Should I outsource marketing or not
This is one of the most important questions that a business owner can ask. But what’s the answer to this important question? Is it a simple yes or no?

Of course not!

Nothing about marketing is black or white. There is a significant portion of gray, which means that the answer to this question is specific to your company and business. What works for one may not work for the other. Depending on your business industry, your products and the objectives and growth targets that you have for your business, you can decide whether you should be outsourcing your marketing responsibilities or keeping it in-house.

Why you should outsource the marketing function of your business?

  • You probably know that by outsourcing your marketing functions, you will be able to focus your time, energy and resources on the more important functions, such as building different strategies for the growth of your business or developing a new product.
  • You will be able to save big by outsourcing as compared to hiring the staff to do the same for you
  • You will be able to make use of out-of-the-box ideas of professionals and experts that have years of experience to back their tactics

Now that we have covered why you should be outsourcing marketing, let’s proceed to when you should outsource marketing:

Yes, you should outsource marketing when:

 

Scenario # 1: You want to move into digital marketing

 

So you are finally ready to leave traditional marketing. About time, I would say. Because as everyone is saying, traditional marketing really, and officially, is dead. Now people don’t respond when you trying shoving your product in their faces. They will look for you themselves when they are ready to buy your product. How? The answer is digital marketing.

Now when you suddenly go digital from traditional marketing, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. Your marketing team for instance won’t know what to do because they don’t do digital. You will either need to hire more people who know digital marketing, or outsource the function. Why risk it with people who don’t know what they are doing when you can hire experts who know exactly what they are doing?

 

Scenario # 2: You have a high volume of leads coming in

 

When you have a high volume of leads coming in, and are having difficulty collecting quality contact information, then it is a wise choice to outsource this function. Moreover, you wouldn’t have enough time to manually qualify all those leads.

 

Scenario # 3: You are not getting the expected results

 

When you are not getting the expected results from your in-house marketing department, then it’s time that you outsourced your marketing to an external agency. You know that your marketing team is working hard enough and putting in everything that they have to get the campaign going – but it isn’t just working. You can’t figure out what’s the problem and the more time you spend on working it out, the more time is lost that could have been spent in generating more leads and acquiring more customers.

But you find this out only when you compare your expected results with the actual. Thus, it is really necessary to monitor your marketing efforts and whether they are actually working. If you know for a fact that it’s been quite some time since an effective marketing campaign was launched by your team, then you should escape those failed campaigns by hiring a reputable marketing agency.

 

Scenario # 4: You have an overworked marketing department

 

You probably know it, but just for the sake of it, there is no single aspect in marketing; PPC, lead generation, SEO, social media, web design, email marketing, content creation and SEO are only some of the aspects of marketing. But do you have enough people on your marketing team to do each one of the above tasks without making a single mistake, and on time? Do you have a department or a single person carrying out these tasks, or is it one person only who is doing as much as he possibly can?

A web developer is not a content writer, but many businesses make the mistake of expecting this much from a single marketing employee. In the hope of saving some resources, they jeopardize the marketing of their business. It is a known fact that marketing is an investment, rather than an expense, so you should just take the leap and outsource this very important function of your business.

 

Scenario # 5: You don’t have enough resources to support a marketing department

 

As mentioned in scenario # 4, marketing spans multiple roles and start-ups and small businesses can rarely afford to have a marketing department that can fully handle the work load of a full-fledged running business. And if there isn’t much work to be done, then it makes no sense to hire staff for this function.

Another important thing to consider is PPC campaigns. They aren’t as simple that you can use them when you wish to generate leads and let it go when you don’t. Proper campaign management for PPC requires consistent monitoring, or all your money will just go down the drain. By outsourcing the marketing of your business, you can rest at ease that your business’s marketing is expertly taken care of, while you can focus on growing and expanding your business.

 

Scenario # 6: You require a high volume of good content

 

If you are a big organization and require a high volume of good content on a regular basis, then it is quite favorable to outsource the content writing division to a marketing agency. After all, how many content writers are you going to hire?

Why you shouldn’t outsource marketing?

There are some benefits to keeping marketing in-house:

  • You have a high level of control
  • You have full time marketing employees that only work for you, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day
  • Your marketing will be deeply aligned with the culture of your company

But at times the shortcomings of in-house marketing outweigh the above benefits way too much.

No, you shouldn’t outsource marketing when:

If you don’t have the scenarios mentioned in the first section, then you probably need to keep your marketing department. Here are some scenarios when it is better to keep the marketing function in-house:

 

Scenario # 1: Your marketing team is doing a kick-ass job

 

When you are getting pretty good results from your marketing campaigns; you are increasing your customer base, generating more leads, closing more deals and your business is experiencing explosive growth. If this aptly describes your company, hurray! You don’t have to outsource the marketing of your business.

 

Scenario # 2: You have enough human resources with related expertise

 

If you have a diverse team that can handle every aspect of digital marketing, then there is no need to outsource this function.

Just to be clear, I am talking about everything; PPC, lead generation, SEO, social media, web design, email marketing, content creation and SEO. If you have got everything covered well and your employees aren’t overworked, then your in-house marketing team is doing a pretty good job!

 

Scenario # 3: You know all the ins and outs of marketing

 

Does your marketing team live and breathe marketing? Are they keeping pace with everything related to the world of digital marketing?

The digital world is constantly evolving and at times it can be difficult to keep pace with the greatest of technologies being invented and the smartest of techniques to stay on the top. But if your marketing department has people who are so into marketing that they even do it in their free time, then you are all set. You don’t need to outsource marketing.

But let’s face it, not many businesses will be able to say that the above three scenarios are true for their company. But if they do, congratulations! You really have an awesome marketing team!

But for those who don’t, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Instead of training your own employees for marketing your business, invest a portion of your revenue and opt for outsourcing marketing. If you are not that sure, why not keep your marketing team and outsource a campaign just on trial basis? You will realize that outsourcing isn’t that bad.

Bottom line – there is no correct answer to whether you should outsource marketing or not. You need to take into account the nature of your company, the products, goals and employees to answer this question for yourself. You need to really know your business in order to get the right answer.

References:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2014/04/23/leave-it-to-the-experts-should-you-outsource-your-marketing/#5c2a344519ea
http://webrunnermedia.com/weighing-the-pros-and-cons-of-in-house-marketing-versus-outsourcing/
http://uhurunetwork.com/outsource-marketing/
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33825/When-You-Should-and-Shouldn-t-Outsource-Your-Marketing.aspx#sm.0000ykpv9v13peec4u1jkqxt278fb

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