Effective staffing is a challenge in the best of times, but it’s even more difficult in a world disrupted by – and recovering from – the global coronavirus pandemic. For companies interested in staffing a marketing team, it’s understandable why HR professionals might approach that prospect with caution.
Marketing has undergone an incredible paradigm shift in recent years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Consumer behavior has changed dramatically, in-person experiential brand marketing screeched to a halt for an entire year, and digital marketing proved more essential than ever – all while the tools to engage audiences continue to evolve rapidly.
The skills needed to be an effective marketer have become increasingly specialized. Can an event planner pivot to virtual events? Does a videographer have the gear to film in 360? For companies with in-house marketing talent – even robust talent – a deep bench still feels insufficient.
Investing in full-time staff seems riskier now than ever, which is why marketing staff augmentation is an effective solution to a company’s needs in these uncertain times and beyond.
What is marketing staff augmentation?
At its core, staff augmentation is designed to enhance a company’s human resources without adding to operational overhead. This may sound familiar for those who have leaned into contract work to complete projects in the past. But marketing staff augmentation is a much more dynamic and precise way to build teams. It identifies highly specific staffing needs and matches those needs by sourcing talent from a roster of marketing professionals ready to assist in achieving a company’s strategic initiatives.
Marketing staff augmentation offers solutions to a spectrum of challenges. Businesses leverage augmentation to address understaffed short-term projects or to execute big ideas on a longer-term basis. Across the spectrum, marketing staff augmentation brings in the talent a company needs to execute its marketing goals without requiring management and HR to permanently reallocate resources to fund full-time hires.
Marketing staff augmentation vs. outsourcing
The differences between the two practices are nuanced but important. When a company outsources, they often hand an entire project, or part of a project, over to a third party for completion. While the hiring company still maintains oversight, outsourcing a project loosens some of the connective tissue between operating teams.
With staff augmentation, professionals are brought in to enhance an operation, not replace it. This creates a much smoother project management process and keeps everything running in-house. With today’s culture trending further toward remote work, augmenting staff is more seamless than ever.
What are the benefits of marketing staff augmentation?
There are myriad benefits for companies to staff augmentation, including:
Flexibility: Companies can add talent quickly and easily, without having to go through rigorous onboarding – or complicated separations, in the event that arrangements aren’t working. ADP calculates that it costs an average of $4,129 to fill a single position.
Plug-and-play expertise: Marketing staff augmentation creates opportunity for companies to quickly onboard highly specialized talent – such as brand strategists, social media experts, or specialized designers – on a project-by-project basis.
Overhead savings: The Small Business Administration estimates that the cost of a full-time employee is roughly 1.5 times their salary. Staff augmentation eliminates that overhead.
In today’s changing world, staff augmentation is a practice that benefits a wide range of companies. Organizations interested in enhancing their own in-house teams without adding to structural overhead are prime for staff augmentation. On the other hand, companies interested in outsourcing entire projects might find that staff augmentation still requires too much in-house project management.
What are the challenges of staffing marketing talent?
A business can never predict exactly what its marketing needs will be over time. Sure, it’s handy to have a designer or copywriter on staff, but when a project calls for specialized talent within those disciplines – such as 3D design or video scriptwriting – the in-house designer or copywriter might not have the specific background or aptitude to adequately execute the job.
As marketing continues to evolve through strategy, channels, and creative, professionals are becoming more specialized in their roles. Because of this, it’s difficult for a company to staff an in-house team equipped with a skill set that’s diverse enough to complete every big idea.
Marketing staff augmentation can help fill those gaps, which takes the challenge out of employing a permanent in-house team, especially in an industry that is constantly shifting and growing.
What’s included in marketing staff augmentation?
Or, a more apt question might be, “What isn’t included in marketing staff augmentation?” An agency like the Nitrous Effect has a vast network of talented marketers, from strategists to designers to event specialists and beyond, which provides the ability to address just about any marketing staff need a company may have. Businesses can insert specialized talent based on evolving marketing needs, as well as project scope and progress.
For instance, if a business is interested in creating an awareness campaign around its new services, Nitrous Effect would consult on the overall project and identify the various staffing needs for each stage – from campaign strategy ideation and execution to content creation and distribution on the appropriate channels. This could ultimately involve adding a strategist, copywriter, videographer, designer, and social media expert in order to bring a campaign to life.
Explore staff augmentation with The Nitrous Effect
With organizations such as CPG, UPBrand, Vidzu Media, Evntiv, and Geniecast under the Nitrous Effect umbrella, there’s no better source of marketing staff augmentation experience. We are equipped with storytellers, brand strategists, event staffing experts, and UX designers ready to jump in and assist your team to meet your marketing goals. The Nitrous Effect is a unique cross-company collaboration of senior specialists solving complex business challenges. We engage our clients’ stakeholders, from frontline employees to new customers, by providing internal and external solutions for the complex challenges brands face every day. Contact us to learn how to enhance your staff with the Nitrous Effect.
