What is Marketing as a Service (MaaS), and why should decision-makers care? MaaS is a modern, flexible solution for companies seeking comprehensive growth in their marketing and commercial processes. We’ve listed ten things that every marketing decision-maker should know about MaaS. Learn how it operates and why it’s a game-changer.
Table of contents:
- How flexible is Marketing as a Service?
- Can Marketing as a Service scale with my company’s needs?
- Is Marketing as a Service a better alternative to recruitment?
- Why is transparency so crucial in a Marketing as a Service partnership?
- Does Marketing as a Service involve proactive development?
- Is Marketing as a Service affordable?
- How does Marketing as a Service align marketing and sales?
- What makes Marketing as a Service service models effective?
- Who benefits most from Marketing as a Service?
- How communication is emphasized in Marketing as a Service?
1. How flexible is MaaS?
Collaboration is not bound by deadlines or restricted to specific actions. MaaS operates based on your goals, not rigidly predefined campaigns or channels. Its flexibility ensures actions evolve with your plans and needs over time. For this reason, determining actions and exact budgets is difficult or impossible at the beginning, as they become more precise as the collaboration progresses and plans and lessons become clearer. On the other hand, this ensures that the actions are always proportionate to the chosen goals and adaptable to changing situations.
2. Can MaaS scale with my company’s needs?
MaaS allows agile adjustments to match campaigns, seasonal fluctuations, or unforeseen circumstances. The service scales seamlessly, offering unmatched adaptability. Regardless of the service concept, resources can be increased or decreased in response to changing situations, campaigns, seasons, or other surprises. Role allocation should also be critically examined during collaboration, as the initially chosen collaboration approach may not necessarily be the best in the long run. Scalability is an inherent feature in all MaaS service concepts.
“The cooperation has been professional and tailor-made since the beginning of the first meeting. There are always clear goals with clear budgets and deadlines.”
Silver Pütsep, Project Manager, Top Marine Laiturit Oy
3. Is MaaS a better alternative to recruitment?
MaaS is a modern alternative to recruitment. Unlike traditional outsourcing, MaaS blends external expertise directly into your team, temporarily or permanently filling knowledge gaps and scaling as needed. Although service concepts can adapt to the management and operation of a company’s comprehensive marketing, the MaaS partner operates in a selected role closer to the core of the organization than a traditional marketing service provider. This can result in a significantly more efficient, scalable, flexible, and professionally diverse contributor to the team than traditional personnel recruitment.
Learn how to compare: Outsourcing marketing or MaaS
Compared to recruitment
- + No need to recruit a person and pay employer costs
- + You’re not limited to what’s available on open markets, as top talent may be hard to find and attract
- + The service adjusts to your changing needs in both difficulty and quantity of the required work
- + The latest know-how from a constantly evolving multi-industry team that is working on multiple clients simultaneously
- + Top-notch expertise at your disposal
- – There’s no employee sitting at your office
- – The essential trust between the service provider and the client may be hard to build
Compared to traditional cooperation
- + You don’t commit to specific actions, and the service is adjustable to your changing needs
- + You get a partner that is not only doing what is told but proactively developing marketing based on learnings
- + Collaboration is built to grow with the client and also to share and improve knowledge in-house
- + A versatile team of top-tier global experts at your disposal
- – The concrete service may be hard to realize in the purchasing process since marketing channels and exact measures are not determined
- – Incomparability with other service providers
4. Why is transparency so crucial in a MaaS partnership?
Instead of precise budgets and actions, transparency is required from the partner. Because the choice of a MaaS partner cannot be made based on price, transparency is one of the key values to be considered when selecting a partner. Pricing, project management, communication, and the basic principles of collaboration must be clearly understandable and justifiable. Goal orientation must be visible from the first meeting, but on the other hand, performance-based pay is not part of the toolkit for a transparent MaaS service provider, as the partner is paid for skillful service.
How to choose the right partner?
5. Does MaaS involve proactive development?
A good MaaS provider brings ideas, identifies growth opportunities, and implements them—even when they challenge the client’s initial expectations. MaaS partner is not a follower but a proactive developer. If you want a partner to follow and implement the assignments you give obediently, MaaS is the wrong concept for your company. If, on the other hand, you want a proactive partner to do everything to promote your growth goals, actively develop and bring ideas to support growth, considering a MaaS partner is worthwhile. A good partner proactively brings up improvement areas to keep the wheels turning, even when those improvement areas may not be what the customer wants to hear.
Learn about the significance of the project management
6. Is MaaS affordable?
MaaS isn’t about being the cheapest option; it’s about being the most effective investment for sustainable marketing growth. If your company measures the success of marketing based on how little it spends or consumes resources, MaaS services are not for you either. If you are looking for the cheapest price, it’s worth looking elsewhere. Marketing is an investment in the company’s expertise, future, development, and growth, and when treated as such, MaaS can be a relevant option to support growth.
“The partnership has provided our marketing with transparency and measurability and enables us to focus our operations effectively and cost-efficiently in the future.”
Outi Jokinen, Marketing Manager, Auramarine Ltd
7. How does MaaS align marketing and sales?
MaaS is integrated into the development of the commercial process, combining sales and marketing processes. By combining marketing and sales seamlessly, MaaS optimizes the entire commercial lifecycle for efficiency and growth. A good partner shares many qualities with a good employee: understanding the company’s cash flows, profitability, customer acquisition lifecycle, worst bottlenecks, and critical points. Finding such an employee and partner can be difficult. Therefore, when one is found, it is crucial to provide a complete view of the commercial development life cycle without silos that hinder marketing and sales development. An expert MaaS partner can bring multidisciplinary perspectives, international-level expertise, and understanding to the development of the commercial process, allowing it to be utilized unrestrictedly as support for the growth of the entire company.
Dive deeper into the topic: Integrating marketing and sales
8. What makes MaaS service models effective?
MaaS concepts are based on years of global marketing experience and continuous refinement, ensuring they meet evolving market demands. The MaaS operating models used today have not emerged by chance. Although the concept is relatively new in the European market, lessons have been learned from the models that have been in use in the United States for many years. In addition, current service concepts have been refined through practical marketing work in growth companies and large enterprises of various industries operating in global markets for over 5 years. According to lean marketing principles, there is never a finished state, and service models are in constant development in response to dialogue and changes in the global market.
9. Who benefits most from MaaS?
MaaS is perfect for growing and larger companies that think innovatively and companies seeking growth and renewal. MaaS is not a relevant option for those who are satisfied with the current state, aiming to maintain the status quo in the market with current resources, or who want to operate in a familiar and safe manner. For those, who seek growth and want to leverage modern operating models to support sales, marketing, and overall commercial development, MaaS is an excellent option regardless of industry, target market, or company size.
10. How communication is emphasized in MaaS?
MaaS combines the benefits of efficient remote communication and tailored team-specific expertise, efficient project management, clear communication, and access to a diverse team of marketing experts for optimal results.The efficiency of the MaaS service requires effective project management and smooth, seamless communication. When communication is kept personal, always connecting to the same person, the service provider works best remotely as a seamless part of the company’s commercial team. In addition, the greatest advantage is offered by the expertise and resources available to the entire MaaS team in various marketing areas. Thus, even though communication remains in a 1-to-1 model, the best expert can be selected for each task to provide the best possible know-how.
Read more about MaaS >
Contact us if you want to discuss the topic.
