In 2023 marketers face a range of challenges that will make it increasingly hard to deliver effective marketing and customer experience that stands out from the competition.  Businesses are grappling with reduced budgets as well as challenges in finding the right skills in digital and data. With marketing data science expected to become mainstream, marketing teams must move from “believing in” data-driven marketing to becoming data-driven in their execution.  Operational challenges (martech skills, resourcing, data operations, content creation), combined with the business challenges of providing better customer experience and driving growth mean the marketing organisation must re-evaluate how it will deliver.

 

Introducing Marketing as a Service for more flexible marketing delivery:

Modern marketing operations requires teams to wear many hats, but it's not always an option to scale in-house marketing or add external agencies. You may already work with many external agencies and staying on top of those can be a full-time job in itself.

Harte Hanks solves this dilemma through a hybrid, flexible marketing services model, which we call Marketing as a Service (MaaS). MaaS gives enterprises of any size access to exactly what they need, when they need it, in a way that makes sense for their business, helping to deliver marketing faster and more efficiently.

 

When are flexible marketing services right for your business?

Whether you are an emerging scale-up business or a mid to large enterprise, having access to marketing services that can fulfil your specific need, or scale up or down as required will help you achieve your desired business outcomes. There are many scenarios where a more flexible and agile marketing approach can help. Examples where we have found MaaS to work particularly well include:

• Reducing marketing costs without reducing output
• Finding specialist marketing skills in digital or data, or market leading platforms
• Creating enough content and campaigns
• More agile execution of campaigns, especially across multiple products or geos
• Maximising the potential of your martech stack
• Making the most of the data you have
• Fixing and enhancing the data you have
• Rapid execution, when timelines are squeezed

Flexible marketing can cover one or several disciplines where you have a skill gap, short term capacity issue or ongoing requirement. Marketing as a Service covers the three pillars of modern customer centric marketing – data, content, and technology. Capabilities include:

• Data operations and management
• Campaign and program analytics and reporting
• content creation
• creative production
• campaign execution
• marketing automation setup and operations
• email campaigns
• social listening and marketing

 

How it works

Rather than having to hire and maintain a full-time marketing team, companies can utilize the services of marketing professionals on a flexible basis. This allows for more agile execution of campaigns, especially across multiple products or geographies. With a wide range of marketing professionals available, businesses can leverage the right marketing experts to fit their specific needs. Whether it's social media marketing, content marketing, or search engine optimization, businesses can find the right professionals to help them achieve their marketing goals.

 

MaaS in Action

Harte Hanks has supported several large and mid-sized enterprises with flexible managed marketing services. As an example, our client, a leading global electronics distributor who sell electronic components, kits and products as well as the latest automation and IOT technology, take advantage of the flexible approach. We provide services across several disciplines (strategy, creative, campaign execution in Marketo, data support, digital ads, direct mail, event support, localisation and project management) to help deliver ongoing and one-time campaigns. We operate the flexible model on behalf of the European marketing team using a diverse pool of resources, that can quickly scale, and which allows the team to avoid having to staff a much bigger team.

 

Why go flexible?

MaaS can be a cost-effective solution for businesses. By outsourcing marketing activities, companies can reduce their marketing costs and focus on their core business. MaaS can provide businesses with a flexible and cost-effective way to achieve their marketing goals. It's a perfect solution for companies looking to outsource their marketing activities and focus on their core business.

 

More about Harte Hanks - Making it happen for 100 years and counting….

Founded in 1923, Harte Hanks is a leading global customer experience company whose mission is to partner with clients to provide them with CX strategy, data-driven analytics and actionable insights combined with seamless program execution to better understand, attract, and engage their customers. With offices across the globe, we are focused on bringing companies closer to their customers. We provide our services to a diverse range of industries including health care, pharma, financial services, consumer products, technology, entertainment/streaming, travel and automotive.

 

What next?

Interested in learning more about Marketing as a Service, or how Harte Hanks can support your organisation with marketing please connect with us here - https://www.hartehanks.com/contact/