The ambiguous definition of outsourcing marketing causes confusion among those who seek outsourcing to improve their marketing efficiency.
Outsourcing marketing tasks to a specialized third party can alleviate a significant amount of the operational pressures your team may be experiencing when your internal team is stretched thin and your in-house talent is struggling.
Having said that, outsourcing is a big decision that requires both a financial investment and a good working relationship between companies. While it may be beneficial to keep some tasks in-house, it may be more advantageous to outsource others.
You have three options for outsourcing:
- Completely outsourcing marketing
- Hire an internal marketing team
- Use a mix of outsourced and in-house marketing
Businesses will have different requirements. The choice you make will depend on a number of factors, including your financial situation, the experience, capacity, and skill sets of your current in-house team, and any other relevant factors.
To put it another way, outsourcing is essentially the same as subcontracting a process to a third-party company such as manufacturing, accounting, or consulting. Outsourcing appears feasible in each of these cases because the outsourced service can be easily defined, quantified, and measured. However, when discussing outsourced marketing and the many sub-disciplines that fall under the marketing umbrella, the meaning quickly becomes muddled.
Outsourcing content creation is defined, measurable, and definitely quantifiable. The process of developing a website through outsourcing is comparable and doable.
However, the process of outsourcing marketing, with all of its myriad strategies and methods, creates a barrier to comprehension that a great number of company executives are unable to overcome. So, they assume their only option is to hire. However, there is a way to outsource the majority, if not the entirety, of your marketing.
The Benefits of Marketing Outsourcing
In order for marketing to be effective, it must be innovative and engaging, so taking the easy route will only get you so far. Even the best marketers can succumb to familiar tactics due to time constraints, limited budgets, and even complacency. Through the use of outsourcing, you will have the ability to collaborate with one or more marketing firms that are specialized in specific channels and monitor emerging technologies and trends in the industry.
Besides, maintaining a salaried in-house marketing team can be costly and, depending on your marketing needs, often unnecessary. For instance, using a third party for promotional materials ensures that you are only making necessary financial outlays.
Would I Be Better Off Outsourcing My Marketing?
By outsourcing your marketing, your business can obtain all of the knowledge, resources, and strategies of a full-service marketing department without having to hire marketing specialists in-house.
Companies that have yet to establish a fully staffed in-house marketing department will require a diverse set of marketing skills from the moment their doors open. Even the most robust businesses require marketing, but they struggle to meet all of their needs with a single marketing agency, let alone a single marketing person.
Consider what a strategic marketing agency could accomplish:
- Create a website, prioritize user experience, optimize for SEO, and keep it up to date
- Have digital marketing expertise, including lead generation and search optimization
- Use social media to increase customer engagement and brand awareness
- Achieve measurable sales results through direct and indirect marketing channels
Outsourced marketing meets all of these criteria because it gives businesses access to a diverse range of experts without the need to hire them individually. When business leaders try to hire one person with this level of expertise, they usually end up looking for a unicorn marketer, which is a rare find in today’s market, which is dominated by single-subject experts.
Being a digital marketing expert is not the same as being a strategic marketing expert. A competent outsourced marketing department should be media and discipline agnostic.
Partial Marketing Outsourcing
Let’s take a look at a few areas of your overall strategy where you might consider hiring a third party to do the heavy lifting if you want to outsource some (but not all) of your marketing efforts.
Marketing Strategy Outsourcing
Outsourcing your marketing strategy to a specialist means enlisting the assistance of someone whose job it is to stay current on industry innovations and new, creative marketing delivery methods. They will also be able to identify audience demographics and market positioning that you may have overlooked previously.
However, strategists are not always financially viable. Fortunately, PMG believes that all businesses require an effective marketing strategy. Having an objective view of your industry and market position is critical to the growth of any company. (For more information, see our strategy package.)
Content Marketing Outsourcing
Small teams frequently struggle to create unique and engaging content, whether it’s for a blog or site messaging. When you work in your business every day, objectivity and learning new things can become tedious. It’s also difficult to meet the tight deadlines that consistent content necessitates: content briefs, keyword research, drafts, images, social messaging, SEO, and posting all necessitate on-demand content.
Content outsourcing is a popular place for businesses to start outsourcing, with freelancers from sites like Upwork or Fiverr, as well as platform options like Writers Access or Draft.co. It takes a long time to find a talented writer who fits your style, audience expectations, and industry. In addition, many writers favor more dependable, sizable clients, leaving smaller assignments to less seasoned, inexperienced writers.
Agencies can manage your content production for you, taking that extra time off your plate. In some cases, you can be involved as much or as little as you want. Plus, their processes for content development are probably more streamlined and will help keep your content on schedule.
Social Media Strategy Outsourcing
If your prospects interact with you directly, there are clear advantages to keeping social media in-house. You can hire full-time social media strategists who communicate with prospects through social media and then relay that information back to sales and marketing. You can employ full-time social media strategists who use social media to communicate with prospects and then pass along their feedback to sales and marketing. It will help them produce more personalized, targeted brand messages.
However, if you work for a small business with a limited budget, a full-time social media manager may be out of your reach right now.
However, if your company is small and your budget is tight, hiring a full-time social media manager may not be an option right now.
You can also delegate specific social media tasks to a third-party group rather than entrusting them with the entire strategy. While the outsourcing team takes care of the consistent posting and creative aspects of your social media plan, you can continue to communicate with potential customers through your internal team.
There are many impressive social media tools available to help you automatically post across channels on a regular basis, use data to gradually improve your strategy, and communicate with prospects at scale if you don’t want to work with a third-party agency to handle your social media needs.
Choosing Which Marketing to Outsource
Every company needs a marketing strategy that is tailored to its specific marketing challenges and needs. This is frequently the best place to start. If you outsource your marketing strategy to someone who is objective and has years of experience, your leadership team can internally review the plan and decide who can or should execute it. Included in PMG’s marketing strategies is a potential execution plan so our clients can make these decisions and comparisons clearly understanding the necessary talent, time, and cost.
Some people might decide that outsourcing every aspect of marketing is the best course of action for them, whereas others might choose to use marketing technology and create a core team around it.
If your current marketing technology is generating excellent ROI and you have a trained, experienced marketing workforce capable of handling long-term campaign work as well as ad-hoc tasks, we recommend keeping activity in-house.
If your team members are wearing too many marketing hats, are consistently missing deadlines, or are hampered more than helped by your current marketing technology, you should consider outsourcing all of your marketing activity.
A happy medium can be found by combining agency and in-house resources, as well as marketing tools. With an experienced third-party agency guiding you every step of the way, you’ll be able to upskill employees and implement new technology without overspending or going through a lengthy recruitment process.