Most companies today need operational assistance to plan, prioritise, perform and analyse marketing activities. Enterprises want creative and analytical people who know the company. People should preferably learn fast, be self-employed, while having solid knowledge in different branches of digital marketing.
You need to strengthen your digital initiative. What are you doing?
Use market consultants or build internal competence?
Your choice is between using consultants or building competence internally. Many have tried both options and found that there are pitfalls attached to both solutions.
The challenging market consultant model and a bullshite detector
There are suppliers for everything. Consultants, advisors, strategists, specialists, experts and developers. Everyone is eager to tell you how amazing they are and how they can easily solve your company's challenges!
External suppliers can certainly help you, but it is important to be critical and show common sense. Remember, suppliers are normal people – they are not superhumans. Use consultants to cover temporary knowledge gap or resource gaps within the organisation. Use consultants to help you get things done faster and smarter, but not let them manage the organisation and not the ‘outsource’ core competence for too long. (Please use my 'bullshit detector‘if you choose to use consultants).
Many organisations have a knowledge gap in digital marketing these days and therefore choose to ‘outsource’ the digital tasks of digital agencies, consisting of consultants in each of their ‘expert’ areas. This can work, but it often gets very inefficient and expensive.
To coordinate the tasks between contact persons and several experts, a project manager from the digital agency is appointed, or communication is directly maintained between the two parties. Such cooperation often leads to many meetings and as a customer you feel that “experts” do not understand your business. Important information is lost, tasks are delayed – and in general there are many cooks and much worse. “The way we do things around here” is a concept that refers to the silent knowledge you get when you are part of an environment. It takes too long to ‘briefe’ the Agency on what you want to achieve. Nobody sees the whole, and good plans and ideas often end up in a disappointment in the lack of internal enforcement. Inefficiency results in invoiced hours running at farms. Often it ends up with frustration on both sides of the table. After going some rounds of different consultants, most people start to think about how they can build competence internally.
Build internal competence: Are Young and promising or experienced ring-up?
Now let's say you choose to build competence internally:
First, you have to find the candidates. Recruitment is both time consuming and difficult whether you do it yourself or recruitment agencies.
- How much does it cost to recruit a new colleague?So let's say that this is the same thing as that. Recruiting a newly trained cost from 90 000 – 150 00 kroner)
- Misemployment is expensive! (an incorrect employment cost from NOK 700 000 – 900 000.)
But let's say you find a good candidate. You hire a young and hungry digital marketer. The person is being engulfed in the job and all the other tasks that appear on the way. She learns fast and does an amazing job. You're very happy.
The challenge comes after a few months at work. The person realizes that the daily life of most people in the company is not about digital marketing. The person starts missing a professional environment; someone to save, someone to learn from and discuss subjects and results with. The person can of course take some courses and attend conferences, but it is probably not enough to feel belonging to a good digital professional environment. In the pursuit of the professional environment, she decides to stop at your place. As a company you are left with a great cost and an even greater lack than you had in advance of your employment.
Another alternative is that you hire a ring rope with many years of experience. The person has done a lot of tasks before and Can go. Presumably, you think? Yes, but it is sad often the disadvantage. In a dynamic landscape such as digital marketing – where trends and technology are continuously developing – curiosity and hunger are critical to hanging around in the swings. Often the ring-up is in practice a procurement manager of consultancy services in the absence of operational feasibility. That's how you're the same far!
OMA - Yes, thank you, both!
In order to solve these challenges, since spring 2016, we have experimented with a completely new cooperation model that can help to solve many of the challenges of digital marketing competence in Norwegian companies.
The OMA Model retrieve inspiration from how Google has worked with digital talent since 2002, as they found it easier to recruit and develop young talent than to hire experienced people with relevant experience. Google APM Program, which is unknown to most people, is considered by many as Google's most successful program over time.
The OMA model provides access to an OMA for key business persons. An OMA is an operational market assistant working internally with companies 1-3 days a week, but employed in an external professional environment, surrounded by experts in the specified fields.
An OMA is young, curious and hungry to learn, while she has good knowledge of digital marketing in several fields. The OMAs undergo a comprehensive recruitment and training process and are followed by experienced mentors with a long-term service in the industry.
After launch, the OMA becomes the senior executive’s or market manager’s injured right hand: A digital market assistant with DRIV who can perform tasks in all aspects of digital marketing – ranging from setting up and running digital campaigns, to solving problems that arise and providing advice and tips to improve network betting. The person lacks competence and experience, is re-emerging in curiosity, adaptability and drive. The slow knowledge of physical presence improves the overall understanding of the company, its vision and its objectives — which provide an increased basis for success.
It is not the most competent who win. There are people with enough skills, high level of psychological protection, a growth mindset and implementation force which creates a change in enterprises.
The OMA model creates win-win situations for businesses as well as young talent:
Young talent is given a flying and flexible start to work. They are given the opportunity to work in a business in a comprehensive manner, while they can develop in a pulsating digital professional environment with good follow-up and high levels of psychological protection.
Businesses will have access to external expertise and operational assistance while at the same time developing a person who will learn how to understand you and your company, as well as your objectives. Everything without risking expensive mis-employments.