I recently formed a "Marketing Production" team in Bangalore that includes a marketing manager, web-developer and graphics specialist. There are a number of reasons for starting the team but the main one is budget. Essentially this team is an alternative to a marketing agency but at a fraction of the cost.
The team in India is responsibile for web-site development, collateral creation, SEO, online advertising / SEM, Flash production, campaign execution and CRM administration. Activities like strategic planning, content creation, customer interations, event execution and PR will remain in the US.
While off-shore marketing and off-shore development are clearly different, I expect that the 5+ years of experience I have gained working with off-shore development teams will pay dividents. I feel that there will be a couple of critical success factors: diligent hiring, constant communication, well defined processes and clear objectives. Right now I have all of them in place.
It will be interesting to see if the issues of location, time-zone and a lack of industry expertise can be overcome. I am confident that they can. Time will tell.
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