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How FlexTeams keep your team running at full speed

Quick take

With several full-time roles open at a critical time, SolarWinds partnered with Ascend Marketing to fill in resource gaps and keep their Public Sector marketing team running at full speed.

Challenge

Open marketing positions caused bandwidth limitations that put the team at risk of falling behind in key initiatives for Public Sector verticals, including Healthcare, Department of Defense, and Education.

Solution

Ascend provided a highly-skilled FlexTeam that “plugged into” the organization to immediately expand its capabilities, accelerate marketing efforts, and keep up with the pace of business demands.

Results

Ascend’s work helped mitigate the typical issues caused by unfilled positions, such as down-time, lost opportunities, under-utilized tech tools, and slowed growth.

Keeping momentum up when manpower is down

In today’s world, speed matters more than ever. Many marketing leaders successfully build teams that are super-efficient, agile powerhouses that drive results. But even high-performing teams struggle to maintain momentum when manpower goes down. Whether they are full-time, part-time, or short-term, open roles may leave skills and bandwidth gaps that can throw the whole team off course.

This was the obstacle the SolarWinds Public Sector marketing team faced with overlapping resource openings during a key revenue-driving time of year. SolarWinds, a provider of secure observability and IT management solutions designed for hybrid IT multi-cloud environments, is a leader in a competitive industry that demands speed and continual innovation—in other words, there is no time for downtime. They needed the horsepower of an outside vendor, but with the sense of urgency, collaborative approach, and precise skillset of an in-house team. They turned to Ascend Marketing to deliver the best of both worlds: A blended-skill FlexTeam that immediately “plugged into” the organization and hit the ground running.

“The Ascend team quickly understood our business and our challenges at a critical time. They filled immediate resource gaps and developed a strategy for our internal team to carry forward.”

Alejandra Quevedo

Public Sector Marketing Strategy Director, SolarWinds

Open positions can hold you back. Don’t let them.

It takes time to fill open positions, especially for roles that call for experience in a complex business, such as SolarWinds. With revenue-driving marketing initiatives already underway, projects could not be put on hold during the hiring process. And though the company was well-positioned in the market, leadership knew there was potential to capture a greater competitive advantage in several key verticals—a crucial step to long-term growth.

The Public Sector team needed to find a marketing partner to help them keep up with the pace of immediate business needs. Resource gaps included Demand Generation communications as well as:

Management of a full slate of events targeted to high-priority verticals such as Healthcare, Department of Defense, and Education
Support for post-event email campaigns
Coordination of sales support and alignment

The specialized nature of the industry and considerations such as tight timelines meant that help from an outside vendor had to provide more than headcount—if they weren’t skilled in the Public Sector team’s systems, martech tools, and tactics, they could slow down the work.

The answer was found in a FlexTeam with a diverse skillset that hit the ground running.

Accelerate results with the right partner.

Ascend’s FlexTeam approach brought a wide range of solution-based advantages to the Public Sector team, from cross-discipline skillsets and operational expertise in core technologies such as project management tools and content libraries; to a customer-centric, strategic mindset that drives results.

Fully embedding into the marketing organization gave both the FlexTeam and the in-house team the key advantages of seamless communication, visibility, and a sense of connectedness that brought everyone together under shared goals.

Uptime is everything.

The “plugged-in partner” approach means there’s no long ramp-up period or steep learning curve to conquer. The FlexTeam immediately went into action to manage SolarWinds’ Demand Gen Programs, including:

Comprehensive event management

Planning and strategy
Partnership with sales teams to align on goals, define targets accounts, and present event strategy
Creation of newsletter copy and event strategy decks
Content development for post-event segment emails

Sales support and strategy

Sales meetings and status meetings to collaborate and coordinate activity
Prep and presentation for Quarterly Business Reviews

As a result, projects kept running at full speed during staffing gaps, including:

Successful coordination and communication of events

Execution of Demand Gen communications and campaigns

Keeping up is not enough—you have to stay a step ahead.

The FlexTeam’s proactive, holistic and strategic nature and deep expertise in all facets of marketing enabled them to see beyond short-term challenges and make strategic recommendations for long-term results, including:

SEO & Web

Website optimization for current and future pages based on target keywords. Conducted site SEO, UX, UI, and accessibility audit; industry/competitor analysis; strategic keyword lists by segment; content assessment and mapping.

Personas

Developed personas driving web, marketing, and sales verticalization efforts. Hosted sales workshops with Department of Defense, Healthcare, and Education teams; conducted market research by vertical; defined segment pain points; macro trends and drivers; identified influencers, decision-makers, and audience characteristics.

“We seamlessly integrated into the SolarWinds team to quickly bridge the resource gap and ensure their initiatives stayed on track and kept running smoothly at full speed.”

Rachel Zavala

Senior Digital and ABM Campaign Strategist

A partner for the long run

When SolarWinds first engaged Ascend, they were looking to keep the work moving ahead and avoid losing ground during a time of overlapping resource gaps. The FlexTeam provided a super-efficient solution, ensuring the Public Sector team avoided common pitfalls caused by open roles, such as lost business opportunities and stalled strategy. But they also provided a clear path forward, with data-driven marketing plans that could be carried out by the internal team.