Marketing as a Service is an agile marketing solution tailored to support a company’s marketing functions by delivering value-based, on-demand marketing services. These range from marketing strategy development to execution.
MaaS delivers tailored marketing solutions that meet a company’s marketing needs. It helps you where you are lacking. For example, if you are struggling to convert leads into customers, MaaS will optimize your marketing campaigns. MaaS providers enable you to tap into the expertise you need to deliver strong and effective marketing campaigns. They typically consist of a team of experts who can execute marketing strategies, from content creators to web developers, media buyers, and social media experts.
One of the reasons MaaS is gaining popularity is that it delivers high-performance marketing campaigns in a cost-effective manner. It enables companies to adopt data-driven marketing strategies and processes, thereby aligning with the best marketing practices in the industry.
How Marketing as a Service works
In the past, marketing departments had to develop and present a budget to management while lobbying for more employees to join their team. After getting management approval, it took an average of nearly two months to hire and get the right candidate in place. Then, they would have to repeat the process in a few years when the employee got a promotion or changed jobs.
But with MaaS, marketers can leverage the expertise they need at that point in time to quickly execute strong and effective campaigns. It is designed to synthesize strategy and execution to support your marketing efforts, depending on your campaign priorities.
MaaS providers develop customized marketing strategies and solutions to help you achieve your marketing and business goals. They essentially become an integrated extension of your marketing department. They deliver services that are tailored to your marketing needs and market demands.
MaaS delivers high-performance marketing at a lower cost, focusing on data-driven strategies and decision-making, and leveraging new marketing technologies and industry best practices. To benefit from MaaS, you need to:
Invest in collecting cross-device consumer data: Marketing generally relies on data for decision-making and effective campaigns. But in the MaaS era, consumer data will play an even more critical role in successful marketing campaigns. You need to know who your customer is and collect data so you can truly understand them across multiple touchpoints.
Create cross-functional teams across agencies: Many companies often work with different agencies for customer relationship management, digital marketing, and creative agencies, among others. You should encourage all your partners to collaborate to ensure knowledge transfer so you can have a shared understanding of your target audience and what your marketing service should focus on.
Think about the customer experience from the design stage: MaaS is about enhancing the customer journey with actionable moments at every stage of the sales funnel. You will therefore need to review and analyze the customer journey from the beginning in order to offer personalized marketing solutions.
Incorporate marketing innovation as part of your product range: New technologies such as chatbots, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are helping to revolutionize the marketing scene. They should not only be seen as innovation projects but also be integrated into your product range as an integral part of the CRM strategy and experience.
If you are going to engage consumers and gain an edge over your competitors, you need to go beyond personalized content and deliver experiences that allow consumers to act on that content. This is where MaaS makes a difference.
Marketing features that are perfect for MaaS
If you’re wondering if MaaS will take over all of your marketing functions, the answer is no. At least for now. With the right team, you can keep core digital marketing functions in-house. These include brand messaging, customer acquisition strategies, market research, and social media management.
MaaS is primarily focused on the technological aspect of marketing, given the speed of innovation and how difficult it is for marketers to keep up. This allows you to stay on top of marketing technology trends quickly and cost-effectively.
Some of the marketing functions that can be outsourced to MaaS include:
- PR (public relations)
- Design for print and online media
- Content development and presentation
- User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design
- Marketing automation
- Lead scoring
Programs that generate interest in a service or product can also be brought under MaaS.
While it is still early days for all businesses to need MaaS, industries such as travel, hospitality, and e-commerce are ready and ripe for it.
Marketing as a Service is particularly beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups that have limited budgets and staffing but still want to execute effective marketing campaigns. MaaS delivers all aspects of marketing so that SMEs can have a complete and successful campaign while employees work on other important needs in the company.
But it is not only SMEs and startups that can benefit from MaaS. Even large and established companies with dedicated in-house marketing teams can find MaaS useful in certain situations. For example, MaaS can be helpful when entering new markets, launching new products, testing new marketing channels or technologies, or when trying something that is outside the scope of current staff.
Does your company need Marketing as a Service?
MaaS is a holistic marketing approach that gives businesses with limited resources access to professional branding. It tailors each program to the individual needs of the business, meaning you can choose a single service or a bundle of services for a complete marketing experience.
Some of the benefits of using MaaS include:
- Free up resources to focus on strategic efforts
When you’re working with a tight budget and limited resources (technology, skills, and time), you need to be strategic about where you put your efforts… and they need to deliver results! The problem is that most companies focus their marketing efforts on execution rather than strategy. While they may achieve quick wins, the end goals are often unsustainable. What’s more, they often lack strategic skills.
To succeed in today’s digital marketing landscape, there’s no room for taking chances. Your marketing strategy should be based on insightful data and expert knowledge. MaaS can help with both. As a business, you only need to spend on the marketing efforts you need, and you’ll get quality, continuous results with growth potential.
- Scalability
The marketing space is also highly competitive. It can be difficult to consistently deliver outstanding marketing campaigns with minimal operational costs.
However, MaaS allows you to scale up your marketing efforts at a lower cost than in-house marketing. This allows you to support additional marketing initiatives or projects. Resources can be quickly and easily moved to where they are needed most, whether it is launching a new product or scaling up a marketing campaign. It also gives you access to insightful market data that can help identify new opportunities.
- Cost effectiveness
When you only pay for the marketing services you need and avoid the ones you don’t, you save money and keep your budget manageable.
MaaS providers can also get big discounts by paying for marketing tools in bulk. They can pass these cost savings on to you as a customer by charging a lower fee to access these tools. This also saves you from having to buy the entire tool when you only need to use a component of it.
- You can adapt to changing business needs in real time
Businesses, especially those in the e-commerce industry, need to stay up to date with digital marketing trends. But it can be difficult to keep up with trends and adapt to changes in real time. It is costly, energy-consuming, and time-consuming to develop a new marketing strategy every time a new trend emerges. It is almost impossible if you are working with limited resources.
This is where MaaS is most rewarding.
Your service provider will always be aware of the latest trends, so you don’t have to worry about keeping up or constantly starting from scratch. Service providers also give you access to the latest marketing technology, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve.
- Better focus for your marketing team
Finally, outsourcing your marketing needs to a MaaS provider frees up your workforce to focus on valuable and rewarding tasks like ensuring a consistent brand message. This improves your workflow and productivity.
Additionally, your internal team gets to learn industry best practices and emerging trends by working with experts. They can use these skills in their work even after your contract with the service provider has ended. This reduces the need to constantly retrain your employees.
This doesn’t mean that the other marketing models are ineffective, but MaaS allows you to get more for less. See the table below for a summary of how MaaS differs from traditional marketing models:
| MaaS | Internal marketing | Freelancer | Marketing agencies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Low – you only pay for the services you need | High – salaries and benefits, staff training, technical maintenance | Economical – hourly rates depending on the size of the project | High – fee depending on what marketing function you need, e.g. website development, social media, etc. |
| Area of expertise | Broad – the team consists of industry experts with different marketing skills | Limited – depends on budget and ability to hire the right expertise | Very limited – each freelancer has a different range of skills | Limited to the marketing services they offer. However, there are agencies that offer a full range of services |
| Speed of market strategy implementation | Fast – expertise is available and services are on demand | Slow – mainly depends on resource availability and staff motivation | Slow – freelancers often have very limited resources. Difficult to scale up with company growth | Fast – their expertise is built around a specific marketing function |
| Access to marketing technology | Immediate access | Limited access as it depends on resource availability | Limited access – freelancers rely mainly on the organization’s technology platform | Immediate access |
| Adaptability to marketing needs | Good adaptability, agility and up to date with the latest industry trends | Low adaptability, often difficult to retain or reallocate fixed resources | Adaptability depends on their in-depth knowledge and familiarity with industry best practices | Limited – contracts can make it difficult to quickly reallocate resources |
Take Your First Step Towards Marketing as a Service
However, it is important to remember that Marketing as a Service is not a short-term solution. It will not work if you are looking for marketing services for a one-time project or quick wins. It is a partnership that aims to achieve continuous growth while offering flexibility, agility and data-driven decision-making. This is only possible if your marketing efforts are consistent.
Don’t waste your valuable resources on marketing functions that you can outsource. Your marketing team should focus on more productive tasks while expert professionals take care of your marketing services. Whether you are just starting out or are already an established business, MaaS is for you as long as you need help with digital marketing-related functions.
Hive Creatives is an established MaaS agency that offers cost-effective and agile marketing solutions tailored to help your business thrive and grow. Our top-notch marketing strategies have helped several companies achieve success in key marketing areas such as lead generation. Find out how our MaaS expertise can set you apart from the crowd.
