The budgetary upside of a hired marketing gun

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The current dynamics of a successful, sustained marketing strategy are as clear as mud. Like so many industries — health care, music and entertainment and technology, chief among them — identifying an effective means of connecting marketing efforts with revenue generation is challenging at best.

Enter the lean and agile outside communications professional whose primary job is to build internal consensus, followed by the assembly of a streamlined team designed to achieve very specific goals within a specified scope of time and resources. And with the job complete, off he or she rides into the sunset until called upon again for the next defined project.

Like most professional service firms, advertising, public relations and marketing agencies are forced to walk a fine line between work completion and self-promotion in the interest of demonstrating value. The problem for clients of these firms is that they are required to pay the bill in both circumstances.

Consider the typical ad agency model. In most circumstances, you pay for the account person, the project manager, the creative director, the senior-level officer who made the pitch, the intern, the writer, the videographer, the designer and so on. That's a lot of layers, and while that may look impressive in your strategy document, it's expensive and oftentimes hard to validate. Ask any CMO who sat through this inquisition with their company's financial officer or accountant.

Now, if you are Coca-Cola or Proctor & Gamble Co., those layers are probably necessary. But for the rest of the business community, you are better off retaining a much smaller organization that can serve immediately as an extension of your existing marketing team. And if you do go this route, here's the checklist you need to consider before signing anything.

Jim Cheney is principal with Prufrock Communications in Franklin.