The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and with it, the strategies businesses employ and the technology they use to do so. A growing trend we're seeing at KINESSO is the rise of clients choosing to bring parts of their marketing technology stacks in-house, while simultaneously leveraging our agency's deep expertise and buying power for media campaign management. This hybrid approach offers a compelling blend of control and performance, and here's why it's gaining traction:

The Allure of Tech Ownership

In today's data-driven world, owning certain parts of your marketing technology stack offers significant advantages. Clients are increasingly drawn to this approach for four key reasons:

  • Data Control and Transparency: Owning platforms like Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), and marketing automation systems allow for direct access and control over valuable first-party data. This fosters deeper audience understanding for the brand and enables more personalised campaigns for the consumer.
  • Customisation and Integration: In-house tech allows for tailoring platforms to specific business needs and seamlessly integrating them with existing CRM and other systems, creating a unified view across the customer journey.
  • Long-Term Cost Savings: While initial investment can be significant, owning technology can lead to cost efficiencies in the long run, particularly for businesses with substantial and consistent marketing spend.
  • Agility and Flexibility: Direct control over technology allows for quicker adjustments to campaigns and strategies based on real-time data insights, without relying on external vendors for every change.

The Power of a KINESSO Partnership

While owning the tech provides a strong foundation, effectively leveraging it for performance marketing success requires specialised skills and experience. This is where a strategic agency partnership becomes invaluable:

  • Unmatched Buying Power: KINESSO negotiates significant media buying discounts due to our large-scale spend across multiple clients. This translates to greater ROI for brands’ campaigns.
  • Expert Campaign Management: Our team of seasoned, award-winning performance marketers possesses in-depth knowledge of various platforms, bidding strategies, and optimisation techniques. We handle the complex execution, freeing up internal teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
  • Consistent Innovation: Our continued investments in our platforms ensure we always push the boundaries of what is possible, something that will be difficult for most clients to achieve on their own.
  • Data-Driven Insights and Optimisation: We leverage our expertise and access to advanced analytics tools to continuously monitor campaign performance, identify opportunities for improvement, and optimise for maximum impact.
  • Staying Ahead of the Curve: The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving. We keep our finger on the innovation pulse of the latest trends, technologies, and best practices, ensuring campaigns are always cutting-edge.
  • Strategic Guidance and Consultation: Beyond execution, we act as strategic advisors, helping brands align their marketing efforts with overall business objectives - maximising tech investment value.
Campaign dashboard

The Perfect Synergy

The combination of in-house tech ownership and agency partnership creates a powerful synergy. Brands gain the control and flexibility of owning their data and technology, while benefiting from the expertise, buying power, and strategic guidance of a seasoned agency. This approach allows advertisers to:

  • Maximise ROI: Achieve better results from marketing spend through optimised campaigns and access to discounted media buying.
  • Focus on Core Business: Free up internal teams to focus on strategic initiatives, while leaving the complex execution to our experts.
  • Gain a Competitive Edge: Leverage data-driven insights and cutting-edge strategies to outperform competitors.

A Future-Fit Example

Google’s recent launch of their open-source Mixed Media Modelling (MMM) solution, Meridian, can provide the perfect base layer for Agency partners to develop their own features and functionality on top of.

In isolation many clients may struggle to update and maintain models such as these, let alone use them to inform how they dynamically update their channel tactics.

By wrapping this technology with a crafted service layer from KINESSO, we can fuse client specific-data with our own indexed benchmarking and other proprietary or licensed data sources to provide greater insight into fluctuations in performance.

Some Common Pitfalls To Watch Out For

Many marketers fail to realise the full potential of their tech investments, and the technology’s possibilities beyond serving marketing objectives. Having a tech-fluent partner, capable of fully realising business use cases, managing the flow of data across advertiser’s organisations and quantifying returns from different departments on large-scale investments becomes crucial.

  • Audit Current Use: Map the gap between current and potential use cases across all departments and quantify the ROI.
  • Ensure Future Accountability: Many technologies are invested in to serve a specific use case decided by an individual. Often, that individual can leave the business and the onus to continue driving value from the technology wanes.
  • Keep Up with the Latest & Greatest: Technology evolves and advances at an ever-increasing rate. Today’s best practice might be tomorrow’s poor practice. Ensure your agency is using their breadth of client engagements to hold technology partners to best in class standards.

KINESSO: Your Partner in Performance Marketing Success

At KINESSO, we understand the evolving needs of modern marketers. We're equipped to help you navigate the complexities of tech ownership and leverage it effectively for performance marketing success. Contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve your marketing goals through this powerful hybrid approach.