Marketing, sales and public relations functions may be outsourced to service providers under various legal regimes. These include:
- Market Research Services Agreements;
- Distribution Agreements, sometimes also called a relationship for:
- distributorship;
- franchise;
- reseller; or
- “channel” sales development;
- Commission Sales Agency Agreements;
- Public Relations Consultancy Agreements;
- Direct Marketing Services Agreements, to support a series of initiatives over a significant period of time.
Relevant metrics may include soft results such as:
- new product introductions;
- campaign responses;
- new customers;
- customer satisfaction; or
- new product development ideas.
Like other business processes that can be mapped and managed for optimization, marketing, sales and public relations can achieve scalability if the programs are capable of rapid growth. However, high level marketing is so closely aligned with core business activities and shareholder value that the outsourced services generally involve creative services for evaluation by in-house staff, implementation of customer contact initiatives (including the use of call centers and non-verbal communications) and other implementations.
As advertising agencies develop ongoing client service capabilities including development, design and distribution of communications, they remain focused on the high-level value of brand management. Unlike other sourcing of important administrative services, marketing and advertising relationships may be intensely interactive and highly managed by the enterprise customer’s marketing and sales departments. So scalability is achieved only in distribution of marketing campaigns, not in their conception and approval by the client.