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Deloitte’s survey of more than 260 CPOs identified improving margins via cost reduction (72%) and driving operational efficiency (68%) as the top two priorities for responding to macroeconomic challenges.
1. Identify a Strategic Marketing Agency Partner [1. Identify a Marketing Agency Partner]
Start by identifying a strategic agency partner with the capabilities, scale, and performance history to support broader marketing needs. By anchoring your operations around this partner, you can unlock significant cost savings and achieve true economies of scale.
- Build a supplier of record relationship
- Negotiate favorable terms
- Lock-in good prices
- Get priority access to the best resources
Case Study: Atlassian strategically used Macro's global concierge team generating $3M in closed deals from marketing projects - delivering a 10x return on a $100k investment.
2. Consolidation of Agency Suppliers
Reduce the number of agency suppliers by awarding your Strategic Agency Partner with additional projects. This will streamline your purchasing operations by reducing the total number of marketing agency suppliers and administrative costs.
- Reduce marketing supplier numbers
- Streamline procurement process
- Ask for Bulk purchase discounts
Forrester's 2026 Marketing Agencies Predictions reports that 85% of US-based marketing executives plan to review their agency contracts in 2026, with agency consolidation cited as primary driver.
3. Demand Continuous Marketing Efficiency
Your marketing vendors must be more efficient year-over-year. As you award them a higher volume of marketing projects, challenge them to do more within the same budget or offer a lower, volume-based cost per hour.
- Same outcome with less investment
- More outcome with the same investment
- More outcomes with more investments
The Hackett Group's 2024 Procurement Key Issues Report found that procurement teams typically target 5–10% cost reductions through supplier negotiations. But the more important frontier is productivity: the WFA notes that 85% of senior marketing procurement leaders now say their mandate is to add value beyond savings - meaning efficiency gains, output volume, and marketing ROI are becoming as important as rate reductions.
- Source: Hackett Group via Precoro
4. Optimize the Freelance vs. Full-Time Balance [4. Balance Freelance vs. Full-Time]
Independent freelancers should only be utilized for short-term initiatives. If you have been relying on the same freelancers for more than two years, it is time to transition them into permanent, full-time employees. Procurement should work with marketing stakeholders to assess whether the work is truly temporary or whether a different resourcing model would be more cost-effective.
- Procurement Tip during a Hiring Freeze: If a hiring freeze blocks you from bringing freelancers in-house, look to your Strategic Agency Vendor to step in and manage these resources on your behalf.
- Cost savings Tip: Use contract instead of full-time employees only for certain projects to convert a part of your fixed labour cost to variable ones.
Perspective: Moving long-term freelancers to full-time employment reduces flexibility. Procurement and marketing leadership need to agree on whether the work truly warrants permanent headcount before making that call.
5. Tap into a Global Contingent Workforce
Look to leverage global contingent resources that work as an extension of your in-house marketing teams. These can work in-region with your business units and assist in accelerating marketing projects at very cost-effective rates.
- Move operations to lower cost regions
- Look for tax incentives and favorable regulations
- Take advantage of language skills
- Avoid all extra overhead and risks associated with full-time employees
Bain & Company notes that taking marketing operations and execution to lower-cost, specialist teams increase cost transparency and keeps data closer to the business - while freeing in-house teams to focus on strategy rather than execution.
6. Strict "AI-Efficiency" Auditing
As agencies adopt generative AI to speed up production, procurement should ask for transparency around where AI is being used and what savings can pass on to you.
Questions to ask marketing agencies leveraging Artificial Intelligence:
- What process is being automated?
- Which delivery time is being reduced?
- Where is quality being improved?
- What are the cost-savings in labour?
Perspective: AI adoption that saves an agency 30% on content production time should surface in revised rate discussions - not be quietly absorbed as margin improvement. Ask for it explicitly and build it into contract review cycles.
- Source: Macro - Accelerate GTM with AI
7. Move Marketing Operations to a Shared Services Model [7. Move MOPS to a Shared Services Model]
Execution of marketing projects and campaigns can be done within regions or countries with lower cost and better incentives to increase volume of completed marketing project. Marketing stakeholders can achieve this by:
- Centralized delivery within low-cost regions
- Measure increased production and marketing output
- Refine processes to “work-around-the-sun”
- Look for economies of scale
- Reduce redundancy and cost per unit
- Spread fixed costs
Case Study: When a healthcare-focused financial services company moved to a fully outsourced marketing operations model, the result was a 106% increase in clients reached and a 55.31% Lead-to-MQL improvement - driven by scalable campaign templates and agile project management, not additional headcount.
The Procurement Golden Rule
Savings in marketing shouldn't be about making agencies work for less or sacrificing creativity; it’s about making sure you aren't paying for layers of management, unjustified high labour costs, hidden margins, and redundant structures that add zero value to your company’s growth.
What Procurement Should Measure
Marketing savings should be tracked beyond rate cards alone. Procurement should measure total cost, service quality, turnaround time, supplier capabilities, and realized productivity gains to understand whether the operating model is actually improving.
A strong marketing procurement strategy gives the business better control, clearer accountability, and more flexible access to talent and capabilities. Done well, it improves both cost performance and marketing effectiveness.
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