You have great people working together in your company toward common goals. If you didn’t you would be making changes or at least thinking about making changes. The people that you work with are most often your primary resources for getting things done.

But are you using ALL of your resources? As a relatively small (less than 20 people) direct and digital marketing agency we are, at times, growing our business by availing ourselves of great resources through partners and associates. In the end coming to work every day is about getting the most effective campaigns/highest ROI on behalf of our customers.

Yet one of the more difficult aspects of working in a smaller agency is bandwidth when it comes to how to handle the many marketing channels that are available. We are really good and deeply experienced in on-page, direct mail, digital and a wide range of e-commerce platforms. However we are not nearly as experienced in channels like broadcast and cable television, radio, telemarketing and OOH (out-of-home). There are times in reviewing what is best for the CUSTOMER; that best thing falls outside of our main areas of expertise. And like many agencies we have invested much time and effort in developing both the relationship as well as the understanding of our clients’ business. That’s where our outside resources help us help our customers.

By managing the overall communication stream across whatever channels are employed we keep the message consistent (something that is often lacking when there are multiple agencies working on behalf of a client but not with each other). And as such there are occasions (increasingly) that we will introduce our partner resources to our clients so we can then work WITH those partners in order to do the best possible work on behalf of our customer. We still own the agency/client relationship. And we remain the driving strategic force.

Does that make me concerned it could make our agency look weaker or that we could lose the customer to a larger agency with a broader range of in-house services? No not at all. Our resources offer insight and expertise that complements our own. By bringing qualified partners to the table we show our customers that we understand our own limitations, but we respect that there are many things to consider and we only want the best results for our customers. I think it makes us a much stronger agency and our customers have told us they feel the same way.

So – are you using all of your resources? You really should not be afraid!