When there are revenue headwinds and economic uncertainty, CFOs put a lot of attention on budgets and expenses. During tough times, reducing marketing headcount and media spend is a standard cost-cutting lever.

Meanwhile, B2B CMOs are given goals to generate growth for the business through more pipeline and revenue impact.

Clearly, those two approaches are in conflict with each other.

Modern CFOs, however, understand that crises sometimes present opportunities—that focusing on transformation instead of stark cost-cutting can lead to increased growth and operating efficiency.

The reality is that CFOs can recommend a lever for marketing that they've used for other disciplines: outsourcing—also with new service models, such as B2B marketing as a service (MaaS).

What is MaaS?

Marketing as a service is a new operating model designed to bring scale to revenue and marketing leaders.

MaaS brings the concept of managed services to marketing. Execution and operational tasks are outsourced offshore to extend the capacity of your workforce and enable internal staff to focus on more strategic, high-value work.

The MaaS model covers a full range of offerings, including digital marketing, account-based marketing, analytics, and creative services.

MaaS is about more than just cost savings. It's about driving sustainable efficiency, bringing in a greater level of expertise, and improving the impact of the work, thereby increasing revenue impact—and simultaneously minimizing costs.

By leaning into MaaS, organizations can reduce headcount expenses while increasing the resources they have and the experience of those resources, and which will, in turn, create more capacity for marketing impact and results.

What to Know About the MaaS Opportunity

Marketing outsourcing through MaaS is underutilized

Outsourcing is common for many corporate-level departments, but not for marketing. Only 5% of sales and marketing services are outsourced, compared with 54% of IT services and 44% of finance work, a Deloitte study found.

True, it is a relatively newer concept for marketing, compared with IT, finance, and customer service outsourcing, but it is mature enough that companies are already taking advantage of it. There is now a massive talent pool of outsourced marketers with expertise in many specialties.

Competing for increasingly expensive execution talent is unsustainable

The Great Resignation has complicated the labor pool. Companies have lost employees or they are now trying to recruit in a market where employees have the power. That has led to increased salaries across the board, and in many cases imbalances between the compensation of resources and the true value that they create for an organization.

While the rest of the industry is fighting over on-shore talent, organizations that embrace MaaS can dramatically reduce run-rate labor costs, building a competitive advantage in their cost basis with first-mover status.

Organizations need to train and upskill talent while maintaining organizational scalability