Faster, better, cheaper: why can’t you have all three?

The phrase “Faster, better, cheaper” was coined by NASA. The notion was that you could have two of them on any given project, but not all three. Within our own sphere of marketing, perhaps it’s possible to have all three.

We often find ourselves saying this to our clients: we can create an asset or deliver a campaign that is on message, on time, and on budget, but it requires fairs wind and following seas.

And if you make significant changes to any of these, it will knock-on to the other two and nudge your plans off course.

But the right agency, who is the right fit for your business and understands your needs, your tech, and your audience, really can deliver all three.

Faster

If you’re running a tech marketing campaign, you’ll have deadlines, and you want to hit them, or hey, even have assets ready early. Some marketers mistake faster for bigger. You can allocate lots of staff to a project, but if they’re doing the wrong tasks at the wrong times for the wrong reasons, things will just get confused and certainly not faster.

Experience is key to projects staying on schedule. Experience of technologies, experience of audiences, experience of spinning lots of plates and ensuring none fall. Futurity is a highly-experienced agency and we’re great at scoping projects out rapidly, understanding your needs, and creating compelling deliverables without needing time-consuming messaging workshops or brainstorming sessions. Calls with your experts inform content, and then we get on with it and deliver you a first draft fast.

Better

Subjective, yes. Biased? Probably. But I often compare our content output with that of our customers’ competitors, and find ours is better. More compelling, more positive, and more professional. If trying to pinpoint why that is, I’d bring experience back into it. We’ve racked up over 20 years of creating engaging content out of some very complex IT and telecoms topics. And we’ve never stood still: we’ve added to that experience by learning about the newest digital technologies along the way. Clients think we are better, which is why our retention levels are high and we do very well with internal advocacy. In this context, I think “better” is measurable by loyalty and long-term trustworthiness.

Cheaper

Everybody loves cheaper, right? Except for shoes. And mattresses.

“Cheaper” when talking about content marketing, for me, means value for money and avoiding hidden costs. You’ll find freelance writers, designers and marketers – or even agencies – somewhere in the world who charge highly attractive hourly or day rates. But it’s probably a false economy.

Working with people who don’t understand your business can get expensive: you spend more time on scoping, calls, interviews, reviewing, editing, and even rewriting altogether. Your subject matter experts are busy people, often speaking at events, supporting sales teams or briefing analysts. They haven’t the time to keep going over content and working on rewrites.

Or you can work with big agencies. The worst will try to convince you their fat fees correspond to the value they give you. They’ll tell you projects must start with extensive scoping and ideation, but they’re often not aligned with your needs. Outputs come late and are inconsistent. Why? Perhaps because they are big, somewhat complacent, and don’t invest the time to get to know you. Or because they don’t allocate experienced staff to work with you, and effectively train up junior staff using your budget. We have a lot of experience salvaging these projects once they have drifted off course.

So, what is “cheaper”? I’d say it’s a mix of offering very competitive rates and a mentality of getting the job done – rather than racking up billable hours for every call, rewrite and design edit. Scoping and planning count of course, but we focus on keeping it tight. And we can do that because we have years of experience in IT marketing. We know what works, what doesn’t, what resonates, and what delivers on your investment.

It is possible to have all three

If the client and agency are fully aligned, it can be possible to achieve faster, better, cheaper. It might not work in every industry, but an experienced tech agency who values your brand and your time can help keep costs down and deliver quality. And honestly? The more experienced we become, the quicker and more effectively we work. If your agency’s fees keep going up every year, maybe ask them why their quality isn’t increasing.

If you find working with your current writers to be more challenging than it should be – because projects are late, or constantly running over budget or that they simply don’t get it – then drop us a line at [email protected] to discuss how we can offer you faster, better and cheaper.