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Driving revenue and controlling costs is paramount for any successful business. How an organization utilizes its resources to focus on revenue generating activities rather than peripheral tasks can make the difference between success and stagnation. Mature industries have long recognized this and have standardized processes in their businesses which enable them to easily scale. This is particularly true in the operations related to managing digital campaigns. The need to keep up with ever evolving and new technologies and meet increasingly short turnaround times can be overwhelming to the digital marketing organization that doesn't have a viable plan for scaling.
 
This article examines some of the critical questions that need to be addressed by online media operations leaders looking to implement scalable resources as a valuable strategy for gaining competitive and tactical advantages, in the digital marketing industry. A thorough analysis would need to consider:
 
• What skill sets are needed to support the types of campaigns and technologies in use?
• Which team members will be strategy focused and client facing rather than execution oriented?
• What are the team economic factors?
• Is there a gap between the available and required resources?
• What is the best way to fill the gap?
• What are the statistics related to timelag to hire, turnover, employee movement, and attrition?
 
Three Facets and Three Phases of a Digital Campaign
 
A typical digital campaign includes three main facets:
• Ad operations consisting of display ads, rich media, widgets, landing pages, and Flash.
• Search campaigns with companies like Yahoo, MSN, and Google.
• Data aggregation and reporting to support campaign optimization and post campaign analysis activities.
 
Associated with each of these facets are a myriad of tasks that need to be accomplished during the different phases of the campaign. The phases and some of the tasks are:
 
• Pre campaign phase—sales activities and campaign planning.
• Execution phase—ad trafficking, campaign optimization, and data aggregation.
• Post campaign phase—campaign analysis and data archival.
 
Supporting Online Media Operations
 
In both display and search campaigns, staff with a wide range of skill sets and experience levels is needed. From the entry level team member needed to generate keywords for search engine marketing to the experienced media planner and the revenue generating sales force, the online media operations center needs to have in place the right resources, with the right skills, at the right time. The following table provides descriptions of some of the key resources and tasks required in managing all phases of successful digital campaigns.
 
Resources & Tasks for Digital Campaigns
 
Task  Required Resource Focus: Execution vs. Strategy Experience and Compensation Level
Sales Account Executives Strategy Mid to high
Campaign Planning Media Planners Strategy Mid to high
Client Services Account Managers Strategy Mid to high
Campaign execution  Campaign Managers  Execution  Low to mid
Deployment including
keyword generation,
site tagging, post-click
tagging, targeting, bid
optimization, bid
monitoring, QA Ad Trafficking and Ad
Operations Personnel Execution  Low to mid
Data aggregation,
cleansing,
normalizing Campaign Managers
and Reporting
Specialists Execution  Low to mid
Report analysis for
Media Planners Data Analysts and
Reporting Experts Strategy Mid to high
Report analysis
for
operations Ad Ops Associates
and Reporting
Specialists Execution  Low to mid

 
No Pain, No Gain
 
Each of the tasks and resources referenced in the preceding table are indispensable. Explosive growth of
the Internet has resulted in increases in potential online customers. If an online media operations organization expects to prosper, efficient and cost effective management of digital campaigns is also indispensable. But, there are growing pains associated with keeping up with the constantly evolving technologies used in planning, executing and optimizing digital campaigns.
 
In general, some of the most resource intensive tasks in online media operations are execution focused include:
• Targeting and QA in display ad campaigns on ad servers
• Keyword generation, bid optimization and bid monitoring in search campaigns
• Site tagging
• Data aggregation
• Reporting
 
These execution focused tasks are most efficiently performed by entry level, lower cost team members.
However, notoriously high staff turnover in these areas results in, at a minimum, increased costs for
continual hiring and retraining of staff. Worse yet, in desperation, some organizations temporarily fill the gap using highly paid, strategy oriented senior team members to perform these necessary tasks.
 
Another major pain point for many online media operations centers involves gathering, cleansing and normalizing data required for generating critical business reports. The level of detail, frequency and amount of data available today is overwhelming for some organizations. But, the data originates from multiple sources and is difficult and time consuming to collect, store, and analyze.
 
The good news is that if the leaders in the online media operations organization thoroughly address scaling its resources to minimize the impact of painful, time consuming tasks; gain can be maximized, while pain is minimized.
 
Filling the Gap
 
After determining the skills needed to support the types of campaigns the online media operations organization conducts, management must determine how to make best use of its resources. Some vital questions need to be addressed such as:
 
• What is the organization's core competency and how does it retain that focus?
• How does the organization foster employee retention and organizational growth?
• Is there cross training to enable talented, execution focused team members to become strategy focused, revenue generating team members?
• Does the organization consider outsourcing execution focused tasks, and, if so, are internal processes in place to leverage the benefits of outsourcing?
• When using an outsourcing partner, are complete functions outsourced, or is it used to handle overflow work?
• Is the outsourcing partner willing to learn or already understand the specific online media operations
organization and will there be a cultural fit?
• Does the outsourcing partner have scalable resources and the infrastructure in place to best support the online media operations organization?
 
The Bottom Line
 
Maintaining focus on an organization's core competencies while minimizing resource costs associated with functions that generate little or no revenue is crucial to optimizing resources and revenue. If the organization has internal resources with the appropriate planning and management capabilities, such as a Human Resource Generalist, it may be able to implement a successful resource scaling strategy. Alternatively, outsourcing execution oriented tasks that often negatively impact strategy oriented team members is another viable solution. The bottom line is that the online media operations organization that achieves resource scalability will dramatically increase its ROI.