Plan Left Team Augmentation: Access a Million-Dollar Team Without a Million-Dollar Payroll

Team Augmentation.

What does that even mean?

That’s not the question you should ask yourself. The question you didn’t even know to ask is, “How can I get a million-dollar team without adding a million-dollar payroll to my budget?”

The short answer is: Team Augmentation. The long answer is coming right up.

Compete at a Fortune 500 Level Today

Competing is tough. When you’re a smaller organization—maybe an emerging brand or a start-up just getting ready to make the transition into enterprise level—looking up to the legacy brands, competition with Fortune 500 brands isn’t even an option at that point. You still need to beat out all the other competing companies that are still on your level.

When you’re of similar size, with similar team structure, you may believe only a few options are available to you:

  • Recruit the hottest marketer out there and watch them skyrocket your brand to the next level, but they can’t have a big team to help because you can’t afford it.
  • Demand that your current team loves your brand, your culture, and their paychecks enough to dedicate twice the time to their jobs, so you get twice the team. (That never really works, does it? Aside from the pending burnout, it’s just never a nice thing to expect from human beings.)
  • Hope that cloning will soon be widely available so you can double your team, triple your team! But clones have to be paid, too.

What could possibly be the answer to set you apart from your competition so you can finally reach the next level? What will give you the advantage to compete today with the Fortune 500 enterprises you’ve long admired and envied?

We’ll say it again: Team Augmentation.

The Difference Between White Label Service, Staff Augmentation, and Team Augmentation

White label services have been available for a while, and you may have even used several while building your business. Perhaps the most well-known white label service is ghostwriting, when marketing content is outsourced to an individual or agency and then published or posted as though written by the client. You may have used this very type of white label service before.

Almost any marketing task can be completed by white label providers. In fact, that’s exactly what most marketing agencies are: white label service providers. They do the work. You pay for it and reap the rewards. Design work, social media management, website development—marketing agencies everywhere can help you with these and other marketing needs.

But sometimes that’s not enough. It’s hard to expect a marketing agency to fully understand your brand, your vision, your products or services, and your messaging when they’re not there in the trenches with you every day. It’s hard to plan campaigns and launch them when they’re not in your meetings, studying your customers, rubbing elbows with your clients, attending your industry conferences, and working with your team every day.

Staff augmentation is a step up from white label services. One temporary employee fills a specific role for a limited period, which could bring some positive change if that temporary staff member has vast knowledge of digital marketing. If you’re lucky enough to get someone who’s a jack of all trades—and there are a lot of trades in digital marketing—you’ll likely pay higher consulting fees to either the temporary staff member or the staffing company that referred them.

Where staff augmentation falls short is in the fact you’re either looking at only one person (who can never truly do it all well) or you use staff augmentation to hire several people to fill these roles. With either approach, you still have to create the team, train them on and in your company, create the processes and practices to accomplish your goals and manage their day-to-day. It’s more hands-on control than white label, but it’s also a lot more management.

What makes Team Augmentation different, and what makes it a better fit for most growing businesses than white label and staff augmentation, is that Team Augmentation combines the best of both worlds into one core philosophy. Here’s an overview of why Team Augmentation is a better fit for most:

  1. Team Augmentation lets you use what you need to and leave what you don’t. We offer expertise and availability for everything from fractional CMO or CPO support to intern and junior specialists. Use what you need, when you need it.
  2. Team Augmentation people are already part of a team. At Plan Left, that means weekly learning sessions, sponsored ongoing education, a pre-built vacation policy, and HR program. We are the nexus of a thousand marketing conversations with multiple brands and industries. Our people are great because we hire the best and make them better. You access that greatness when you need it. This also means we already know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. So, you don’t end up paying for someone to try something new and fail, just to figure out it’s not their specialty.
  3. Team Augmentation is scalable. With Team Augmentation, you can scale from one to several people, or the other way around, in a very short time. You could have a dedicated programmer for 3 months, then scale down to a part-time programmer with fractional dev-ops and social media support for the rest of the year, for example.
  4. Team Augmentation lets people specialize and be truly great at what they do. The reason our team can be great, cross-industry programmers is that they don’t have to be programmers and project managers, or devops and social media specialists. We let people thrive in what they do best, grow that talent base, and do that in everything they touch. So, the level of talent and expertise advances and becomes more specialized in an industry and case-agnostic way.
  5. Team Augmentation trains for flexibility. Our team aren’t just marketers for fintech or programmers for eCommerce. We train greatness within the craft itself, and we carry over lessons and techniques from our cross-industry experience.
  6. Team Augmentation teammates have systems and processes already made—and a good Team Augmentation firm makes those adaptable. So, you don’t need to recreate the wheel with every new teammate that’s added to your Team Augmentation plan. We work to become a seamless part of your day-to-day operations, we take copious and transparent notes, and we keep an ongoing profile on your organization and its needs as you grow and change. This helps ensure seamless transitions with teammates and reduce onboarding time when your needs change.
  7. Team Augmentation comes with an Account Manager. This may be the single most important differentiator of them all. Your AM becomes your right hand, ensuring that your business goals and outcomes are protected and delivered on time. An AM is like a fractional executive assistant and team manager, all rolled into one.

Team Augmentation Is the Answer to the Question You Didn’t Know to Ask

When you need an account manager, a project manager, a systems administrator, an SEO analyst, a search marketing specialist, a paid media expert, a junior developer, a senior developer, a designer, a branding expert, content marketers, social media specialists, and software engineers, you’re looking at $1 million or more in payroll and benefits.

Your question isn’t how to get a million dollars for this team. Your question is, how can I get a million-dollar team without paying a million dollars?

The answer is Team Augmentation.

With Team Augmentation, you can have it all on a fractional basis instead of hiring, training, and paying eleven or more full-time employees. Our million-dollar team becomes your million-dollar team, and you don’t have to pay a million dollars (or more) for them.

Our team has joined forces with:

We know we can help you, too. Whatever your situation, we’re here for you. We can’t wait to serve alongside you to help you meet—and even exceed—your goals. If you’d like to discuss your specific situation, don’t hesitate. Reach out any time.

Explore Latest Posts