If you’re a small business owner, you know that marketing is essential to your success. But what happens when you don’t have the time or resources to do it yourself? That’s where managed marketing comes in.
Managed marketing is a service that provides small businesses with the expert help they need to create and execute a successful marketing strategy. From developing creative campaigns to managing your social media, a managed marketing firm can take the guesswork out of marketing for you.
If you are interested in managed marketing, then you have thought about effective and hassle-free business promotion.
Managed marketing services have many advantages, especially if you want to sell online.
Entrepreneurs often find ways to reduce their workload and reduce the costs associated with hiring additional employees.
They are not always clear about the goals and objectives of marketing, so they focus exclusively on sales.
But competition is growing; customer priorities are changing, unforeseen circumstances keep arising.
Who could have imagined that the pandemic caused by COVID-19 would affect but established and emerging businesses the way it did?
The global trend of marketing in this digital era is to achieve more with less. New services are emerging that automate their marketing tasks, a new approach for reaching the target audience is being discovered as technology continues to sharpen the digital marketplace.
As a result, a growing amount of statistical data makes entrepreneurs realize that managing a marketing strategy is a lot of work. Delegating marketing tasks to dedicated external marketing specialists is now beginning to make sense.
If you happen to be one of the entrepreneurs mocking the idea of outsourcing marketing to a third-party marketing service provider because you think your current structure is great or because of concerns about costs, now is the time to reconsider.
What is Managed Marketing?
Before we dive into the benefits of the managed marketing model, let’s look at the basics.
The term “managed marketing” refers to the practice of outsourcing responsibilities related to marketing and business promotion to a third party.
In recent years, the demand for managed marketing services has been growing exponentially. In 2019, the global managed services market was estimated at USD 185.98 billion.
This increase in demand may be largely due to small and medium-sized businesses that need access to the latest technologies and trends to maintain a competitive advantage in their respective markets and support their further growth, but they do not have their marketing team and sufficient budget to achieve these goals.
The good news is that managed marketing allows small and medium-sized enterprises to play at the same level as mid-market organizations and enterprises without overexerting themselves – and this is just one of the advantages of the managed marketing model.
REASONS TO CONSIDER PROVIDING MANAGED MARKETING
In modern conditions, most entrepreneurs understand the need for a highly professional approach to marketing activities.
This requirement is due to strong competition in all sectors of production and sale of goods and services.
The commercial success of businesses in this digital era is more than ever depends on the ability to stand out from the rest of the market participants to make your brand easily recognizable and memorable.
It is necessary for entrepreneurs to be aware of fresh marketing trends, create long-term forecasts, show a creative approach, and offer non-conventional methods of product promotion.
If at the stage of creation and the first steps of the business, an entrepreneur keeps the issues of marketing strategy under personal control and independently sets tasks for employees, over time that entrepreneur will be faced with the need to create an in-house marketing department or delegate these functions to a third-party contractor.
Most often, the decision to consider managed marketing is due to the following reasons:
TO REDUCE WORKLOAD AND FOCUS ON THE MAIN BUSINESS GOALS
As your business grows, so will your marketing needs. Your internal marketing team can handle some of this increased workload, but it will most likely be overloaded and will not be able to scale according to the needs of your business, which will force you to assign additional responsibilities to managed services which are not part of your team, which may distract from the main business goals.
One of the advantages of managed marketing is that it frees up your team to focus on the core business operations and allows business owners to build more business relationships.
A truly qualified managed marketing partner will offer a flexible service model that will allow you to determine what level of service you need, whether it’s just outsourcing blogging or outsourcing the entire marketing department of your company.
TO GET CAPABLE HANDS ON THE JOB
One of the key advantages of the managed marketing model is that it allows you to hire an entire team of marketing specialists at a fixed monthly rate.
Some managed marketing service providers even use a general approach to managed marketing, which means that you can add or remove specialists from your managed marketing team as needed, depending on the requirements of each marketing campaign.
These professionals include SEO experts, Branding Experts, Copywriters, Product Design Experts, and training consultants who can help you improve your brand, continue to attract customers, and reach their full potential.
TO REDUCE COST
From a cost perspective, one of the clear advantages of managed marketing is that it reduces labour costs and eliminates the cost of hiring and training new marketing employees.
The opportunity to have skills available on a scalable basis is incredibly attractive, and most managed marketing service providers offer a flexible subscription that reduces costs and eases stress.
The best part is that you will never have to worry about unexpected marketing expenses because you are signing a service level agreement that meets your organization’s unique marketing needs.
This will allow your organization to move from a capital expenditure model to an operating expense model.
TO EASILY MANAGE CHANGE
As your business’s marketing needs evolve, you will need to scale your things up or down to fit them. Fortunately, managed marketing services can respond to changes in demand in real-time, so you will never have to worry about solving marketing tasks.
Be sure to pay attention to the managed marketing service, which provides marketing consultants (and can attract more as needed) and offers advanced services such as proactive monitoring, reporting, and much more to get the maximum return and scalability from your investment in Marketing.
What aspects of your marketing can be managed by third-party?
Aspects of your business that you should consider when handing over to Managed Marketing Services providers.
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Market Research
For a qualitative analysis of the market situation, special competencies, experience in using special methods, tools, and resources, and the objective view is needed; therefore, transferring this task to a managed service is important.
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One-off campaigns and promotion events
It is better to entrust large-scale events such as organizing exhibitions, rebranding, and presenting a new product to a specialized company with the necessary professionals and the skills to conduct promotion events.
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Offline Advertising and PR
Marketing agencies have established cooperation with printing companies; this implies that advertising materials will be much cheaper. In addition, they have designers and other specialists who will ensure high-quality design and production of banners, leaflets, and booklets.
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Blogging
No matter how small your business is, blogging is a good approach to build trust and influence your industry. By providing content that will be seen as valuable and expert insight, your potential customers will be able to see the knowledge and experience you have gained in your field.
Another angle to blogging is blog outreach and SEO writing.
This is more about making your get found by internet searchers and getting cited on authority websites.
Most managed marketing services already have a relationship with bloggers and influencers.
Partnering with them will save time and help ensure the appropriate thing is done.
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Online Marketing
In the world of online marketing, it is impossible to do without serious immersion in narrow-profile areas of knowledge and paid licenses for special software. Often, the execution of tasks in online marketing is entrusted to managed services to avoid a possible conflict of interests.
TOP 6 ADVANTAGES OF THE MANAGED MARKETING MODEL
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HIGH EFFICIENCY DUE TO THE USE OF EXTERNAL RESOURCES
It can take years to recruit qualified specialists to your marketing department, and they can still lose to the leading professionals of this market.
For this reason, companies that want to get a high-quality solution to marketing tasks select a specialized agency for this, which, if necessary, can be changed to another one.
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EASE OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT FOR THE BUSINESS OWNER
Suppose marketers are on the staff of the company. In that case, the manager has to delve into the reasons for the failure to achieve their goals and independently adjust the activities of this department.
By concluding a contract with the agency to provide marketing services, the company has the right to count on their impeccable provision, free revision, if necessary, and termination of the agreement if the quality of performance does not suit the customer.
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THE FLEXIBILITY OF MARKETING POLICY
The constant change in the market situation requires a timely response from marketers. In certain periods, various tasks become relevant, from pricing to the preparation of events.
An external contractor has access to many resources. Therefore it offers the customer solutions that are in demand at the moment.
At the same time, the business owner does not waste time expanding the department or retraining the staff.
He only sets goals for the agency, and the whole process of formulating specific tasks and implementing a marketing plan falls on the shoulders of professionals.
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A QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MANAGEMENT AND THE PERFORMER
Employees on the company’s staff are dependent on top managers and are largely guided in their work for personal gain.
This situation suits managers for whom the prompt and effective solution of marketing tasks is not a priority.
As for companies that are aware of the importance of this area, constructive cooperation with specialized agencies comes to the fore, as a result of which marketing goals are achieved in a timely and high-quality manner through the implementation of measures approved by the customer plan.
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DEVELOPMENT OF COMPANY RESOURCES
The increased level of competence inherent in the employees of the agencies involved has a positive effect on the professional growth of employees who interact with him in solving marketing tasks. Communication is inevitably accompanied by the exchange of experience, mutual learning, and the acquisition of useful skills.
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EXPANDING MARKET HORIZONS
In their activities, external consultants are faced with the need to apply marketing tools in companies with different business models operating in different industries and adhering to their own corporate rules.
This gives invited specialists a serious advantage over the full-time marketing department: it is easier for them, based on their experience, to offer the customer a non-standard solution to problems and outline promising development paths.
Of course, the companies’ marketing departments have their strengths. They are well versed in the specifics of their business, know better the methods of doing business accepted in the organization, cope with repetitive tasks with greater efficiency.
However, they lose to the agencies involved because they do not have extensive experience in various market segments and do not have access to the same number of tools and resources.
The optimal choice for large companies is considered to be a combined model of marketing activities.
At some point, the owner of the business resigns his powers of administration and transfers them to the marketer who has been hired.
The tasks of this employee include defining a strategy and setting goals, the achievement of which is entrusted to managed services – a pool of invited specialists or a specialized agency.
Final Words on Managed Marketing
When a business subscribes to managed marking, the only function that management of such business needs to reserve is the definition of strategic goals. The managed marketing services provider can handle all other marketing activities.
Smart entrepreneurs subscribe to managed marketing to leverage a wide range of in-depth knowledge; they see managed marketing model as a clever way to combine all their marketing in one place and gain access to the most advanced and innovative marketing strategy and solution.
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