The Leap of Faith: Choosing a Managed Service Provider
The projects are piling up. Your team is overwhelmed. You’re motivated and ready to find a service partner to help you achieve more with marketing automation. But how do you make sure you’re putting your reputation, goals, and revenue potential in the right hands?
Choosing the right marketing automation partner is a big step, but it can transform your marketing practice. The right managed service provider can help you increase bandwidth, branch into new and rewarding marketing disciplines, or access deeper levels of technical expertise that unlock new opportunities.
It’s not a step to take lightly. In fact, it’s the ultimate trust exercise for marketers. You need to feel as though your partner can handle anything you throw at them, generate ideas you’ll love, and produce results that make you look like a superstar.
But how do you find an agency that’s ready and able to shoulder that partnership role and take ownership of your goals, your values, and your success?
Here, we look at some points to ponder as you research and evaluate your options. And for a deeper dive, you can download The Ultimate Managed Service Provider Evaluation Kit, which includes a list of must-ask questions.
Project management
When you’re browsing through an agency’s portfolio and being dazzled by pretty content, fun apps, and other campaign content, it’s easy to forget basics such as management practices. But they can make the difference between lost time, missed deadlines, frustration, and confusion or a seamless, stress-free experience. Quiz a potential marketing automation partner on how they manage projects, monitor progress, impose quality controls, and ensure deadlines are met.
Familiarization process
Ask the managed service provider how they familiarize themselves with your business and your competitive environment. If they falter, move on. To be effective, a demand generation partner needs to be embedded in your organizational culture and understand your business goals inside out. You need a true strategic partner who can take the lead in aligning your revenue goals with innovative campaigns that connect with your target market, not someone to turn dials and flip switches at your command. (For more tips on identifying an outsourced marketing service partner that is equipped to take on the role of collaborator, partner, strategist, and all-around superhero, download the kit.)
Team dynamics
Who will you be working with, and how will they service your needs throughout the relationship? Ideally, the team will include a point person who is there to provide continuity and accountability throughout the relationship. However, you also want to ensure that there’s a broader team of specialists in place who can be plugged in as needed to provide advanced expertise. In today’s multichannel, high-tech marketing world, it’s not realistic to expect that a single person can deliver excellence across an entire campaign.
Specializations and priorities
Your marketing automation agency will ideally have a purview broad enough to flexibly deliver on a range of campaign needs, but no agency partner can be all things to all marketers. Most have an affinity for a particular area or approach that they believe in and that works for them. For example, at DemandLab, we have a strong drive towards data-driven marketing — technologies that enable our clients to collect, analyze, and act on market data — and we maintain strategic partnerships with companies like BrightInfo, SnapApp, and InsideSales that enable us to hone client campaigns using granular, actionable data. Finding an outsourced provider whose capabilities match your priorities is key.
Personality
Knowing that your marketing automation partner can do the job is essential: so is knowing that you can work side by side with them in harmony. Don’t underestimate the importance of finding a good fit in terms of personality and working styles. It may come from mutual trust, respect, shared values, complementary communication styles or other elements: it’s hard to define, but you know it when you feel it. Conversely, if an agency checks all the boxes but the relationship feels uncomfortable, don’t ignore that feeling. Remember, this is a team you’ll be working with closely over the long term: do you want an engagement filled with camaraderie and great energy or one that takes hard work to maintain?
Keep your lint screen clean
One final note: try to cut through all the fluff that tends to collect as you gather information on potential providers of marketing automation services. It’s easy to have your head turned by a sexy website or a glossy portfolio (and those things definitely demonstrate creativity), but don’t let all the fuzzy stuff pile up and obscure the need for clean, clear proof points. Ask for references, credentials, net promoter scores, client retention rates, and other hard evidence of effective client management skills, project management skills, and campaign results.
Want more tips on finding the right marketing partner?
Download The Ultimate Managed Service Provider Evaluation Kit, which includes:
- Top tips for ensuring optimal services levels
- 8 key questions to ask about project management
- 5 fluff-busting proof points to request from agencies
Get 40+ incisive questions to help you identify your priorities and find the perfect service partner.
