Today it’s harder than ever to justify increased marketing expenditures. Flat or down can be the new up. As your business rebuilds new ideas can be paramount as your organization rebounds from a challenging 2020.
As a marketing leader, there hasn’t been a better time to introduce strategy shifts within the C-Suite or Executive Team. With today’s technology revolution, more companies are evolving marketing from a cost center to a profit and revenue center.
78% of members of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) already have an in-house agency. This doesn’t mean all aspects of marketing; brands in-source different elements of their marketing with digital advertising, creative, and media buying at the forefront.
So how did we get here? The current agency structure grew out of an age old model that spawned big, national TV ad & radio campaigns. However, this structure is completely misaligned for the digital age, where marketers need to be producers managing multiple channels, some in-house, and some external.
The driving force that’s prompting CMO’s to bring their marketing in house comes down to a few themes: control, visibility, & economics.
“The impact the pandemic is having on in-house agencies today is similar to what the rest of the world is experiencing — essentially, teams working remotely while doing their best to maintain business as usual,” Emily Foster, director of the In-House Agency Forum (IHAF), a trade group representing internal agencies, as reported by Marketing Dive. “The longer-term impact could, however, mirror what we saw with the economic downturn of 2008. That is, work that would otherwise have been outsourced being funneled in house.”
Major brands continue to move more agency work in house as technology has enabled marketing staff access to modern tools that gain stronger results for a fraction of the cost.
The Role Of Technology
Modern marketing platforms did not exist when the agency/marketer relationship was born. From a digital marketing perspective, the options consisted of outsourcing to an agency, or stitching together a solution based on disparate platforms which can lead to even more work.
That’s where progressive technology like Eulerity comes in.
The system we’ve built was developed by Google and Facebook former engineers that improves the end to end buying experience full stop. With one platform you can build creative, buy, optimize, and understand how your media investment is performing across all major digital channels. Modern ingredients including AI, cloud, mobile first usability, visual data, and SaaS pricing come standard.
Without the best technology it’s hard to understand how it’s even possible to manage local marketing for brands that have hundreds or thousands of multiple locations. A common marketing infrastructure platform makes this possible by bringing uniformity to marketing creative, measurement, attribution — enabling an organization to truly get their hands around their local markets.
Flipping the switch to turn marketing from a cost to profit center can be a rewarding strategy. Having a marketing team that generates consumer revenue, brings in profit, while enabling transparency and control of your destiny increases the importance of the marketing function with your board, internal consistencies, and gives you a leg up on your competitors.
Adam Chandler, COO & Co-Founder, Eulerity
