Are you interested in outsourcing marketing tasks to a third party?
In order to create brand awareness as well as generate leads for your business, marketing plays a key role.
Even so, for most smaller businesses, having an in-house marketing department is not always feasible.
In addition to the hiring and training costs, running a full-time in-house marketing team can be a costly endeavor. It is also true that managing the multiple tasks involved in marketing often directs your focus away from your core competence.
It is one of the main reasons why many companies outsource their marketing activities as a result.
But what is it and what does it have to do with your company?
In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about outsourcing marketing services, including its benefits. On top of this, we will also discuss how to select the perfect outsourced marketing agency for your business.
Let’s get started, shall we?
How Does Marketing Outsourcing Work?
In marketing outsourcing, you hire a third-party marketing agency or a marketing professional to do your marketing activities on your behalf.
What is the reason?
As a result of outsourcing, the external entity performs the task on your behalf. Instead of managing your marketing obligations yourself, you will be free to focus on your core competence instead of managing your marketing responsibilities yourself.
What marketing services can you outsource to a third party?
Let’s take a quick look at 4 of the most commonly outsourced marketing activities:
Market Research
Research involves a comprehensive study of your company’s marketplace, its competitors, and its customers. It is important to identify your brand’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition), understand what your customers need, and gauge what your competitors are doing.
However, since this task entails a great deal of research and analytical work, it can be extremely time-consuming and tedious when performed in-house.
It’s more common for marketing agencies to dive deep into Google and other social media analytics when they outsource marketing research services. In order to understand where you stand against your competitors in the market, they analyze every competitor’s position.
In addition, they will perform a SWOT analysis on your firm (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), which will help you strategize branding and marketing better.
Strategy And Planning
If you create a marketing strategy, you can define and even reconstruct the image of your brand. In addition, it will assist you in determining how and when you can introduce your brand into the market.
What does it feel like when an outside marketing agency is hired to create a marketing strategy for your business?
By strategy and planning, marketing agencies are able to develop your market persona and generate leads for you. Several tasks are performed by a digital marketing agency to create your brand’s marketing strategy, including:
- The positioning of your brand
- The creation of value propositions
- The development of growth strategies
- You can even get them to conduct keyword analysis for SEO marketing to figure out which is the best platform for marketing your business.
Creative Projects
Our creative services include the creation of marketing materials that deliver the story and identity of your brand to your target audience via the web, social media, and e-mail campaigns.
This includes logos, websites, apps, emails, newsletters, and marketing campaigns that can be used for branding, promotion, communication, awareness, and lead generation.
According to a recent report, almost 84 percent of B2B companies outsource their content creation.
What is the reason?
Marketing service providers will have an experienced content marketing team, which includes a content writer, editor, copywriter, and designer who will take care of the task for you.
Using your marketing strategy, they design and create your brand’s marketing materials, which will help you improve your public relations and establish a stronger connection with your target audience.
Marketing Operations
The marketing operations division is responsible for the management and optimization of your whole marketing process, beginning from strategy and deployment and ending with measurement, report generation, and attribution.
What are the benefits of outsourcing your marketing? How can it help your company with its marketing operations?
A marketing expert in an agency performs several tasks such as:
- Planning a project
- Management of the creative process
- Technology Management in Marketing
- Checking the compliance of your brand with the law
- Measurement of Marketing Performance
The best way to handle your marketing operations is to have an in-house marketing department. It can be a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Additionally, you won’t have to invest in the software to perform the tasks as the service provider will have the latest technology to do it efficiently.
Outsourced marketing has 4 major benefits
The following is a quick look at the 4 major benefits of outsourcing your marketing.
– It is a cost-effective method
When you use outsourced marketing services, you get a team of marketing professionals with a broad skill set at an affordable price.
From marketing strategists to marketing material producers, you get a professional team working for you at a fraction of what it would cost to hire them full-time in-house.
As a result, you won’t have to pay each one of them an individual salary like you would if you were running your own marketing department in-house.
Since you are outsourcing your marketing, you only have to pay them for their time and the type of marketing services you need.
Additionally, outsourcing to countries with low cost of living, such as the Philippines and India, can give you a skilled team at a fraction of the price you’d pay for someone who’s from the United States.
– Get Effective Content That Delivers Better Results
Marketing that is outsourced promises both quality and quantity.
Is that so?
Marketing agencies know the importance of regular content in generating customer engagement in the market. To ensure maximum lead generation, they ensure that the required content marketing materials are up to the highest standards.
In addition to producing quality content, SEO optimization, and graphic design, a good agency will also strengthen your brand’s marketing campaign. As a result of their access to a variety of marketing tools and platforms, they make it easy to quickly promote your brand, which heightens visibility and organic traffic for your site.
On the other hand, a marketing department buried beneath a mountain of tasks may not always be able to strategize and execute every marketing campaign that is required regularly.
Your marketing process can be slowed down as a result of this. This can break the consistency of your marketing process, taking you off course from your marketing goals.
– It is possible to see the bigger picture
It is one of the issues with an in-house marketing department that they tend to repeat the same strategy over and over again. Since customer preferences and market trends change often, this strategy isn’t viable for a very long time.
Hiring an external marketing company can help you get a fresh perspective on your marketing strategy.
Since an outsourced marketing agency will have worked with companies across a variety of industries, they will have enough experience to be able to reinvent your existing marketing strategies.
Understanding your industry, competitors, services, and company culture will give them a better understanding of showcase your brand in a completely new light. Using this method, your marketing strategies will always be relevant!
– Ensures that you get the desired return on your investment
One of the main goals of marketing agencies who offer outsourced services is to generate leads for your business through their digital marketing services.
There is an outsourced marketing agency that works to not only provide you with the promised ROI, but they also provide you with accurate growth reports as they send you those quarterly.
Therefore, even if your in-house marketing team is unable to achieve the desired return on investment for the month, your outsourced marketing agency most likely will.
Would it be right for you to outsource your marketing to a third party?
The advantages of outsourcing
Are you still unsure about whether or not it is right for you to outsource your marketing services?
Please take a moment to look into the following 3 scenarios, and if you relate to any of them, outsourcing marketing could be your best option.
Hiring An In-House Marketing Team Is Costly For Your Business
A business cannot afford to hire an in-house marketing team from the very beginning. The hiring of a marketing manager can be a challenge if you have a startup or a small business as the average base salary alone for a marketing manager in the US is over $54,000 per year.
You will still be limited to the number of marketing executives you can hire even if you are able to afford a marketing manager. If you want to expand your business’ reach to a wider audience quickly, then having a really small marketing department is not going to help.
In order to avoid the high cost of hiring and maintaining an in-house marketing team, most of the new businesses choose to outsource their marketing.
Your current internal marketing strategy is not working
The reasons why a marketing strategy might fail can be attributed to a number of factors.
A poor marketing strategy is caused by a limited market perspective, a lack of familiarity with new trends in the industry, and outdated marketing tools.
If you have a marketing strategy that is failing, but you do not understand why, you might want to consider outsourcing.
Every business owner can get the expert marketing assistance they require to accelerate their marketing process and achieve their expected return on investment by outsourcing their marketing functions.
You Want To Shift Your Focus To Maximizing Growth
Businesses usually conduct a number of marketing experiments in order to find out what works.
The thing is, despite the fact that testing through trial and error can help you figure out what is right for you, it usually takes quite a lot of time, and usually requires a decent amount of investment.
As an alternative, if you work with an outsourced marketing agency, you will get data-driven marketing plans, strategies, and marketing materials right from the beginning.
By utilizing consistent marketing efforts, they help you instantly build a positive impression about your business online for maximum growth in the shortest amount of time.
Outsourcing Marketing Agencies: How To Choose The Right One
It can be tricky to hire the right marketing firm even though there are quite a few digital marketing agencies to choose from.
As a result, here are three tips to help you find a perfect outsourced marketing firm for your company:
Step 1: Know Your Marketing Needs
You must first consider your business’s needs to understand your marketing goals and the digital marketing services you require.
Consider the following questions:
- How would you describe your position on the market?
- Would you consider yourself a startup or a large company with at least 50 employees?
- Are you looking for a specific type of marketing?
- Are you targeting a specific group of people?
- Would you consider yourself a B2B or B2C company?
- In your opinion, what will be the main purpose of your marketing campaign? Will it be lead generation or awareness?
After you understand what you need for your business, you will have an easier time hiring the right outsourced marketing services.
Step 2: Create A Budget
Despite the fact that outsourcing your marketing services is generally a less expensive option, you still need to consider the peculiar circumstances of your business and your capital.
You might want to consider asking yourself the following questions:
Is there a marketing department in your company? And if yes, how much do you spend on them at present?
Do you require any additional marketing services? If so, what do you require?
What will be the total cost of digital marketing if you choose to hire the service?
Also, it is a good idea to compare pricing models of various professional services firms to figure out what the average price of your digital marketing services will be.
After crunching the numbers and observing your overall business situation, you will be able to set a reasonable budget for outsourcing marketing.
Step 3: Search For A Digital Marketing Agency That Is Right For You
Taking a look at the various marketing agencies that cater to outsourcing can be very interesting.
Look through the website of the outsourcing marketing agency to analyze their marketing expertise in order to filter out the right agency for you.
In order to understand if they have relevant experience in your industry or not, look at the industries they have worked in in the past. As a rule of thumb, it’s always a good idea to choose agencies that are more familiar with the industry you are working in.
It is also essential to get an overview of the technology they will use to manage your marketing strategy and analytics. If they are using the right tools to boost your marketing efforts, you will know if they are doing a good job.
Bringing it all together
A third-party marketing agency is often a better choice when it comes to efficiency, cost-savings, and ROI when compared to maintaining an in-house marketing team or hiring a freelancer for your marketing projects.
To determine whether outsourcing marketing is right for you, you can use the tips we discussed here. Then, if you believe it’s going to be a good fit for your company needs, you should check out the companies we highlighted to find the best outsourced partner for you.
The important thing to keep in mind is that outsourcing marketing can take your company’s outreach to the next level quickly and easily when done correctly.