When should you consider using outsourced marketing services?
We know it is more than an understatement to say we have recently been challenged by a world of uncertainty. A global pandemic plus the ‘Great resignation’, recession, and rising interest rates, and everyone is now struggling to do more with less. How is your team managing? Do you have enough internal talent and budget to support your marketing activities? Or are your in-house teams struggling to execute campaigns? Perhaps you are needing to use some of your more valuable resources time for day-to-day activities?
Use your resources
We feel a great marketing manager is like the conductor of an orchestra (bear with us here, we will explain). The conductor don’t necessarily play an instrument, but they excel at overseeing and leading a symphony. Experienced as having worked at the coal face and understand the effort and work that goes into executing the day-to-day activities. With great understanding of the business and marketing strategy. All these attributes make the conductor a valuable resource. One that needs to be utilised where it’s most effective.
This makes them an expensive resource to be used for writing and executing a digital or email marketing campaign for example. Time better spent funnelled into supporting the businesses objectives. So, how do you still run the activities you need? Without using resource which should be focused elsewhere?
Let it go
We know it can be difficult to let go of the day-to-day stuff. Many entrepreneurs, business owners and marketing managers often struggle to do this. Owners often feel that other people don’t understand the business or don’t have the drive to get things right as they would. However, it is not possible for everyone to do everything, and no-one should. But the problem is most businesses’ goal is growth. The success of this growth is dependent on the strategic players who are driving it forward. These individuals should be focused on scaling the business successfully and thinking strategically. Not sorting out invoice problems, writing email content or designing a banner. It is best for these activities to be executed by people who deal with each of these specialisms every day. So, it often makes sense to outsource these things to others.
Resource planning
We know for marketing to be effective. It needs to be inventive and engaging. But budgets, time constraints, resource and complacency can all make it easier for marketeers to fall back on familiar activities. There are a few options to consider. We are going to look at outsourced marketing services and how this can help solve some of the problems your team might be dealing with and relieve some of the operational pressures they face.
Build your orchestra
Outsourced marketing services enable you to build your orchestra up from a one-man band and form a digital marketing team, who have digital strategic thinking. But outsourcing your marketing activities is a big decision. It involves a financial commitment, time to brief and support the external team. It’s a working relationship with an outsourced marketing service you trust.
In-house vs outsourced
There are a couple of different options you could consider when looking at outsourcing your marketing. You can either fully outsource it or use a combination of both in-house and outsourced marketing services. There are outsourced marketing services available for every requirement you have. Whether it’s for your content, email, social media, events, campaign concept or even your marketing strategy. Make sure you are using a supplier who can add value to your business. You want to work with someone who can offer an outsiders view and bring you a new perspective, along with ideas and strategies. For example, if you are looking to run a new email marketing campaign, you need a specialist who understands it isn’t just about writing a couple of paragraphs, selecting some images, and sending it out. It requires a much broader range of knowledge and skills than that, such as:
- Copywriting specifically tailored to each recipient/sector/audience
- Calls to action that work
- Image creation that resonates
- HTML coding which escapes spam labelling
- Server management that avoids black-listing.
Skills analysis
And there isn’t one person in a team who can do all those things. You need multiple skill sets to deliver the above activity, plus it is expensive to have all those skills available in-house. Using outsourced marketing services for a monthly email marketing campaign will always be more successful because it means digital marketing specialists are taking care of the detail. Guided by the digital marketing strategy they’re being fed from the digital marketing manager.
In time you will be able to build a budget which reflects your marketing spend in terms of requirements. For example, you may wish to send one newsletter a month, and therefore it doesn’t make sense to hire individuals to create each aspect of this activity. So consider using an outsourced marketing service to create this once a month, only using budget when it’s needed. Then as your business grows you can re-evaluate whether you need these resources in house.
Free up your time
Outsourced marketing services give you time to assess your activities and strategy when it gets a bit quieter. But there are more benefits than just that. Very few businesses are completely flat out every day. There are busy periods and quieter times. If you have a team of outsourced marketing specialists, they can continue with their planning regardless of these peaks and troughs.
Do what you do best
Conductors are of most use when they are doing what they do best…conducting. As a business owner or marketing manager, you know your time is best spent focused on growing the business. Without you conducting and setting the pace the company will soon stagnate. To help you achieve this you need your most valuable resource, time. By allocating tasks to specialists and giving yourself time to do that thinking and planning, you will find that using an outsourced marketing service is time and money well spent.
Choose a marketing agency to run your outsourced marketing
Based in Warwickshire, UK, virtualROI is a digital agency that specialises in helping business-to-business clients solve their marketing challenges. VirtualROI has been helping clients deliver marketing campaigns since 2009, working with companies across Europe, The Middle East and Africa.
For more information on how we can help you with all aspects of digital marketing, speak to our team today.