Engagement model 03
We run and maintain it alongside your team
Marketing operations maintenance is ongoing operation of a marketing function that has already been built, run with your internal team rather than instead of them. We manage the channels, hold the plan, keep optimizing and report against pipeline every month. Everything stays documented and owned by you throughout.
What ongoing operation covers
What does maintenance actually involve?
Running the system, not just watching it. Maintenance keeps every layer of the operation live: the plan gets revisited as conditions change, channels get managed day to day, and the reporting infrastructure keeps producing numbers leadership trusts.
- Channel management. Paid campaigns, SEO and content cadence, email sequences and social presence, run and iterated week to week.
- Continuous optimization. Creative testing, bid and budget adjustment, funnel tuning, and stack refinement as the data comes in.
- Plan revisions. The market moves. Positioning, channel mix and budget allocation get revisited on a standing cadence rather than left as they were at launch.
- Systems upkeep. Integrations stay connected, tracking stays accurate, and the stack gets rationalized as tools change.
- Reporting. Monthly reporting against cost per qualified lead and pipeline contribution, with the reasoning behind any change explained.
How we work with your team
Run with your team, not instead of them
The same principle that governs setup governs maintenance: your people stay involved, and the operation stays visible to them rather than becoming a black box a vendor manages out of sight.
What stays with your team
- Ownership of every account, tool and dataset
- A standing view into what is being run and why
- Sign-off on plan revisions and budget changes
- The playbooks and SOPs built during setup, kept current
What we hold
- Day-to-day management of the channels in scope
- The operating cadence: what happens, on what schedule
- Senior judgement on what to test, adjust or retire
- The monthly reporting discipline
Reporting
What does reporting look like?
The same headline numbers every month: cost per qualified lead and pipeline contribution, by channel. Impressions and click volume appear only where they explain a change, never as the result being presented.
What gets reported
- Cost per qualified lead, by channel
- Pipeline contribution, by channel and campaign
- What changed since last month, and why
- What we are testing next
What stays documented
- Every change made to a live campaign or system
- The current version of the plan
- Access and account inventory, kept current
- Playbooks, updated as process changes
Every discipline, scoped to need
Which disciplines run under maintenance
Whatever was built during setup keeps running under maintenance: paid media, SEO, content, email, automation, analytics, web and social, managed at whatever level of activity the plan calls for. Nothing here is billed as a separate product.
Who this is for
Companies with an operation already built, whether by Arkas or otherwise, that need it run with the same discipline it was designed with. The team that would otherwise carry it, often a founder, a sales lead, or a generalist already doing several jobs at once, is stretched too thin across other responsibilities to give it the sustained attention it needs.
Other engagement models: Operations Audit & Strategic Blueprint · Operations Build & Enablement.
Questions
Common questions
Do we need to have used Arkas for setup first?
No. We take on maintenance of an operation we did not build, after an initial review to understand what is running and confirm the tracking is trustworthy. That review is usually a short version of the Operations Audit.
How is this different from a standard marketing retainer?
A standard retainer typically covers one channel and stops there. Maintenance runs the whole operation, plan, funnel, channels and reporting, as one accountable engagement, with your team retaining ownership and visibility throughout.
Can maintenance scope change over time?
Yes. Channel mix, budget and priorities are revisited on a standing cadence, and the scope of the retainer adjusts with them. Any material change is agreed in writing before it takes effect.
What happens if we want to bring it in-house later?
That option stays open throughout. Documentation is kept current as a matter of course, not assembled at the point of a handover, so taking the operation in-house does not require rebuilding anything.
Related: setup if the operation still needs to be built, consulting for a standalone review. Background reading: how an Arkas engagement runs.
Book a strategy call
Thirty minutes, no deck. We look at what you are running now, where the operation leaks, and what it would take to fix it. Engagements are scoped on a call.