Outsource Magazine

Attend any conference and you’ll see row after row of exhibitor companies whom you’ve either never heard of, or of which you may just have a dim recollection. The earnest lads and lasses passing out business cards, brochures and logo items are all pumped about “marketing” their companies. Or look at any industry publication, and you’ll be dazzled by the investment in expensive four-colour pages. Check out a pay-for-play website, and you’ll read an analyst’s report subtitled “sponsored by” with the name of the provider in the smallest font imaginable. Or, if the budget and the CEO’s egos are big enough, you might even see a name attached to a sporting event or a charity ‘do: think golf or yachting. Is this what we deem effective outsourcing marketing? Some members of our provider community seem to think so…

In two of last year’s Outsource columns - 'Buying Brand' and 'Thought Leadership is Brand in the Outsourcing Industry' - I looked at the importance of brand salience and thought leadership in the outsourcing industry. Now it’s time to discuss something not quite so aspirational as building a brand or truly contributing to the industry by having a fresh spin on the state of affairs, but rather how an organisation throws away marketing dollars, eliminating any chance of an identifiable return.

The discussion lends itself to outlining the outsourcing industry’s worst practices in marketing. This is not to say that there aren’t some superb outsourcing marketers, or marketing moves out there; it just says that the industry, in its wisdom (and often parsimony) hasn’t a clue about best practice and gravitates toward the implementation of some of the very worst marketing decisions. And, as a result, marketing produces nada, marketing budgets are cut, the provider is not able to establish a brand, and a vicious cycle ensues.

Working through the wrong channels, spending too little, being too impatient, not differentiating the message, forgetting about selling into the client’s pain, conducting marketing as intermittently as a drive by shooting - these certainly are outsourcing marketing faux pas of the highest order.

When it comes to marketing, the foundational mistakes are made in talent, organisational alignment and budgeting, the “part one” of effective marketing. Eliminate these worst practices from your organisation and marketing is poised to deliver; ignore them and no amount of marketing activity or spend will create a brand that outsourcing clients want to associate with.

What are the fundamental mistakes every provider should strive to avoid?

Confusing a PR function for key executives with marketing
Even as the industry is maturing, there remains a point of view that sustaining the personal brand of key outsourcing executives is far more important than building the brand of the organisation they lead. We’ve all seen the approach: if the boss makes it into the Economic Times, has an interview with CNBC, or with luck, even gets a quote in the Wall Street Journal, marketing gets a high five. But placing all bets on making CEOs rock stars has an obvious downside. Firstly, they don’t stay in their roles forever, so when they leave, there’s no program. Second, few spend their days out in the marketplace, so only their peers enviously regard the amount of press they are getting. Third, smart clients do not buy outsourcing services based on the charm, good looks and wit of the CEO. Great outsourcing brands are built on consistently pushing out the value proposition, differentiation, thought leadership and the personal brands of the team who are selling and managing the work through the right channels.

Combining employee engagement and recruitment with so-called “external” marketing
Other than core communication, the functions have little in common. Granted, there should be commonality of brand, but the similarity basically stops there. The audiences are different, resulting in different messaging. The channels are different, delivering little synergy. The organisational alignment is different: employee engagement typically reports to human resources, while marketing is joined at the hip with sales. Yet many organisations tie the two together, often in one leadership role.

Because employees and recruits are more of a definable or captive market, attracting/retaining them is critical, and the metrics are more easily measured, marketing leaders with dual responsibility have difficulty serving both causes. So, as a result, “external” marketing seems to get the short end of the stick.

Not aligning marketing to sales
Many providers design their marketing function as “marcomms,” separating it from any linkage with the organisation’s sales engine. Making noise for noise’s sake is not the purpose of outsourcing marketing; differentiating an offering and rendering it safe and smart to engage is what marketing is supposed to do. Trumping the competition’s Factiva numbers may earn a PR firm its at-risk compensation, but it does nothing measurable to drive sales.

This does not mean that marketing must report to sales; it means outsourcing marketing’s sole raison d’être is to grow revenue. If marketing is only charged with making noise - putting out announcements cum press releases, sending out blanket emails, mounting  sexy websites displaying every istock photo imaginable - and is  unconnected to lead generation, it will never deliver.

Using marketing budgets as a cookie jar
It often seems that the annual process for developing marketing budgets is allocating whatever is left over after every other department’s budget is developed. You’ve heard the excuse: “it’s what we can afford to do. We’ll spend more next year if revenues go up this year.” This logic is flawed: if marketing is responsible for driving growth, and is given no or insufficient resource to do so, how can it possibly increase revenues?

Alternatively, marketing budgets are often built properly from the bottom up, than slashed whenever it’s time to make the push for quarterly numbers. What outsourcing executives may not realize is that marketing is a process just like any other: when it is stopped or curtailed, it no longer delivers expected results.
This worst practice begs the question: if the provider cannot commit to investing in marketing, why is it in business?

Paying peanuts
In our industry, good marketing talent should be given endangered species status. It’s difficult to count those with a real track record driving corporate growth on more than one hand; it’s even harder to find someone with more than a courtesy CMO title who reports to the CEO and is integrally involved in developing strategy.

The propensity to confine marketing to a marcomms function aside, one of the reasons stellar CMOs are rare in the outsourcing industry is because the compensation is not commensurate with the responsibility to create real value. If marketing is the de facto public face to the market, and the CMO is designer and communicator-in-chief of every bit of buzz that compels a client to buy, why does the industry insist on paying a marketing leader often as little as one tenth (yes, one tenth) of what it pays the CEO?

Hiring kids
Why would you entrust creating an environment for revenue growth to a youngster whose main credential is a newly minted MBA in marketing, an aspiration to be in marketing, or, dare I say it, being the son or daughter of a friend who just completed a summer internship in a PR agency? Then expect them to get a little on-the-job training and - voila - deliver marketing effectiveness!

Marketing outsourcing today is a very sophisticated pursuit. It requires a constant command of a rapidly shifting competitive landscape, the ability to stay on top of business and sector trends, the ability to harness rapidly changing channels to market, differentiate offerings, talk knowledgeably to clients, represent the company in the marketplace, and influence the influencers, just to name a few capabilities. A sparkly personality, perhaps (if you’re lucky) the ability to turn a good and grammatical phrase, and a willingness to learn are not skills sufficient to drive growth.

Outsourcers don’t hire kids for solutioning, account management or sales. By extrapolation, why would an organisation hire juniors to devise a strategy to promote the brand, present the organisation to the marketplace, and develop and exploit sales channels?

Burying marketing in the bowels of the organisation
If marketing is the all-important face to the market, why is it so often relegated to the organisational equivalent of the cellar? It’s not uncommon for marketing to report as many as three levels down from the CEO, perhaps to the head of sales who reports to the business line leader, or to the head of business development who reports to the head of solutions who reports to the president who reports to the CEO. And then there are the instances when an employee communications leader assumes the responsibilities of external marketer, reporting to the chief people officer who reports to... you follow the drift of the discussion.

Without organisational prominence, there is no ability to influence or contribute to strategy. Without clear influence, there is no respect for the function. Without respect, there is no call on resources. And without resources, there is no effective marketing program.

Demanding that the marketing team do double duty
It’s a dirty secret in parts of the provider world marketing is often a part time role. The head marketing guy or gal also puts together proposals, develops the PowerPoint presentations, perhaps lends a hand to a bit of solutioning, manages employee communications, and acts as the CEO’s private press secretary to boot. As a result, real marketing is not a priority; it’s what the marketing person does with the time that’s left over. And that’s not very much. Shake your head in disbelief, but a number of just-shy-of-a-billion-dollar outsourcing companies have no full time, dedicated CMO.

Locating marketing direction offshore
Hypothetically, in a connected world, location should have no impact on the effectiveness of any function. But the rule does not generally hold for outsourcing marketing leadership — especially if the target market is global.

A good marketer is deeply immersed in the ways of the local markets. He/she has the advantage of proximity, the ability to detect firsthand what clients want and how competitors are going to market. Discussions with influencers and pundits become a regular affair. The efficacy of one marketing channel versus another is easily gauged. Marketing works hand-in-hand with the sales team. There’s no need for time-consuming translation of trends and market shifts.

But because marketing is seen by some as a job to keep the CEO’s name in the press, or as “corporate function” (whatever that means), a necessary evil, or because providers are too parsimonious to spend real onshore dollars for talent, its leadership (or semblance thereof) is often housed away from clients and sales.

Here’s the conundrum: a provider would not locate a delivery leader away from delivery centers; why would that same provider remove marketing leadership from... the pulse of the market?

This is not to say that key members of the function cannot be located offshore. Marketing as a function can be described as consisting of front and back office processes. There is great talent available offshore that adds real value, such as campaign management, content management, and digital marketing. The trick is to know what should be located where under an overarching program umbrella.

These worst practices beg a very simple question: if providers cannot commit to attracting the requisite marketing talent, equipping it with sufficient resource, and aligning in the organisation where it can actually drive revenue,  why is it in business? Clients buy brand, not charm; providers’ growth comes from disciplined, differentiated messaging, not a lucky chance meeting at a conference. Yet too few outsourcing providers understand the importance of investing in marketing, and, alas, they get the marketing they deserve...

To be continued...