If you want to scale up your business, attract more customers, get more leads and make more money, then you need to invest in marketing. That much is obvious.
But should you outsource your marketing efforts? Or hire someone internally?
A valid question. And one most companies have.
For some companies, particularly startups on a tight budget, it’s a harder question to answer.
In this blog post, I’ll outline six reasons why you should consider outsourcing your marketing and then consider the pitfalls of hiring someone internally.
1. You Can’t Do Everything
A small business is often a labour of love. You founded the business, watched it grow and over the years have had to wear many hats. From being the salesman, marketer, to the accountant.
But no one person can do everything. Trying to do everything yourself can severely impact your physical and mental well-being.
Studies have found that people who worked long hours were 40% more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than those who worked standard hours.
Business is a game of replacement and delegation.
“Delegation isn’t about giving away your weaknesses. It’s about being a good leader and knowing when to let go.”
If you think you’re not the best at marketing, hire an agency that is. That way, you can focus on what you’re good at instead of getting caught up in an endless struggle.
2. Expert Knowledge
The only constant in digital marketing is change.
Search evolves at such a tremendous pace that being a part-time marketer doesn’t work. You need to be continually researching, testing and staying abreast of best practices.
A professional marketer or agency will have more collective knowledge than any one owner/manager and have access to in-house expertise on the finer details.
3. Save Time and Money
Most companies underestimate the true cost of recruitment by 90 – 95% and consider only the basic salary they’d have to pay when hiring someone. Forgetting the costs involved in training, payroll taxes, pensions, employee benefits and productivity losses.
The true cost of recruitment is something else altogether.
Getting someone to work for you in-house will probably cost the same as hiring an agency, but here’s the catch – in case of the latter, you are not bound by stringent contract terms or facing hidden costs.
With a freelancer or agency, you can scale up and down as necessary.
Not to mention, save time and money by not having to go through the process of onboarding and developing employee skills.
An agency comes ready.
Controlling expenditure is often what differentiates between success and failure for a business, so play your cards carefully.
4. Your Staff are Exhausted
Small firms with only a handful of employees often have to deal with overworked and exhausted staff. The problem exacerbates when we’re talking marketing because it has to be done regularly.
Let’s say you have around 120 hours of marketing work that needs to be done each month and only a few employees to handle the tasks.
What do you think is going to happen? Corners will be cut and/or employees are going to experience burnout.
Getting some outside help can significantly reduce the workload and yield better results.
5. Your Company is not Growing Fast Enough
Scaling a business is not easy.
Digital marketing is the present and the future. Every business needs a strong online presence. And you need one that works.
Digital marketing is completely transparent and accountable. Your success and growth are measured in terms of ROI, you’ll be able to get a real insight into how much money you’ll make on every outsourced marketing expenditure.
Hiring an agency that is both accountable and transparent makes good business sense.
6. When You’re Failing to Complete Tasks Regularly
Work is a busy place. More often than not, multiple tasks need attention at the same time.
In such a scenario, it’s only reasonable to expect that some work would either slip, remain incomplete, or be ignored for the time being.
If you often find yourself dealing with situations where the most critical work gets left behind, it’s time to get help.
Why is in-house marketing not always the best idea?
While having one marketing person in-house is better than not having anyone at all, there are certain pitfalls you should keep in mind:
1. Part-Time Work = Part-Time Results
It’s tempting to give an existing employee a marketing role as an add on to another job. However, there’s no way a part-time marketer can give your business the attention it needs. Marketing is a full-time job.
Part-time marketing gives part-time results.
2. A Blinkered View
Marketing is incredibly fast-paced and continually changing. Being an in-house marketer often gives you a blinkered view of marketing. You’re focused on your site and your niche.
An agency has access to many accounts across many different industries. You can test, bounce ideas off one another and get a more holistic view of marketing as a whole.
3. Hiring Interns
Hiring and nurturing new talent is one of the best things you can do for them and your business. But, managing interns may prove to be tougher than you’d expect. That’s because you or someone else in a position of power has to do the… managing. And in business, time equals money.
Marketing is too important to delegate to people with limited experience.
4. Your Digital Presence Needs to be the Best There is
In today’s’ digital marketplace, there is no scope for second best.
You need to have a professional presence across all channels. And no amount of enthusiasm can make up for hard-earned experience.
You need a fast, well built and carefully optimised website. Technically it needs to be perfect. That takes experience and knowledge.
Take copywriting for example. Much of what we do involves writing. Be it blog posts, sales pages, ad copy, case studies, emails, etc.
It’s easy to think that you or your colleagues can write good copy. But there’s so much more to writing good marketing copy than meets the eye. Themes and keywords need to be researched, buyer personas developed and intent assessed, even then not everyone can write copy that engages.
If a copywriter is someone you want to bring into your team but cannot afford at the moment, hiring an agency will solve the problem. Marketing agencies usually have professional copywriters handling all the writing tasks.
Hiring Marketing Agencies in 2019
Companies that grow quickly invest in marketing, this investment has been increasing every year and shows no signs of slowing down.
In 2018, the average firm allocated 42% of their marketing budget to online and this rate is expected to grow to 45% by 2020.
For SMBs there’s never been a better time to invest in digital. Search has changed dramatically over the last few years. Its become far more personal and niche specific. With semantic search creating parity between small and big businesses.
Isn’t it time you spoke with an agency?
