Should you be investing in tools to manage your digital marketing monies?

This is a question which multiple marketers are trying to figure out for their organisations.
Marketers are confused since they are unsure of whether to invest in a tool, which invariably
includes investing in the hands-on training of the in-house people to use these tools, or to outsource the entire complexity of advertising management to a media agency.

It is no secret that if used properly, a tool increases the productivity and efficiency of the organisation thereby deriving higher rate of returns on marketing spends.

So the real issue is to decide whether to invest in media management tool and equip the internal teams with it or to outsource this entire business to a specialized digital media agency. Both the options comes with their own pros and cons.

The answer to this problem differs from business to business and depends on multiple factors like organisations strategy, capability of the internal teams, type and amount of media to be managed and also the relationship and trust of the business with their agency.

Lately many of the big enterprise marketers are investing in enabling their in-house teams with the advertising platforms to drive efficiency to media spending. Chief among many reasons to go down this road are to bring the branding/product/marketing teams to work in conjunction with the media
buying and spending towards common goals. Investing in technology in-house also allows businesses to circumvent the hefty commissions that agencies charge. Also investing in technology to solve problems brings in a culture which is self sustaining, forward looking and more future safe.The rapid growth of cloud powered technology solutions have made taking this option more appealing than it has ever been in the past. Marketers are free to experiment with these solutions without the risk of being stuck with one type of technology forever. This in-turn results in pushing the
marketing platform companies to out perform each other by building and offering more capabilities and services.

Agency business on the other hand is not dying anytime soon. Most of the big agencies have successfully transformed and have made themselves useful in the increasingly digital world. These agencies have the experience and know how of the real world media business and are steadily building the skill sets required in the digital age.Agencies themselves use multiple technology platforms and most of these agencies have people who are trained on using these tools. In many cases, businesses license these platforms and agencies use them thereby providing the best of both worlds.

Some marketers also attempt to hire a lot of workforce in order to outdo the benefits of a tool and to avoid the related cost. This is definitely not a wise decision given higher attrition rates, increasing demand of higher ROI from marketers, complex algorithms working across digital channels ,challenge to manage large teams
working on different digital pieces and to make sense of it all to drive unique marketing objectives.

I would like to conclude this piece by saying that investing in a technology platform is today's demand and a critical necessity for tomorrow. The way you choose to go about it - via agency or through internal teams, depends on your organization's strategy. Once you decide to invest in a platform, equally important is the decision to choose the right platform from the many currently being offered in the market. In my next post, I will list down the factors that a marketer must look at while evaluating any media management tech platform.