Sharing Economy in Marketing

How SMEs and Start-ups Benefit from a “Shared CMO”

The need for outsourcing has started to spread into marketing and strategy development. SMEs in particular feel more and more impelled to professionalise their marketing and sales operations with regard to digital media and automation. But they haven’t got the right resources in terms of quantity and quality to achieve this on their own. On the other hand, they may currently lack the financial means to permanently hire the required knowledge and experience as incremental headcount at upper management level.

 This is equally true for young companies, having to manage the transition from start-up to growth: Maturing mostly involves new markets, products, and above all investors, who want to see a solid marketing strategy before they buy into an idea.

 Furthermore, many SMEs only need selective, project-related support, e.g. when entering a new market, developing new target groups, or plan to introduce new processes like CRM. In such cases, creating permanent headcount at the relevant management level isn’t always worthwhile.

 Evolving the Sharing Economy

Purchasing know-how and experience as a temporary consulting service or interim management, with clear objectives and deliverables, is a suitable solution for organisations – and will start spreading quickly. Just like larger corporations organise their internal resources in the form of group-wide “Shared Services Centers”, “Knowledge Centers”, or “Centers of Excellence”, and just like “Software as a Service” replaces classic licence models, SMEs can share external marketing experts and project leaders, instead of investing heavily to build such capacities on their own. It’s much more beneficial to them to concentrate on their own core competencies instead. This development is a natural evolution of the “Sharing Economy” trend.

 But there is more than just the financial side: As time to market is critical, having instant access to knowledge and experience that is immediately productive outpaces the integration of new employees easily. Differently from traditional models, the know-how can be transferred to the internal resources as the “Shared CMO” can be working alongside the in-house team, guiding people.

 Being inside an organisation, but at the same time outside of its day-to-day routines allows the “Shared CMO” to get the job done efficiently.

 If you would like to learn more about the evolution of the “Sharing Economy” in marketing or how a “Shared CMO” could benefit your organisation, please get in touch.