Outsourced Marketing Engagements

Small to medium sized organizations that need to fill a professional strategic marketing role but can’t justify a full-time senior hire can turn to R.C Gregory & Co. for help. Rick Gregory serves these firms through an outsourced “fractional” marketing executive role. This involves an on-going engagement where Rick participates as an integral part of the management team, working with company leaders to formulate and assess strategy, synthesize marketing plans, and manage all marketing-related activities.

This approach offers several advantages:

Provide a more senior marketing leader than the company could afford or could attract in a full time hire.
Provide a more capable strategic thinker and marketing execution specialist than a lower cost full-time hire would provide.
Supplement an existing sales and marketing executive who must focus on salesforce and customer issues.
Combine objective external insight with the familiarity of an internal team member.
Enhance a technical product management team by introducing professional marketing discipline.
Achieving cost-saving execution through R.C. Gregory’s broad range of capabilities and captive resources.
Achieve time savings by eliminating hand-offs to unfamiliar external vendors.
Consolidate marketing activities that are currently spread across multiple staff members.
No benefits, payroll taxes, office space or other employee-related expenses.

Outsourced marketing engagements are handled with a combination of on-site and remote activity. Frequent interaction is essential so we are always actively engaged in the company’s marketplace activities, product planning and other dynamics. This creates familiarity that enhances overall marketing continuity.

Because fractional engagements are funded through a monthly consulting retainer with no payroll taxes, benefits or other employee expenses, most clients find that the investment in engaging Rick Gregory in a fractional role is roughly equivalent to the all-in expense of employing an administrative assistant. For this, the client gets a proven marketing professional with 20+ years experience handling strategic marketing management and implementation, especially involving complex technical products and services.

Clients also find that in addition to formulating strategy and managing marketing activities, Rick Gregory will personally handle many marketing tasks that would normally require the engagement of external specialists, thus avoiding many of those expenses as well. Avoiding third-party resources also results in fast turnaround time to accommodate emergent opportunities and the client’s busy schedule.

When projects do require external resources, R.C. Gregory & Co. can offer a network of trusted sub-contractors (e.g., for web design, photography, graphic design), or can work with resources with which a client has already developed a relationship.

Activities typically covered under a fractional marketing engagement include:

Marketing planning and strategy development
Development of detailed marketing plans, calendars and budgets
Marketing budget tracking, analysis and reporting
Regular participation in strategy and planning meetings
Media analysis, selection and communications
Media negotiations
Copywriting for advertisements, literature, website content, techno/marketing papers (e.g. case histories, whitepapers)
Publicity efforts (writing and distribution of press releases)
Electronic marketing planning and execution
Direct marketing planning and execution
Branding assessment, brand name development
Ad hoc strategic support (e.g., business plan support, acquisition and J.V. due diligence, competitive analysis)
Tradeshow and conference planning and promotion
Website strategy and management, including search engine optimization, pay-for-placement programs
Development of presentation materials for customer presentations, board presentations, investor presentations
Key account homework and strategy support
Channel support
Development of dollarization approaches for key products