Since Atos won B2B Marketing Team of the Year in 2016, I’ve been involved in many discussions around the approach and model organisations should take with their marketing teams.
Research conducted by ISBA, Oliver and Future Thinking showed 62% of organisations are shifting towards stronger relationships with fewer suppliers, and about 40% have or are considering in-house or onsite agencies. I concur with these findings, but is there a right approach to take? To help, I’ve summarised the benefits of each approach:
- In-house agencies: These are departments within your organisation typically responsible for marcomms-related deliverables. They offer deep institutional knowledge, and understand your brand, clients and the industry in which you operate. They tend to be transparent, efficient and more cost-effective because they utilise internal resources, and they also take full ownership of projects from start to finish.
- Onsite agencies: These are dedicated teams of people who sit alongside your own team. They provide a quick turnaround on creative briefs, are agile and provide real-time responses. They bring in best practice from other industries, and provide cost efficiencies, collaboration and enhanced skillsets. And because they’re contracted like an external agency, there’s no issues around additional team headcount.
- External agencies: These are organisations that provide a service and work with your own team. They can handle complex and technical programmes and campaigns across multiple channels, and provide a dedicated expert service in specialist areas.
Our approach has been to combine all three models, although we’ve become increasingly selective about the external agencies we work with – looking for those who offer something new, differentiated or niche and who are responsive to our needs.
Personally, I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong approach, but B2B marketers should be open to new ideas. So why not give one (or all) of the above a try?
