MARKETING IN HOUSE OR AGENCY: WHERE SHOULD BELIEVE BE OVER?

There is a constant underground battle in the thinking that business managers should spend time building a Marketing In-house team or looking for an Agency unit. To solve this deliberate problem we should seriously put both options on the scales.

Let's take turns reviewing the following criteria: Budget management, HR management, Campaign management, Commitment, Confidentiality.

BUDGET FACTORS - RESOURCES

When the marketing budget is limited

The fairly common case is that the business has a specific marketing budget such as 100 million / month. Say 100 million for comfort, many parties only have from 30-50 million for Marketing only (accounting for most of the personnel). When the marketing budget is limited, the scope of implementation and implementation time is also limited.

In the Build team plan, in order to shorten the time to build a team, when there is no time to train and wait for human resources to develop, you are required to choose high-quality personnel, to operate quickly and stably. That means investment costs for human resources increase. With any amount of money, personnel with strong experience have a salary of 150-200% higher than that of young employees. From here on, the budgets for marketing campaigns are reduced.

Personnel costs alone fall into about 60%, including essential positions: 1 Marketing Manager, 1 -2 Digital, 1-2 Content, 1 Design ... If you want a lower human resources budget, you must accept the quality. staffing will also decrease with or lower headcount. You only have 40% of your budget for advertising. It is also a challenge in managing and operating the newly built team to be able to deploy effective Marketing campaigns.

⇒ At this time, the plan of self-building In-house team is not appropriate. This plan should be for businesses oriented to build teams for long-term investment, with a "redundant" Marketing budget.

If you choose an Agency in this case, Managers may have problems not fully grasping how to operate the apparatus due to the outside marketing system and personnel. If there is a meeting only a few times, mainly work online. In return, Managers can solve the problem of human resources by taking advantage of the "good war" talents that the Agency owns as well as their experience through many similar projects.

In general, agencies usually charge a management fee of about 20%, which means that the investment in advertising campaigns will be more, up to 80%. Moreover, with a contract that is fully committed to KPI, cost constraints, the results of the marketing campaign will be more guaranteed. In many cases, businesses only accept and pay for the results. But there are also many cases of "money loss carrying disability" because the agency is not reputable.

So on the balance between 2 options Agency & Inhouse in case of a limited budget, Managers should consider an option that can meet 2 factors, namely optimal cost for human resources and ensuring professional quality for the marketing campaign.

When the business has a "rich" Marketing budget

The second case is when the business has a larger or even unlimited budget. More precisely, the marketing budget is directly proportional to the growth target (accounting for 10-25% of revenue). In this situation, the manager is faced with a long-term problem, building a solid staff, and marketing campaigns can span years.

With such conditions and problems, Managers have enough time and budget to build a well-trained Marketing Inhouse team. At that time, businesses can be completely owned and monitored closely with the cost of the campaigns Inhouse team has deployed. On the other hand, looking towards the Agency selection plan, on the market very few Agency has the capacity to follow the plan for the whole year with the Client unit, because human resources will be dispersed for many other projects.

Also, due to the long-term plan, Managers can be flexible between the two options. Specifically, in the long run, Inhouse team still uses the Inhouse team to implement cross-cutting marketing campaigns. At the same time short-term campaigns and requires "boom" in sales or strong brand identity should be combined Agency. Learning from new ideas, workflows, technologies, and trends from Agency partners is also a good choice for in-house teams.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

For the implementation of an Inhouse team, businesses need to strictly manage the following steps: Recruitment; Educate; Job Management, Review & Evaluation, Promotion or Layoff ... Sometimes it is necessary to accept HR risks that are invested but not effective. There is no shortage of cases, businesses think they can recruit people with good profiles, but it is good to go to new jobs to reveal the weakness in terms of expertise, it's good to cut the wind but start doing it, then three dots ...

In terms of workload, Managers also need to properly evaluate the workload of the Marketing department in order to be able to properly organize the staff size. Avoid overloading situations that lead to poor performance or less work.

In terms of workload, Managers also need to properly evaluate the workload of the Marketing department in order to be able to properly organize the staff size. Avoid overloading situations that lead to poor performance or less redundancy.

As can be seen, in this case, cooperation with the quality Agency will be a more optimal plan. Management problems such as the In-house apparatus will disappear. However, the business side needs the project manager with experience and knowledge to exchange, manage, and control the activities of the Agency.

OPERATION MANAGEMENT

For Team Inhouse, it is necessary to follow a standard cycle management form. The Marketing Director is responsible for the KPI of the whole campaign, managing the KPI of each team or even the KPI of each individual. With strict KPI control to each head of personnel, it will help ensure the performance of the whole campaign continuously updating, but that means the manager's daily workload will be very large. The Marketing Manager / Director does not have much time to plan long-term strategies and plans.

If cooperating with Agency, often apply end-to-end management. That means the Client will assign to partner Agency Brief & Budget and receive the Results for acceptance. The whole implementation process such as Brainstorming ideas for the campaign, how to work with the Designer, how to brief the Content, Follow you Digital, will be entirely in charge of the Account of the Agency.

This form may reduce the time and effort of Managers, but the reverse side will not be able to follow the campaign closely as well as take risks when the final results of the campaign are not as good as the original KPI. To overcome this, businesses need to ask the Agency to provide regular reports, closely coordinating for both sides to closely monitor the running campaign.

COMMITMENTS

With the plan of building a Marketing In-house team, commitment is expressed by KPIs of teams and individuals. In case everything is favorable, it is what Managers want. But when the KPI of an individual or a team in the team is not completed, the business can make heavy hands, especially lay off personnel, the damage will not be compensated.

With short-term campaigns, commitment to KPI is especially important because if you cannot achieve the KPI as originally required, it will be more difficult to "correct" because the pressure of time will be heavier.

In the same situation above, if the Agency does not fulfill as originally committed, the contract binding responsibility between the two parties will be the basis for forcing the Agency unit to have the highest responsibility for the customer.

 SECURITY

No one manager wanted their implementation method, their information to be known by the market or their competitors before the campaign was launched.

Short-term marketing campaigns are usually geared towards one or fewer goals. At the same time, when the time is short, the rate of information leakage is also reduced. With a long-term campaign, it is difficult to ensure that the human resources accompany the business throughout the campaign. With an in-house team, there is a risk that employees will quit their jobs and move to another company (worse than competitor companies).

With the current agency market, most reputable agencies will sign confidentiality for their customers. At the same time, the Agency must also be responsible for the signed commitments because of its reputation.

Inhouse has a stable strength, people in the house, know everything related to the brand, have a deep understanding of their fields. A good professional agency, experience in fighting thousands of projects with excellent warriors. Choosing which form will depend on the financial situation of the business, "whether rice, fish sauce" to balance existing resources as well as marketing objectives from time to time.

In short, at the managerial level, the Managers need a cold and sober head to evaluate. Evaluate the quality of the Agency you plan to choose. Evaluate the quality of the In-house team that is or is planning to build. The project needs assessment suitable for which option.