Video Transcript

In this video, I’m going to break down when to begin your buying process for next year’s initiatives. So first and foremost, looking at historical data from Element Three over the last six years, it takes an average of about eight and a half weeks from the first conversation until we have a first engagement clarified and SOW signed. Now that is brought up and down — sometimes it’s like a week-long engagement where it’s really clear right from the start what’s going to happen and we can get through that process very quickly or we’ve seen things go out as far as 16 weeks during the process, just depending on how intricate your own buying process could be.

What drives those numbers up and down is largely impacted by how much clarity you have about your priorities when you walk into the conversation. So if you come in with a very low amount of clarity as to what marketing needs to do for the organization in the next 12 months, it is going to extend the time that it takes for us to unpack with you.

Where should marketing plug in? How do we best help your team that you already have? What should you actually invest? All of those questions will come up. So the more you come to us with clarity about what marketing needs to do for your organization, the faster the process can move. If you are in a scenario where you really need support from an execution standpoint, where you’re looking for a point solution, say it’s something like a series of landing pages for a campaign just as an example, you can start that buying process later.

That can really be started more towards the end of the year because you will have clarity about what good looks like and what the plan should be. On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re working on big, broad business initiatives like I’m trying to enter a new market, we are installing a new leadership team right now.

Hey, we’re going to go through a period of acquisition with our business. Those are broader questions that need to unpack layers of the organization to understand how to best clip in. So those are two opposite ends again from I have an execution need all the way to I have a strategy need and how that will impact your timeline.

So as you walk into this planning season, start to think about, hey, I might not have exact understanding of what I need yet, but that still could be a starting point for when you should reach out.

If you think you’re going to be able to figure that out on your own, you can wait a little bit if you believe that you need a partner to help you unpack that question, reach out as early
as possible to start the conversation.