Marketing Procurement: Key Challenges and Best Practices

Introduction:

Marketing procurement(MtP) is crucial to organisational success but often underestimated. Traditional procurement sources goods and services for operations, but marketing procurement secures services that boost sales and promotions. This speciality optimises marketing budget and effectiveness by choosing and managing marketing service providers. Understanding and managing marketing procurement is crucial as firms manage modern marketing’s challenges, including quickly expanding digital platforms and altering customer behaviours. This article discusses marketing procurement’s particular difficulties and best practices, helping organisations maximise marketing spending and returns.

Key Takeaways

• MtP is often overlooked by procurement leaders.
• MtP promotes sales, whereas conventional procurement supports the firm.
• Best practices, such as marketing spend procurement software, ease difficulties.
• Marketing procurement
• MtP involves finding, choosing, and hiring marketing services suppliers.

It’s frequently considered different from supply procurement, yet it’s just as crucial to an organisation.

Marketing procurement evaluates and chooses the finest marketing service suppliers to provide an organisation the most value.

Organisations may save money and boost marketing by carefully selecting marketing service providers.

MtP may also streamline procurement and make marketing service expenditure easier to track through category management.

Marketing category spend may include:

• Benchmarking and market research
• Advertising and media buying
• Creative and consulting services
• Web design and development
• Management of social media

MtP is more than sourcing strategies and agency partnerships; it can assist organisations increase marketing efficiency and performance.

The difference between marketing and standard procurement

As said, MtP involves buying goods and services for marketing and advertising.

Standard procurement involves buying items and services for a business’s daily operations.

Marketing focusses on buying products and services to sell, unlike ordinary procurement.

Standard procurement purchases items and services needed to run the business.

Marketing includes more market and client knowledge than procurement, making it more complicated.

Marketing procurement generally involves superior bargaining abilities to secure the best pricing for goods and services from suppliers.

Manage Marketing Procurement Benefits

Marketing procurement may guarantee product raw materials are accessible when needed.

Avoiding manufacturing delays due to material shortages can save time and money.

Managing MtP may also help companies negotiate better raw material pricing, increasing profits.

It may also guarantee high-quality materials are used. Businesses can also protect product prices by managing MtP well.

Challenges in marketing procurement

Coordinating with various vendors makes procurement complicated and time-consuming.

Multiple vendor bids are typically needed to acquire the best pricing.

Procurement may be difficult for marketing departments.

Things Must Move Fast

Your strategic sourcing technique may not work for service marketing. Marketing must be fast and flexible to changing market conditions and customer behaviour.

Good marketing drives sales, therefore stakeholders want marketing efforts to move swiftly. That requires nimble partners, which most procurement plans ignore.

Technology Can Cause Problems

New digital platforms constantly change marketing. TikTok, a previously unknown site, now offers commercial advertising.

Marketing executives must constantly learn about new platforms, products, technology, and influencer marketing.

Before platforms to connect marketers with influencers emerged in recent years, individuals had to locate their own influencers.

Finding the Best Service Suppliers

Procurement teams struggle to choose suitable agencies when disciplines merge. Procurement managers may ask agencies to check their social media.

They don’t know how to examine it all because so many of their suppliers provide integrated services that incorporate social media. Marketing agencies will become difficult to categorise.

Lack of Standardisation

Agencies dominate marketing budget, and each is unique. Your internal marketing team may need various agencies to achieve goals.

No two marketing campaigns are same. The cheapest choice may cost more in agency fees, thus overall cost isn’t adequate.

A more experienced agency may provide faster, affecting MtP professionals’ sourcing.

Difficulty ROI measurement

Marketing planning cycles are longer than other functions, thus you may have longer contract durations and fewer vendors. This makes ROI measurement challenging.

It might be hard to calculate ROI when you consider the many marketing and advertising approaches, their differences, and their expenses. Meta’s reporting dashboard provides cost per click on advertising, however it’s not always adequate to calculate campaign ROI.

Best practices for marketing procurement and strategic sourcing

A successful firm needs a smart marketing plan.

Many organisations don’t realise that marketing service procurement might be as crucial as marketing.

Businesses may maximise their marketing spend by forming the proper relationships and creating a complete plan.

Find Your Main Audience

This will assist find marketing partners that target the correct audience.

After identifying the target market, describe the company’s goals and produce a thorough marketing partner brief. This can help you identify business-friendly suppliers.

Set KPIs and Metrics

Always tell the sourcing manager the campaign success KPIs and indicators. Connecting with agencies and finding a solution for everyone will be easier.

Choose Partners

After setting goals, find marketing partners. This may be done through web directories, industry groups, and word-of-mouth.

If you like a potential partner, send an RFP to learn more about the firm and its capabilities. Some agencies focus on conventional PR, others on digital marketing.

Take your time and carefully assess each possible relationship before committing. In addition to experience and knowledge, consider price (agency fees may add up!), turnaround times, and customer service.

Strengthen and Detail Your Proposal

After finding a few marketing partners, write a detailed proposal detailing your company’s needs and how they might be satisfied.

This proposal should describe your company’s products and services, target market, and initiative goals. It should also specify the services you want and any budget or timeframe limits.

A great proposal can help you maximise your marketing procurement process.

Establish Good Supplier Relations

Building connections with marketing firms is as vital as managing any other component of your supply chain, whether you hire them full-time or sometimes.

Your marketing team and MtP team should work together to implement supplier relationship management principles as your marketing services are a business partner.

Best Marketing Procurement Practices

Impact of MtP on Organisational Success

Marketing procurement may dramatically effect an organization’s bottom line, so it’s crucial to weigh all choices.

Businesses often collaborate with MtP professionals to obtain the best bargains and make purchases quickly.

If your marketing expenditure is too high without enough return, you risk budget concerns in other areas. Even without worldwide marketing, your budget may need to be more than expected based on company ambitions.

Maintaining Marketing Procurement Efficiency

Consider these to keep your MtP process efficient at obtaining what you need and saving money:

Objectives should be clear

What are your MtP goals? Make sure everyone understands the goals so they can work towards them.

Refine the Method

Make marketing procurement as simple as feasible. Make things easy for everyone by creating templates and standardising procedures.

Utilise technology to automate activities and improve information management. This saves time and boosts efficiency.

Buy Procurement Software

By reducing activities, recording data, and engaging with team members, procurement software may improve MtP. Procurement software saves time and money over time.

Marketing procurement is complicated yet necessary for businesses to maximise marketing ROI and profits. By following the best practices in this article, you may overcome numerous marketing procurement issues and help your organisation succeed.

Conclusion:

Marketing procurement is crucial to a company’s strategy, affecting sales and corporate goals. By tackling MtP concerns and following best practices, organisations may improve procurement processes, build strong marketing partnerships, and optimise marketing expenditure. Advanced procurement techniques and technologies may boost efficiency, streamline processes, and boost company performance. Businesses may navigate the marketing environment and achieve their goals more efficiently with a systematic approach to marketing procurement.