Tag Archives: outsourcing

Marketing: 4 Scenarios for Hiring an Outside Consulting Resource

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The past couple of years have changed things in our modern work world quite a bit. Generation X was raised to believe that, if we just get an education and land a corporate job, we’d have security for years to come. Think again my friends, because those days are long gone.

With our economy running on life support, the dollar in the tank, and fast-rising inflation, companies had to pinch pennies wherever possible to keep the ship afloat. The results have been widespread and severe…significant loss of jobs, budgets slashed to levels we haven’t seen in years, and even a slew of companies going belly up during the prolonged recession.

Now we find ourselves with an unemployment rate higher than we’ve seen in at least couple of decades, if not longer. All companies want to do “more with less”. But business must go on, so we have to work within the current constraints placed before us.

As marketers, there comes a time when you have to consider outsourcing some or all of key programs. Let’s look at the most common situations where you should consider an outside consulting resource.

Work Overload

Doing more with less essentially means your company has decided to squeeze lemon juice out of a turnip, and you’re the turnip. Work/Life balance? Fat chance. This is typically a situation where the company has lopped off as many limbs as possible in hopes of surviving, and all of their work either goes away, or more likely, falls squarely on your “to-do” list. If you have been working so many hours that it takes more than a split second to remember your kid’s middle name or birthday, draw a line in the sand and sign up some help.

Missing Skillsets or Experience

I’ve spent a great deal of my career in startup environments, and there always comes a time when you need to do something that no one on the team has done before. There are two answers to this situation – invest your own valuable time and effort into figuring out how to band-aid a solution together, or pony up the dough to hire someone who already knows what they are doing. Having taken both approaches, I can speak from experience on this one. Bring in a consultant for the execution, and spend your valuable time working with them on fitting it into your overall strategy and vision.

Short-Term Needs or Projects

This is the situation where you most need to look outside. It’s one thing to have a new ongoing need, which is the only time you’d really want to invest the time and energy in ramping on a complex new skill. If you have a time-limited project where you need specialized technical or execution resources, save yourself the hassle, and budget for hiring some help. You can do a quick ROI analysis by taking your hourly rate, estimating how long you have to work to learn the skill, calculating how much slower you’d actually do it than an expert would, and comparing that to their quote. If you are still ROI positive, what other non-financial tradeoffs are you making, such as opportunity costs (i.e. other important projects that go into a queue instead of getting done), your stress level (and how that affects your ability to properly address other priorities), and whether you are getting enough time to recharge personally.

Building a “Virtual Support Team”

Maybe you’ve determined you do need to do a large volume of work, you are missing skillsets for managing the work, and you have frequent needs for short-term project assistance. Great! You may not be able to get a permanent job req for hiring new direct reports, but you can likely plan around setting budgets for your extended team. I’ve run entire virtual marketing groups myself by hiring outside professionals for web design, PPC strategy/execution, trade show support, writing, graphic design, etc. This is a valid and proven model, particularly in the startup world where you have to do the work of an army by yourself.

Conclusion

Your company may expect you to do the work of a small army, but is that truly reasonable? You can do financial calculations to justify outsourcing rather simply. Use those numbers as ammo to negotiate funding for outside help or to persuade the company to de-prioritize activities that aren’t worth the investment. After all, if it isn’t worth a few grand to get it right, is it even worth doing in the first place?

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This work originally appeared as a guest post for the As-Such Communications blog.

Public Relations: 7 Steps to Selecting a PR Vendor

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Public Relations (PR) is one of the best ways to get some quick and potentially extensive exposure. But PR is much more than just crafting press releases and paying to post them to the business wire. Unless you are a larger company that can afford to keep dedicated PR resources in-house, you can do it yourself or bring in a PR vendor to manage it for you.

The cheapest way to get started is to do it yourself, assuming you have enough experience to craft a well-structured press release in the first place. [If you don't know how, you can typically fake it by doing a little research on how to piece one together, but it's not as easy as it may appear.] This approach is affordable, but you will be making a tradeoff in potential reach vs. bringing in a vendor or agency with established media relationships. At some point, you will need to bite the bullet and hire a partner or employee to manage the process for you.

Even if you have your sights set on hiring a full time PR representative, I still recommend you start out by managing an experienced partner for at least a few months or through a one-off project. Not only will this give you extremely valuable experience in the whole process, but it can extend the effectiveness of your first campaign(s) exponentially…assuming you select the right vendor.

I present to you the following seven steps to select the right vendor. If you follow these steps to the letter, your odds of getting it right will increase significantly.

  1. Scope the project - I can’t stress strongly enough how important it is to do a deep dive into what you are trying to accomplish, why you need to do it, and how you intend to get there, before you start talking to any potential PR partners. Know what you want from the start, and know how much strategic input you are expecting from your vendor of choice. Most of the time, PR is needed to bring attention to an event, a product launch, or some other significant development. These events should be promoted with a full integrated marketing assortment, and PR needs to fit a specific role within that assortment. Once you are comfortable with the whole plan, then you can turn your attention to the details of the PR part.
  2. Document the PR components needed - Specify the activities and documents you will be expecting from your chosen vendor. Writing press releases only? Distributing releases to the wire? Media outreach? Article placement? Editing contributed content? Managing syndication? Blog outreach? As you can tell, there are many things they can do to get the word out for you. Be very clear what your expectations are.
  3. Spell out submission requirements – Once you know exactly what you need from your partner-to-be, outline it in detail. I recommend formalizing it into a Request-for-Quote (RFQ). There are dozens of RFQ formats you can find online or through colleagues, and in my experience, PR outfits take it more seriously when done this way. Typical components of an RFQ include company and product overview, project scope, expected deliverables, submission guidelines (how/where to submit, by when, and in what format), whether references are expected or not, what work samples to submit, and key media they can leverage for your benefit. Be absolutely sure they you require well-established contacts in the publications and online services where you want coverage. Of all requirements, this is the most important.
  4. Identify potential partners – This is where you can waste a lot of time searching, so it is crucial that you start out with a vision of the type of partner who’d be a fit for you. I recommend avoiding individual PR consultants or other one-person outfits. Just like with any outsourcing partner, it’s best to have more than one contact at the company to cover for vacations or time out sick. Sometimes individual outfits will have a backup plan, perhaps a partnership with another PR consultant, to cover for these incidents. When you are just starting out, you also want to avoid very large agencies, where it takes $5K / month to really start seeing value add once you factor in the overhead of client management fees. Be sure to take advantage of your network for referrals, because a recommended vendor is much more likely to work out than someone random who you find in the telephone book or online.
  5. Engage in dialogue – Once you identify candidates, send them your RFQ document. I always include a blurb about when/how we can have a dialogue to clarify areas of confusion, answer questions, and start building some rapport. This can get a little tricky, because some vendors won’t take advantage of the opportunity, others will need one call only, and still others will want to ping you daily. This process is important because it helps you see how they operate. If they’re high maintenance, you can expect the same behavior once they’re on the clock. If they seem to pop in and out randomly, you may have problems getting in contact when you need them. This is a trial run in working together, so pay attention.
  6. Evaluate responses – If you did a good job of specifying submission requirements and timing, you should have all of your responses in hand by the deadline. I rarely let a vendor slide if they submit late, because again, it’s a negative indicator of their ability to meet deadlines. Review all of the documents, looking at cost quoted, timeline proposed, and completeness of response. Have a decision matrix in mind where you can score them in an objective manner – perhaps scoring them in each important area on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being a perfect fit and 1 being a mismatch. Include a category for their work style as mentioned in step five.
  7. Select partner – This part of the process may differ for each and every one of you. The key here is to simplify rapidly. Look at the scores from step six and eliminate anyone whose score is far below everyone else. Look at what you are getting and when, and compare against cost proposed. Don’t be so shortsighted as to just pick the cheapest option without considering what they are doing for the money and what your network can tell you about them. Get it to the top two or three options, and look for more resources to help determine whether they are good at what they do or not. In the end, decide if your scoring approach is more important or your “gut”, and go with whatever you think will be best for your business.

Sealing the deal: Break the news to all involved
First, notify the party you selected directly via telephone if at all possible. You are engaging in a working relationship, so the least you can do is call to tell them. Do the same with all the “losers” in the process. They will want to know why they didn’t make the cut, and you should absolutely share that detail with them. After all, if someone wants advice on how to improve their business, why wouldn’t you want to help? Karma applies in business too.

There you have it…seven steps to getting a new PR partner identified, selected, and on board. This may seem like a little overkill with the RFQ, but it is not. Trust me, you want to avoid headaches if at all possible, and this is a way to get through the process most efficiently.

What other steps have you employed that seemed to work? Are you using a partner or managing PR internally? Let’s discuss it if you have experienced something different. I’d love to hear about it.