Marketers have reached a tipping point. Budgets are stretched, teams are shrinking, but the workload is increasing and the need to compelling, engaging marketing communication pieces grows. A solution that, according to a recent article in Forbes, 78% of brands are working on is in-housing and it’s most definitely the right way to go. When an in-house is delivering on its promise the high impact results are felt throughout the organization.

The leading benefits are faster and cheaper, or cost neutral in some cases and there are many others.

With so many benefits it’s easy to get carried away and to try to build an in-house that does everything right out of the gate. However, the size and structure of the in-house depends on the spectrum of marketing materials your brand needs and the business/marketing needs are a really good place to start.

Here’s a very broad road map to get started on building your in-house

• Audit
  Audit the services the in-house needs to offer to support the business. This can be a time absorbing task but is necessary to ensure the in-house is built with the right capabilities and capacity to do the work.

  • External Agency Scope Review
    Review the scopes of all of the external agencies and evaluate what will come in and what will stay at external agencies. I don’t believe that an in-house should do 100% of the work. This is because there are always going to be one offs that need specialized talent and it’s good to get outside thinking in the mix for some projects. However, the work that is currently being done outside that will come in needs to be quantified along with the current costs.

    At the end of this exercise you should know;

    • The services that will be offered: creative, production, media, analytics, SEO etc

    • The volume of work for each service

    • Turnaround times and expectations

    • Specialized systems that will be required

• Develop the in-house mission and vision.

• Decide on the in-house agency internal billing, dollars, hours or projects for example.
  This is important as you need to have some type of currency to control the volume of work within the in-house. If you don’t have any control your in-house will become an all you can eat buffet which won’t end well.

• Calculate the annual number of hours the in-house team has to ensure you have enough people to do the work.

• Develop the in-house team structure based on the services and the volume, and how it fits into the existing company structure.

• Physical location - if the services and or company require onsite work

• Phased Approach
  When taking on such a large initiative a phased approach is useful. It gives an opportunity to bring a limited number of services online in phase 1, make nimble course correction as needed, and gives the team time to make sure the processes and workflows run smoothly.

This is just a snapshot of the key things to consider. If you need help thinking this through or want to talk about in-housing please reach out to eve@eveasbury.com.