Most businesses handle marketing in-house. They begin with organic, grassroots campaigns and eventually scale up to more detailed (and costly) campaigns. But what if that’s the wrong way to handle it? Could outsourcing your marketing actually make more sense?
What is Outsourced Marketing?
Traditionally, marketing is one of those tasks that’s handled in-house. Either you hire marketing professionals and build out your own internal marketing department, or the founder works closely with one or two key employees to execute all aspects of the company’s marketing strategy. But in recent years, outsourced marketing has become quite commonplace – particularly for smaller businesses.
As Forbes explains, “Outsourcing marketing enables companies to acquire all the expertise, tools and tactics of a comprehensive marketing department from a third-party company, which eliminates the need to hire skilled marketing personnel.”
In certain situations, going with an outsourced marketing department is more beneficial than building out your own team. But it’s all about knowing when to select this option.
The Biggest Reasons to Outsource Your Marketing
Outsourced marketing isn’t right for every business, but there are plenty of situations and circumstances where it makes the most logical sense. Here are several of those factors:
1. You Don’t Have the Time
A lack of time is the biggest reason business owners outsource their marketing. Because as much as some marketing “gurus” might like to tell you that you can do all of your marketing in “60 minutes per week,” the reality is that it takes hours of time every single day. If you’re a one-person business or a small team, you might not be able to dedicate 15 to 20 hours of your week to marketing. By outsourcing, you instantly gain a team of people who work on marketing, while allowing you to focus on other tasks like sales and customer service.
2. You Don’t Have the Internal Resources
You might have the time, but do you have the resources? In other words, do you have the skills required to architect and implement a high-converting marketing strategy that works? Most businesses do not.
By outsourcing your marketing to a company that already has the skills, experiences, and frameworks needed to launch high-ROI marketing campaigns, you don’t have to worry about writing content, responding to social media comments, creating graphics, or managing your website. Everything is taken care of on your behalf.
3. You Need Cost-Effective Scalability
Scalability is a major factor in this equation. You need marketing in order to grow. But in order to have success with marketing, you need lots of resources (including skilled marketers and deep pockets). This creates an obvious conundrum: How do you implement an effective marketing plan so that you can grow, without actually having the resources to do so?
According to EAG Advertising & Marketing, outsourcing is the way to go. “It enables companies to add incremental support in small, manageable doses so that marketing expenses rise along with sales.” In other words, your marketing investments scale at just the right pace – keeping up with your growth but never going too fast.
4. You Need a Competitive Advantage
In an industry where every business sells the same products with the same quality and pricing, there aren’t very many ways to differentiate. A compelling marketing strategy is one of them. By outsourcing to a skilled group of marketing professionals, you can gain a massive competitive advantage.
5. You’re Looking for a Fresh Perspective
Sometimes businesses add an outsourced marketing arm to their business, even while keeping one or two in-house marketing folks on their payroll. This is usually done as a way of supplementing what you already have going on.
One great thing about outsourcing marketing is that it brings a fresh perspective to your business. While everyone inside of your company has been taught to view things through a particular lens, someone on the outside looking in can bring new ideas that are in your blind spot. This leads to exciting innovation and new opportunities.
Putting it All Together
The great thing about outsourcing marketing is that it’s not permanent. If you do it for 12 months and decide that you might be better off bringing things in-house, you can always hire a couple of people and slowly transition the workload to your own team. It’s a low-risk way to amplify your marketing efforts for a period of time (or permanently).
