Core vs. Non-Core Activities: Self-Assessment and Strategic Playbook

What’s inside:  

This playbook is a step-by-step guide to help marketing leaders quickly identify where their organizations may be overinvested in non-core activities. Cut through complexity, reduce execution friction, and allocate resources where they’ll drive the greatest impact.

Walk away with:  

• An execution clarity framework: Know what to outsource, co-own, or keep in-house based on team maturity, budget, and growth goals.

• Efficient resource allocation: Pinpoint where execution friction is slowing progress and reconfigure resources for impact.

• Model modernization lens: Strategically blend in-house, outsourced, and AI-supported models to future-proof marketing.

• Actionable pathways: Follow practical steps and real anonymized examples to shape your hybrid operating model.

Why now

Today’s B2B CMOs, CFOs, and CROs face rising execution demands and tighter budgets. Yet many haven’t defined where to allocate resources across in-house, co-owned, and outsourced functions. Often, they sense inefficiencies but lack a structured framework to evaluate what to outsource, retain, or reconfigure.

Leaders that have made this shift are proactively moving toward operational resilience. As competition intensifies and AI-powered capabilities emerge, modern leaders must balance flexibility with control. That means streamlining workflows, eliminating execution friction, and investing resources where they drive measurable impact.

How to use this playbook

Use this playbook to map the right balance of in-house and outsourced support across your marketing function. Leverage your personalized results to evaluate which functions to keep, co-own, or delegate based on your budget, team maturity, and functional needs. 

What you need to get started: 

• Awareness of your current challenges: Bandwidth bottlenecks, budget pressures, performance plateaus, and tech usage, across key functional groups.  

• Understanding of your current technology usage: Where technology enables, or hinders, efficiency across execution areas (in-house vs outsourced vs AI-enabled, by function).

• Delivery to performance impact insights: What workstreams, priority deliverables, and core programs have the most impact on corporate objectives.  

• Team structure insights: Where resources are allocated today (seniority level, functional groups, and deliverables).

No need for detailed financial reports, this tool is designed to guide strategic evaluation first. 

Step-by-step assessment:  

A 5-question check to uncover hidden cost or capacity opportunities in your org.