Companies have long battled with weighing the benefits and drawbacks of managing their marketing and communications in-house vs. hiring an outside agency. New research from agency partner Filter examines the key considerations and consequences faced by an increasing number of companies looking to shift their marketing and customer experience work to in-house agencies—but with a new spin.
The firm’s new report, The Hybrid Services Model: Why Future-Forward Marketers are Taking a New Approach to Taking Work In-House, analyzes the many important drivers of this trend, as well as the considerable challenges companies encounter in their efforts to build a high-performing, in-house agency.
Top takeaways from this report include an analysis of how in-housing brings greater command and control of a company’s digital experience, and the returns it can deliver against the always-on demand for new, personalized, high-value content to continually elevate those experiences.
The paper defines a proven framework—the “hybrid-services model”—for effectively orchestrating marketing activities among a company’s outside agencies, in-house staff, and its in-house agency partner.
This latter party—a relatively new breed of professional services firm that builds and runs in-house agencies or embedded teams on behalf of its clients—combines the capabilities of a strategic consultancy and the expert marketing chops of an agency, along with strengths in workforce operations and talent development. Through this unique blend of disciplines, in-house agency partners have proved to play a key role in the success and sustainability of in-house programs among mid-size and large enterprise companies.
More and more companies continue to explore in-housing as a means to elevate and accelerate their marketing performance
In a recent survey by the Association of National Advertisers, 78 percent of companies reported new development of some kind of internal marketing organization, and 70 percent moved at least some established business in-house over the past three years.
“In-housing partners increasingly play a vital role in helping companies make this transition,” said Joe Melanson, Filter CEO, in a news release. “As this paper demonstrates, the collaboration and expertise they bring is essential to crafting an effective, efficient balance across in-house and outside agencies.”
Download the full report here.
The paper draws on Filter’s 30-year background in resourcing solutions for digital marketing, user experience and emerging technology services, distilling this demonstrated experience into data-driven insights and actionable recommendations for CMOs and other business leaders.
