Last year, a survey conducted by Gartner showed nearly a third of businesses had moved their marketing tasks in-house over the previous year. This trend that has been accelerating as more companies look for ways to conserve resources while increasing their competitive edge. Having an internal creative team allows marketers to get closer to the brand, adding to their understanding of what is needed for success. Additionally, an in-house marketing agency allows for expanded flexibility and the speed required to turn projects around in record time. With in-house agencies, cropping an image, changing verbiage, or modifying a color selection is fast and simple, which is advantageous not only from a speed, but also a cost standpoint.

Although every business will have specific needs and goals, this article will provide resources to help you create your own in-house agency to foster significant savings on agency fees. 

Creating Your In-House Marketing Agency

In-house marketing teams that are successful have a number of components in common, among them a sense of purpose and smooth collaboration and communication. While a positive culture is important, there are several other best practices and tools you will want to consider:

Understand Your Needs

Before you begin hiring staff or collecting the tools and technologies you will need you must establish three important things:

• What your business needs are in terms of marketing
• What your brand needs to align with your goals and vision
• What you are currently spending on marketing tasks

Once you have an analysis of these facts, you can evaluate where you are — and where you want your in-house agency to take you. 

Highlight the Makers

Many businesses focus on management when creating in-house marketing teams, but you need to have plenty of makers to fuel your creative strategy. Harnessing in-house talent means hiring the right creatives — everyone from media planners and buyers to marketing strategizers, digital creators, and people familiar with typical tech tools such as marketing or creative software, production printers, and digital platforms.

Invest in the Right Tools

The right technology is critical to in-house marketers. Among other things, robust tech tools allow creative to focus on innovation, collaboration, and the reduction of manual tasks. You may wish to consider graphic design software, project management software, tools for social media marketing and SEO, and others. Importantly, you will want to ensure you have the right hardware to support your software needs. Consider high-powered computers that can run presentations, create full-color marketing collateral, and connect team members for smooth communication.

Also consider bringing your print needs in-house. A production printer — or a fleet of them — can give you further control over your brand and speed projects to completion. The right production print machine can handle both high-volume and high-quality marketing jobs — everything from brochures, catalogs, and flyers to business cards, posters, booklets, and trade show materials. 

Today’s production printers offer consistent color and control over your marketing materials with a cost-effectiveness that extends even to short-run projects. Bringing printing in-house can help your marketing team shine by lowering print costs and allowing for flexible, on-demand printing.  

Make Blue Technologies Your Go-To for Agency-Quality Printing

Print pricing is on the rise, but for those of you who are considering an in-house marketing agency, the right production printer can help you defray those costs. Servicing your print marketing needs in-house is a breeze — and cost-effective — with the right production or wide format printer.

At Blue Technologies, we offer a wide range of state-of-the-art print devices by leaders in the industry such as Konica Minolta and KIP. With these machines, you can achieve complete control over your brand image and your marketing — whether you have high-volume projects you need to get out or a specialized, short-run design. Wide format printers have the advantage of allowing you to print on expanded sizes and multiple substrates for vibrant posters, vinyl decals, and even wood and metal marketing collateral. 

Give your in-house marketing team the tools they need for success. Contact a Blue Technologies consultant and learn more about our production printers and wide format print options.