How can your business become more flexible, agile and adaptable?
Survival of the fittest
The pandemic has brought levels of hardship to businesses and individuals that 12 months ago would have seemed impossible to imagine. The furloughing of employees and the threat of redundancy is likely to be an on-going concern for many over the coming months. From a business management perspective, however, it presents a unique opportunity to reshape businesses, making them more flexible and more agile to adapt to changing market conditions in the future.
A unique opportunity
The ability to put employees on furlough has been a lifeline that has quite simply enabled businesses to survive. Many businesses were down to skeleton staff during the first lockdown and employees were brought back to work only when demand made it absolutely necessary. In plain terms, furlough has inadvertently provided a unique opportunity to identify which areas of the business were previously over-staffed. The result is that these businesses are leaner and fitter than they were before, overheads have been reduced, and the businesses are in better shape to deal with the uncertainty ahead as a result.
Out-sourcing adds flexibility
At the same time, the more agile businesses are finding additional flexibility by out-sourcing some of their marketing. Faced with the need to cut overheads, these businesses are reducing the size of their in-house marketing teams, and then using the services of cost-effective marketing agencies like 49Red. In this way, the marketing spend can be adjusted in line with the business objectives, whilst by comparison, the cost of salaried employees is far more inflexible.
For this to be most effective, it’s usually best to keep one or two marketing people within the business. They can provide an important point of contact for the marketing agency. By out-sourcing the time-consuming strategic thinking, website development, digital marketing and lead generation activity, the in-house team can focus on providing content, coordinating the activity and ensuring that internal communication continues to be effective.
Bigger is not necessarily better
There are lots of large and well-established marketing agencies that employ talented teams and operate out of fancy city-centre offices. Whilst they are often very capable, they have considerable overheads that they need to cover, and this is reflected in their fees. By contrast, the smaller agencies like 49Red have equally talented people at their disposal, but have minimal overheads. The result is a talented marketing resource that is far more cost-effective. For businesses that are keeping a close eye on costs, this has to be a sensible option.
Here to help
49Red is a full service marketing agency based near Cambridge and offering low-cost, effective marketing services to small- and medium-sized businesses across the UK. Whether you need help with your business strategy, marketing strategy, digital marketing, website, advertising, content marketing or lead generation, our expert team are happy to help. Contact Hugh Moss on 07808 365214 or email hugh.moss@49red.co.uk to find out more.
This is the last of six blogs under the title ‘Five steps to post-pandemic business success’. Follow 49Red on LinkedIn or visit our website at www.49red.co.uk/news to see more.
