marketing resourcing and ways of working with the rapid growth of its use of Social Media globally.  We were able to move fast, understand the organisation, bring social media strategy and operational understanding to the diagnosis and design of a new structure, ways of working and external agency model.  All within 12 weeks.

Long term knowledge and skills transfer:  In another example, we were approached to support a Procurement team which had concerns whether a key advertising agency was offering value for money for the Scope of Work.  We were able to deploy our Global Agency Rates Database to benchmark the agency’s rates, but equally importantly look at the agency staff mix on the account.  We identified that the staffing in local adaptation markets was far too heavy on the more expensive roles related to Strategic and Creative origination skills, to the detriment of adaptation skills.  Our comprehensive report and coaching enabled the Procurement team to take that data and knowledge and negotiate a more appropriate and fair remuneration package for both parties long term.

So, when you’re next looking down the barrel of a challenge or opportunity, without the resources to hand to unlock it, consider the consultancy solutions outside your organisation.