Since we launched Kompani Group over a decade ago, clients have come to us for a variety of reasons. Some wanted strategic advice on how to navigate a particular set of issues. Some wanted a new website. Some wanted lead generation or SEO support. Many were looking to outsource their marketing department altogether. Over the years, some clients have gotten pretty creative in how they work with us and we thought we’d share with you some of those ideas for how to best leverage a company like Kompani Group.
For Companies With Less Than $100 million In Revenue
The cornerstone of outsourcing: do what you do best and outsource the rest. Companies, especially those under $100 million in revenue, typically have some core competency; they specialize in a particular product/service. They are subject matter experts in their particular field. But, rarely are these companies also experts in what their product/service is not. If this is you, and you are trying to manage everything internally, you are then at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to the other fundamental elements of a business: Branding, Marketing, Information Technology, Operations, Accounting, Strategy, and Business Optimization as a whole. These are all functions that can be sourced out.
While you may be tempted to try to manage these functions internally, doing so is often not in your best interest. Two primary reasons: Expertise and Cost. 1) Expertise: To give your organization the best chance at success (for a project, a program, or as a whole), you need the right people involved. Steve Jobs was once quoted as saying, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”. And that is exactly the point. You are hiring someone because you need their expertise. Find those who can guide you where you need to go. 2) Cost: the reason people often settle for less. You want to hire internally, but an expert would be expensive, and you don’t need that expertise full-time. Instead, you search for someone who can ‘learn’, and then do other work to support the company – someone who is well rounded, a jack-of-all-trades. This can be an okay strategy depending on the need you are addressing. But when it comes to critical areas—how the market will perceive your organization, your brand, or how likely prospects are to find you in the first place—you are negotiating the lifeblood of your business. These are areas where you want—nay—need to give yourself the best chance for success.
Frees You Up To Focus On Your Key Priorities
As mentioned above, clients often come to us for a specific reason. You may feel a bit stagnant in growth, or know you need some new but undefined technology or feel that you need a new operating or marketing strategy. However, needs change. Once that initial work is done, other needs inevitably present. Creating a new brand, developing the relevant assets (logos, brochures, websites), finding the proper channels on social media or otherwise and publishing accordingly, optimizing your public presence — these efforts require a diverse set of skills. Strategists, Analysts, Designers, Writers, Developers, Digital Marketers, Project Managers can all be employed at the same company, but most likely they won’t be at yours. Not all at the same time within a reasonable budget.
Finding one Kompani that has all these skill sets under one roof proves to be incredibly valuable to our clients time and time again. We may set a monthly budget, an expense that you know is what you can afford for support, and then we shift how we apply that budget from one need to another. So we help you rename, then we build your new website and marketing materials, then we do a deep dive on the competitive landscape for search engine rankings and optimize to position you on top, then help you with planning and scaling your operations to keep up with the increased demand for your product/service. This is all done without ever changing your service provider, so you have both expertise and continuity all along the way.
Using Data To Support Your Board’s Strategic Initiatives
While day-to-day support is not always necessary, having an educated ‘partner’ (not necessarily in the formal sense, but someone who cares about your success and stays knowledgeable about your industry) that you can communicate with as needed is also valuable. Some clients have chosen to keep us on retainer so they can use us as a strategic sounding board for real-time feedback. They ask us to follow industry journals, conduct market research, help with data collection, or monitor the customer experience so we can provide specific and targeted guidance either as we see relevant or on demand.
Such an engagement also helps inform a data-driven marketing strategy. With regular attention on various key performance indicators (KPIs)—search traffic, market trends, customer data, user experience, etc.—we are able to iterate on a strategic plan, participate in business process optimization, or just flat out generate more leads. We have also been called upon by senior team members to make presentations to help internal teams sell a product or to present new ideas to the C-Suite which may drive new marketing efforts or enhance business process management. We have helped clarify communications both to manage up and to manage down.
Board Advisory Services
One other often overlooked opportunity to outsource work or expertise is to hire a Kompani to serve on either a Board of Directors or Board of Advisors. When we sit in on these internal strategic conversations, we are able to provide immediate feedback and you are automatically more efficient at carrying the discussion/thinking from the high-level meetings to the practical execution. This is particularly true when our team is also involved in that tactical execution. Having that key human resource available to help in defining marketing initiatives and then turn and implement without additional meetings is a shining example of an optimized business process.
Consider how many competitors you may have selling a product or service inferior to yours but doing so with greater success. Outsourcing the right work to the right people at the right time frequently proves to be a more important critical success factor than the quality of the product or service you are selling itself.
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At Kompani Group, we’ve been guiding our clients through many of 
