Outsourced marketing gives businesses without an in-house marketing team access to a range of professional advertising skills and strategies, without the expense of employing a new team member.
The Cost of Hiring an In-House Marketing Professional
The costs associated with an additional employee may include an hourly wage or annual salary, benefits, employment taxes, and recruitment fees. Once a new team member comes on board, the company must provide the space, training, and equipment to support them in their new position.
In order to take advantage of the diverse skills an outsourced marketing team brings to the table, a company needs to hire at least three or four marketing professionals. This is a prohibitive expense for many newer or smaller businesses.
How an Outsourced Marketing Team Helps
Businesses that outsource their marketing needs tap into a wealth of specialized skills and strategies without footing the bill for recruiting, hiring, and housing these talented professionals.
Outsourcing marketing is often less expensive than hiring a single new employee and allows the company use of professional writers, videographers, project managers, graphic designers, web programmers and more.
What an Outsourced Marketing Team Brings to the Table
Having a stable of marketing professionals at the ready is a huge advantage for any business. The team may specialize in traditional marketing, online marketing, or both. See the types of marketing projects made possible with outsourcing.
Traditional marketing: press releases, direct mail campaigns, newsletters, consumer research.
Online marketing: search engine optimization, internet ad campaign management, top quality content creation, web design and maintenance.
Hiring marketing professionals to perform all of these tasks in-house is exorbitantly expensive and out of the reach of many businesses. Outsourcing these needs gives companies an opportunity to increase exposure using the advanced marketing techniques used by the largest and most successful companies, at a fraction of the cost.
When to Outsource to a Marketing Team
Outsource marketing projects or entire campaigns to increase customer loyalty, reach a new customer base, improve operations, and boost sales.
Businesses can use the services of an outsourced marketing team as needed, or on an ongoing basis. This flexibility allows the company to budget accurately for effective advertising, without paying a full-time in-house marketing professional when part-time or occasional is more appropriate.
Avoid Marketing Blunders by Outsourcing to Professionals
One mistake companies make is entrusting an important advertising or marketing duty to an unqualified staff member simply because no one else in-house is able to do it. For example, a small business might ask one of their web programmers to start an online advertising campaign. They figure they can save money and give the programmer something to do, since the website seems to be performing fine and he is not busy right now.
Unfortunately, this is beyond that staff member’s expertise. He tries his best, but is not skilled in the latest social media marketing strategies and has been set up to fail at this task. Because online presence is so critical to the company’s success, they have made a critical error in judgment.
Worse, the programmer had good intentions but had no experience in measuring the success of pay-per-click ad campaigns. He continued to spend the marketing budget long after it became clear that this was not a good strategy for this type of product. The company threw money away on an ineffective, poorly managed campaign.
This company could have saved time by launching a professional online marketing campaign to improve their business reputation and drive sales. Outsourcing to a professional marketing team would have cost less than what they lost in the online advertising disaster.
Tips for Success in an Outsourced Marketing Relationship
Look for a marketing team with an open communication style and clear vision. Clearly convey the company’s sales goals and share successes or failures in past marketing campaigns.
Set clear expectations and perform any tasks required by the outsourced marketing team to ensure the success of this new, professional campaign. Save time and cut in-house costs by taking advantage of the broad skill set and flexibility of an outsourced marketing solution.
