After we published our blog: “My Digital Marketing isn’t working”, we received a few queries from CEOs and CMOs and found a common thread in all the queries- "I now understand the importance of Marketing Operations now, what next? Is Marketing Operations really a full-time activity?" Bang on. This question made me write this post.

Should marketing operations be outsourced?

Before going into critical analysis of outsourcing, Let's take a step back and take a look at the definition of outsourcing. According to Wikipedia, "Outsourcing involves the contracting out the business process and operation, and/or non-core functions, to another party." Outsourcing the non-core activities is always the right way of moving forward.

In the field of Marketing, outsourcing of the right brain activities like advertising, creative designing is happening from a long time. Though marketing operations are relatively new, there is a strong trend of outsourcing the left brain activities of analysis, analytics, and optimization. According to a Forrester Survey, "55% of B2B Marketing functions are outsourcing their marketing operations activities & in the last decade, the outsourcing of CRM activities have quadrupled."

The key challenges of building a marketing operations team

There are 5-6 skills sets critical for the Marketing Operations team and one of the key challenges is that you don't need 6 resources for 160 hours/month and the other challenge is you can't find all the skills in one guy. Marketing Operations agency solves both of your problems.

They have the expertise and provide you with a range of skill-sets - you don't need to hire on your payrolls to get the best results anymore.

Benefits of marketing operations agency

A full-service Marketing Operations agency brings multiple disciplines to the table: This is the most important benefit of getting the marketing agency on board. They will bring the skill sets like Marketing Technologist, Data Analyst, Campaigns & Lead Management experts to maintain the sanity of the contacts database along with a manager who will be coordinating with you on the deliverables and the KPI's.  If your marketing operation activities can be done by a single resource, then there is no need for outsourcing your marketing operation but that's not true in most cases.

It's a combination of multiple skill sets which are not required on daily basis. For ex: You don't need a dedicated campaign manager ( assuming you are a start-up or SMB) because, on an average, you will only launch one or two campaigns a week.

A marketing operations agency has the benefit of lessons learned across dozens or even hundreds of client accounts. Agencies thrive every day to be excelling in delivering the results as it's their bread and butter. So they will, of course, bring their expertise to different clients on to the table and prevent you from falling into the cracks which might not be visible to you at all.

How to make Outsourcing a success story?

To get the maximum value of the outsourcing engagement, the Marketing Heads / Managers should make sure that everyone is on the same page for the following.

• KPI's to be measured at each week, fortnight or monthly.
• The skills the agency brings on to the table should be complementary to the organisation. If not, things will go wrong as there is the conflict of interest.
• Do proper analysis before choosing an agency, but once decided, always think of them as partners and together you will make the digital marketing success story.

Please share your opinions and feedback. We would love to hear.