Optimizing Talent, Tech, and Marketing ROI

With Gartner noting a significant decrease in marketing budgets—from 9.1% of company revenue in 2023 to 7.7% in 2024—teams are continuing to find themselves pressured to achieve more with less. This 15% drop is a clear indicator that marketing and creative departments must tighten their belts while still leveraging emerging technologies like AI, which present unique challenges and opportunities.

CFOs are taking a closer look at the ROI of marketing investments, with Gartner saying two-thirds are reporting that digital spending over the last three years hasn’t met business expectations. At the same time, many marketing teams are intensely focused on capturing and reacting to customer signals, which often leads to tactics that customers find too intrusive, and ultimately prove to be counterproductive. The consequence? More expensive campaigns with diminishing returns, making it essential for these teams to realign their marketing efforts towards more valuable initiatives.

In response, we encourage today’s creative and marketing leaders to:

• Align closely with business goals when prioritizing projects.
• Thoughtfully decline less critical but urgent requests.
• Choose KPIs that genuinely reflect marketing’s impact on business objectives.
• Leverage new technologies to boost productivity.
• Optimize team resources to stay competitive in this tough economic climate.

With the high costs of maintaining full-time teams, especially in slow periods, many creative and marketing teams are exploring AI solutions and flexible staffing models to stay agile. These strategies enable you to adjust team sizes according to immediate needs, optimizing costs and focusing on key projects that drive towards your business goals. This flexibility allows you to allocate essential internal resources towards long-term goals, manage costs, and still maintain creative output.

Consider the balancing act you face: managing resources to support other departments while prioritizing major initiatives like brand and product launches. By implementing flexible, reliable resourcing solutions, you can scale your workforce during peak times without the overhead of permanent positions, allowing you the flexibility to bring in specialized skills—think 3D designers, video editors, or creative technologists—on demand. This approach not only cuts down on long-term financial commitments but also allows you to explore new roles and discover how they can add value to your team over time.

Effective resourcing strategies are essential, but integrating clever AI tools like Celtra for automating ad production, or Ikonik and LucidLink for efficient video asset management, can also improve your team’s effectiveness. This strategy enables you to maintain a high level of creative output without stretching your resources too thin. It also simplifies the management of resource-intensive roles and ensures that your spending is in line with your strategic business goals and operational requirements.

While AI tools and flexible staffing solutions might seem like a quick fix, they actually require thoughtful consideration to be effective. It’s important to select the right partners and tools, whether they’re creative resourcing specialists or enterprise-based AI production tools. Many large organizations already use contingent workforce solutions and large-scale staffing solutions, but working with experts who specialize in building flexible teams specifically designed for the future can help improve returns. These experts not only excel in identifying and vetting top talent but also understanding the unique traits and skills needed to meet your marketing and creative studios needs.

At Sandy, we specialize in connecting exceptional creative talent with forward-thinking organizations, offering flexible staffing solutions that help teams thrive in today’s dynamic workplace. Our approach goes beyond just supplying great talent; we also handle talent onboarding, manage talent expectations, and ensure that new team members integrate smoothly into your organization. We manage communication, team expectations, and performance reviews, effectively lifting the burden off your shoulders so you can focus on getting the work done. We’re incredibly proud of our success in filling flexible creative roles, and it’s always exciting to see our elastic team talent frequently become valued full-time members.

If this strikes a chord with you, we’d love to connect! Feel free to reach out—we’re eager to share our expertise and help you overcome the challenges of building a high-performing team that drives your business forward.