One of the most important questions you can ask your marketing firm is this: “Tell me about your marketing team model.”

The firm’s team model can make or break your marketing profitability. You are looking for this delineation on the firm’s team: 

1. The first category includes those folks who focus solely on recommending and delivering solutions for growth. At least one of these people is the founder or top executive of the firm and has 5 to 20 years of experience driving results for organizations like yours. These are your main contacts at the firm, typically involving no more than two people with whom you will build lasting working relationships through alignment and trust-building quarter over quarter as results are delivered. They are the strategists, working with you to capitalize on opportunities and proactively identify and resolve weaknesses in the marketing plan as they emerge. This is where profitability starts: having the right executive-level talent in your corner to execute marketing that matters most to your target audience now.
2. The second category includes those people who are resourcing the time and budget you allotted to solve the marketing challenges and opportunities on the table. This is typically a Project Manager or Traffic Controller. Under that person are all the folks responsible for developing the solutions you engaged the firm to deliver: Graphic Designers, Automation Specialists, etc. You have little to no contact with these people. This no-contact policy keeps scope creep at bay, which is when your projects’ budgets bleed out due to unnecessary communication with too many people on the firm’s team rather than being focused on growth-, revenue- or profit-producing marketing initiatives. The policy also allows you to focus on the strategic, high-level marketing while the firm’s team handles the details behind the scenes.

Is your marketing as profitable as it can be? If not, your marketing firm’s team model may be the root cause. A firm that clearly delineates roles – providing you with executive-level strategists as primary contacts and skilled specialists working efficiently behind the scenes – positions your organization for long-term success.

Since 2007, Big Buzz® has helped Stage II to Stage III organizations systemize marketing to achieve growth goals. Founder and CEO Wendy O’Donovan Phillips is the author of two books available on Amazon, Kaboom and Flourish, multiple data-driven eBooks, has been published in McKnight’s, in Forbes, and has been quoted in The Washington Post, ABC News and Chicago Tribune. She has lectured dozens of professional organizations in front of audiences ranging in size from 25 to 6,000. She has been honored by the American Marketing Association for excellence in her field and has been named a Gold Key Award Winner by the Business Marketing Association. In her two-decades-long career, she has consulted with hundreds of organizations globally to support improved marketing clarity, strategies and outcomes. Get details: visit www.bigbuzzinc.com and follow Wendy.