The global need for more and more advanced IT services is putting a strain on the current digital and IT infrastructure. And even though a growing number of institutions are offering formal education in this field and even though many people are entering the job market – the need for such a trade is even greater. That is why managed service providers (MSP for short) are becoming the norm in many areas of business.
Be it business-to-business integration, media, transportation, or marketing, managed services can be found in a variety of sectors. Marketing is especially interesting in this regard as it used to be by default that every company would do its own marketing strategy and implementation. But times have changed, and now we see a lot more professionalism needed for that, so businesses have opted to outsource this job to dedicated providers. But when searching for a business partner that would cover your marketing, what are you supposed to be on the lookout for?
Where Is Their Expertise?
The first question you need to ask yourself, and your potential marketing partner, is what field of marketing are they good at, where does their previous experience lie? Social media? TV commercials? Pamphlets and other types of handouts?
Depending on your product or service, or your targeted audience you will want different things for marketing. The team behind https://www.ulistic.com/services/msp-marketing also noted that MSPs will also be looking for appropriate clients, so putting the word out there that you are looking for a marketing partner might even bring the right one to your door without missing a beat. For example, companies that deal with beauty products might need both TV commercials and door-to-door salespeople that will get the message across and bring the product to the customer.
Compare Them to an Internal IT Sector
What is the alternative to having a separate entity provide the service of marketing? Doing it yourself? Do you have the necessary manpower and logistics to pull it off?
This is probably the main reason why small and medium businesses are opting for MSPs for various sectors. Think of everything you would need in an IT department to have an independent and successful marketing campaign for a new product. Designers, photographers, a studio, equipment and software, and above all marketing experts that know how to coordinate everything and have experience with the market.
All of this is possible in large companies that have enough revenue to hire more people that are not working only in production, though we see that even they sometimes choose MSPs for transport, for example. As a whole internal IT department is a huge investment it is therefore much better to start off by looking for a marketing partner first, and later becoming self-sufficient.
Security and Privacy
As all managed service providers have to deal with a lot of data from their partners and customers it is inevitable to ask the question is there a risk of security involved, concerning any confidential information? Depending on the case at hand most data may be quite useless to others if found out, and therefore not an issue for security. But from experience, most in the business will tell you not to make a difference between “important” and “unimportant” data in this case, but to treat everything with confidentiality.
A marketing partner is bound to have an insight into your clients’ contact information, as well as a range of operations and part of revenue. As you don’t want any of this to come into the wrong hands, make sure, for starters, to find someone who does not have a history of misconduct or security breaches by hackers. Furthermore, you should have a mutual non-disclosure agreement for any business-related data that you exchange. This is a standard procedure and should be fine by everyone working professionally
A good sign that they have a high standard of security and privacy is that they are public with how they deal with such information. Data collection procedures, data usage, and changes, etc, can all be announced as company policy and are therefore useful for them to attract partners for their business.
If you are a small or medium business owner you will most likely have to resort to an MSP to cover one of the needs of your growing company. But even though you might not have the biggest possible profit because of such a move, you will most likely have fewer setbacks in that field, especially marketing, than otherwise if you and your team were trying to accomplish the same project without the proper tools and experience. So chin up and start looking!