Outsourcing Marketing: The Pros and Cons

Every dollar in a marketing budget is valuable, and the weight of responsibility to use those resources wisely can be heavy. Outsourcing all or parts of your marketing can be a significant investment. Yet the benefits are many. Outsourcing frees leaders to direct growth at a higher level, while tapping into the talents of others who can make your marketing better. 

The Many Faces of Outsourced Marketing

You can outsource marketing in the same way you outsource accounting, IT management, facilities maintenance, customer service, and other areas of your business.

Outsourcing can look different depending on your internal needs and capabilities. Businesses might hire an outside marketing firm for one-off technical projects, like website development, and handle the rest of their marketing in-house, while other businesses may turn to an outside professional marketing agency to deliver comprehensive marketing solutions.

Organizations choose to outsource their marketing for various reasons, including:

1. They are used to outsourcing other areas of their business and understand the value of turning to partnerships with other professionals, which can free up time and resources internally while creating higher quality material
2. Their current marketing team suffers from a gap in skills. Each marketing team needs six key skills on their team: writer, designer, developer, strategist, analyst, and project manager. Not every team can fill all of those roles in-house, so they hire an outside agency to close the gaps
3. Their leadership is eager to work with a highly regarded marketing agency that will bring creative ideas, and a fresh perspective.
4. Their existing marketing team outsources the tedious and repetitive tasks (managing ad campaigns or pushing out email campaigns) to another agency so they can focus on higher level creative and strategy
5. The in-house team seeks support from an outside agency to assist with strategy development, advanced technological support, or fresh ideas so they can continue implementation and monitoring
6. Leadership is tired of spending money on marketing without being able to measure results, so they partner with an outside agency who is able to generate reports and communicate their progress on your agreed upon goals

Benefits to Outsourcing Your Marketing

Like any endeavor, there are rewards and risks you have to weigh before jumping in. If you’re thinking about outsourcing your marketing efforts, these are several benefits to that decision:

• You don’t need to make marketing your primary business. You don’t have to spend all of your time staying up on evolving trends and technology, implementing solutions across various platforms, analyzing data, or hiring a team of professionals who take up valuable overhead staying apprised to evolving marketing strategies and trends. Content marketing requires both technical and creative expertise that didn’t used to be required in order to do business. Today, marketers need to understand search engine optimization, website analytics, marketing automation, technical and creative writing, graphic design, and more in order to be successful.

• Outsourced marketing saves time. Instead of the thought leader of your business spending hours thinking, writing, and editing content, they can dedicate an hour or so for an interview. That one conversation can generate enough content to create a whole marketing campaign… and most likely, the writing will be better and more efficient, too.

• Outsourced marketing is less expensive. If you were trying to hire an internal team of marketing professionals, the costs to manage and employ that whole group of specialists would be substantial. Instead, you can reach out to your marketing agency for the content you need, and only pay for the services you need when you need them.

• Results-driven accountability. When you work with a marketing agency, the results are going to be evident in the data, so you are able to hold your agency accountable for your investment. 

Hazards to Outsourcing Your Marketing

There are potential hazards to any partnership. Here are several to keep in mind as you consider this shift:

• Less immediate access to marketing professionals. Your team of marketers won’t be sitting right down the hall, able to be beckoned in an instant. While our team is responsive and available for clients, it may take a little time to adapt to the rhythms of a marketing agency. We’re here to help ease this transition with clear and upfront communication.
  

• In-house team morale issues. If you’re hiring an agency to complement the work of your in-house marketing team, they might feel threatened by these “outsiders” on their turf. Because our agency values team dynamics, we work hard to build trust and rapport with your entire marketing team. We augment your team and leave room for their strengths to shine.
  

• Cost concerns. Marketing agency rates can sometimes give organizations sticker shock. However, when factoring in the costs of recruiting, onboarding, compensating, and managing a larger in-house team, as well as the number of different skill sets needed to staff that team, outsourcing can be a more cost-effective solution. 

How the Outsourced Marketing Team Works

Marketing agencies vary in their approach to providing services, but here’s how we do it at Spire. 

You’ll work closely with an Account Manager who helps you translate your needs into solutions, and a Marketing Manager who serves as both your project manager and primary point of contact throughout the course of your relationship with our team. Behind the scenes, a whole host of marketing professionals are at work, including:

• Strategists help to formulate a plan to achieve your evolving goals. 
• Writers create content that is clear, concise, and effective.
• Designers ensure your marketing looks great, converts well, and is on-brand.
• Developers make the technical stuff in your marketing works as it should. 
• Analysts monitor campaign performance and recommend improvements. 

We meet at least monthly with our clients to report on work in progress, discuss campaign performance, and recommend any necessary changes. Assess your marketing team and see if there are any gaps missing.

How to Decide Whether to Outsource Your Marketing

The best way to determine if outsourcing your marketing is the right choice for you is to assess your internal business processes to determine if your company can—and should—accommodate your needs. If it feels awkward or cost-prohibitive to build out these services in-house long-term, or if the needs you have are not a central element to your business, then it might be worth considering outsourcing. 

If it’s a natural addition to your existing business model and you aren’t worried about where to find talent or maintaining expertise in that area, then keeping that work in-house might be an effective option. 

Ultimately, choosing to outsource your marketing should be about investing in the growth of your company. If it saves you time, money, energy, and resources and still meets your goals for marketing your business, then it’s a worthwhile investment.

If you’re ready to explore how a partnership with Spire could benefit your organization, connect with one of our account managers today. We provide comprehensive digital marketing solutions and websites that help your company grow.