Last year I started a new marketer interview series called “The Marketer’s Edge”.  We interview c-level marketing executives to learn about things about them, their business, and how they deal with challenges thrown at them by this rapidly changing marketplace.

To-date we have released close to 40 interviews.

I’ve talked with a wide-ranging group of marketers across a range of industries and have found a handful of common threads across all of the marketers.

Marketers seem to really value their in-house teams, but find that they tend to go outside when one of three things occurs:

  1. The marketer has grown in their own level of sophistication and technical needs and the in-house team simply isn’t capable of keeping up.
  2. The marketer is just looking for a fresh set of eyes to get some new perspective on a project, a new initiative, or their current marketing program.
  3. They have a very specific technical need that their in-house team simply doesn’t have the skill set to deliver.

Getting an agency in to give your business a fresh look doesn’t have to be at the expense of your current agency partner or your own internal team.  It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing affair.  Looking outside your in-house team can be a good thing.

The last two searches we ran for marketers were all about finding a new agency to manage a very specific project.  Current agency and in-house team remained in tact.  New agency brought great new and fresh perspective.

In our most recent survey, we found that a long-standing trend of marketers consolidating the number of agencies they were using is turning the other way.  Marketers are more willing to go outside and look for specialty agencies today than in the past.

The good news for marketers is that most agencies today know that they aren’t going to every be the sole provider of services to a single marketer.  And smart, good agencies will say and live by the fact that they work well with other agencies and play nicely in the sandbox.

So don’t live and die by your in-house team or your long-standing agency.  It’s perfectly fine to have a strong allegiance to both.  But don’t forget about that business you’re running and the crazy, competitive nature of the market you’re operating in.

Do yourself a favor and find a fresh set of eyes.  Find some better technical expertise.  Find an agency that can help you bring something new to your firm.

If you need help, give us a call (513-293-6785) or drop me a line (mark@rswas.com)