Have you thought of Outsourcing Digital Marketing?
And what is the cost of outsourcing marketing?
Learn the 11 crazy benefits of outsourcing digital marketing.
Here’s a fun fact: As of 2021, people spent around 415 minutes per day online. Compare that to the 34 minutes per day that people spend reading!
With this statistic, is it any wonder that digital marketing is now seen as one of the best growth strategies for companies?
From simply posting new updates on social media channels to carrying out large-scale drip marketing campaigns, digital marketing has grown into a specialized field that requires continuous effort.
It takes into account not only sales and conversions but close monitoring of the brand presence and its overall sentiment among the public. It has evolved from updating and selling to the public – to selling to the right public at the right time.
All this means – that more and more companies are relying on professionals to get things done. That is – outsourcing marketing to social media managers. Today, around 50% of small businesses outsource their digital marketing!
All that aside, what’s the biggest benefit of outsourcing marketing services?
The biggest benefit of outsourcing services to a digital marketing agency is the ability to free up your team and focus more on core tasks! And on the whole, this can make your entire group way more efficient and effective.
But don’t believe us yet, let us discuss this a bit.
Why do companies outsource services?
As opposed to paper media that catered to the audience as a singular unit, digital marketing is much more personalized and targeted. Digital marketers constantly look at various analytics and trends to determine what would resonate best with an audience.
Startups may often assign an individual to cater to their social media channels. And while this can be great for the early days, as a company grows, so does its online presence. And a growing presence needs to be constantly monitored and assessed. This requires the intervention of a professional – and often a team with the best-in-class digital marketing tools.
In-house vs Outsourced marketing
Both positions have their pros and cons. So, first, let’s look at what these 2 terms mean.
- In-House marketing refers to a marketing team that is a part of the company itself. There are several benefits to this such as:
- Being able to hire a team of your choice
- Having full ownership of content
- Being highly involved in every marketing decision
However, keeping a fully employed staff while paying for a software license may be very tedious for smaller businesses.
- Outsourced marketing on the other hand refers to outsourcing marketing to a full-fledged marketing agency. An individual or a team from the agency will be assigned to take care of your company’s marketing needs. Here, one benefits from:
- Their expertise in the matter
- Their arsenal of best marketing tools to sift through data
- Huge savings on cost as opposed to employing full-time staff
Should I Outsource Marketing Services?
Despite the growing complexity and specialization within the field, companies may often hesitate before outsourcing marketing. One fear is that it can create security and management difficulties.
However, there are many advantages of outsourcing marketing. And when handled appropriately, marketing services work with the company to bring out their best version online!
Outsourcing marketing is not for everyone. In fact, some big brands like Zara and Krispy Kreme have minimal engagement in marketing. But, it could benefit you if:
How much does outsourcing cost?
Getting down to the figures, you may ask: is it actually more pocket-friendly? In a way, that depends on what you want.
While outsourcing, you will receive access to a much larger and varied talent pool at the same cost at which you might be able to hire only a couple of experts in-house.
Agencies offer full-service packages or segmented packages. Segmented packages only offer some services such as eCommerce, strategizing, content creation, etc.
Here, you can pick and choose based on your in-house talent and also enjoy the final call on every decision!
For an in-house team, you will also need to invest in induction, training, annual salary, and benefits.
On average, a social media manager may make anywhere from 6 to 9 LPA in a year. And that’s the amount paid to only 1 person!
Hiring an agency on the other hand would cost anywhere from 4 to 12 LPA per year for a combo package. In the end, outsourcing marketing is certainly easy on one’s pocket!
11 Crazy Benefits of Outsourcing Digital Marketing
Cost aside, outsourcing marketing services can help you in many other aspects. In the age of staying relevant, having a focused team that constantly offers new perspectives is paramount. Have a look at the many ways outsourcing marketing can benefit your business:
1. A Team of Experts at your disposal
Do you know the corporate buzzword of 2021? It was the word “journey”. While you might now know this, a Marketing team certainly will. And they will know how to best utilize it in a campaign to gain followers! This is the type of intimate understanding that experts can bring to the table.
2. Cost-Effectiveness in Long Run
As we discussed above, outsourcing marketing services is certainly cheaper than running a full-time team of your own, and scaling it with your growth. It also avoids the cost incurred in offering company benefits to new employees.
3. Exposure to the latest trends & resources
Knowing the top-performing trends is one of the core jobs of the marketing teams. In fact, knowing is half the work! Once you know them, you can utilize them.
Marketing teams also remain up to date with various tools and resources that can help track consumer engagement and conversion rates.
4. Avoid reliance on a single member of staff
Agencies will ensure that you always have someone on standby to discuss your marketing needs. This is much better than a single in-house member who the team relies on at all times.
5. Fresh and New Perspective
Marketing teams hire from a mixed batch of old and new-age recruits. This ensures they always have a fresh perspective on every issue. If something is too ‘woke’ for you, you can rest assured that someone in the digital marketing team knows all about it.
6. Save time & money on hiring
Did you know that companies spend around 1 to 5% on training new staff? By outsourcing marketing services, you save hiring time, compensation, as well as their training fees!
7. More time to Focus on your business
Removal of the above also means that your management team can now focus on actual company work, as opposed to sifting through candidate resumes.
8. Project Growth & Scalability
Growing team? Just sign up for a bigger package. Outsourcing services means you have got a larger and larger team at your disposal anytime without going through the hassle of hiring and training recruits.
9. Data-driven results
There are many marketing methods like A/B Testing that can help you get accurate data as to how a campaign might be perceived. This gives us solid data to take forward, without huge risk-taking.
10. Stay relevant & consistent
The 24 hours news cycle that we live in makes everything redundant in a matter of days. To keep your company relevant, digital marketers constantly look up new trends. They also forecast which future trends might catch on!
11. Systematic & Organized reporting
The best part is – you will always receive a full, organized report of your strategies and their results. This can help you make informed decisions.
Moreover, at any stage, you can choose to opt-out or add more types of services to your package!
Downsides of outsourcing digital marketing
All this aside, let’s not wax poetic about outsourcing! Surely, there are some downsides. so, let’s have a look at those.
1) Lose control over your brand image
A common fear is that one may not be able to curate their image. In fact, no one knows your business like you! However, agencies rely on a constant stream of communication.
As long as you make it clear that you should be involved in all top-level discussions – you will be the boss of what goes online!
2) Risk of inconsistencies
As you change agencies, there arises a risk of inconsistencies due to different ideas and tools used. However, this can be managed by keeping detailed reports from your previous agency to ensure a smooth handoff.
Moreover, agencies may charge a small commission on successful campaigns. So, it is always in their best interest to get amazing results!
3) Limited Availability
Agencies work on multiple projects. Hence, the time devoted to you alone will be less than a fully-employed team. But this need not be a dealbreaker.
Efficient management can ensure that you get the best out of the time allotted to you. Moreover, in case of emergencies, agencies always offer top priority to the concerned party.
What tasks should you outsource?
There are many resource-intensive tasks that a business can choose to outsource. This includes IT services, account management, customer services, and more.
Within the realm of digital marketing, some of the tasks you can outsource are:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to increase its traffic and overall position in search engine results.
SEO consists of many tiny tips and tricks that can help boost your search engine performance. Monitoring SEO would require investment in tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.
Moreover, it can further be broken down into keyword analysis, backlink tracking, website structure, and more. Considering its complexity, SEO is one of the best things to outsource to a professional.
Web design & development
Unless you have a developer on the team, who is also a designer and UX expert – creating and maintaining a website is best left to the professionals!
A good website has the power to attract customers. A smooth website has the power to retain customers! Teams dedicated to this will find out your target audience, study their motivations and interests – and create a curated website.
Content marketing
One of the best ways to remain relevant on the web – is to churn out content continuously. So, many businesses have branched out into offering podcasts, videos, blog posts, social media shorts, and more.
Content marketing refers to the efficient production and engagement around these. Outsourcing content marketing means you do not have to worry about any of these.
But you still get to get the data analytics and figure out what your audience likes and dislikes!
Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to continuously remind and update customers about new campaigns, sales, and services. But, remember those newsletters that go straight into your spam box?
Well, that’s where you could end up without utilizing proper email marketing.
Email marketing teams work on creating drip campaigns, newsletters, and subscription-based content. Furthermore, they have access to various hosts and servers that allow these emails to be ‘whitelisted’ and not end up in someone’s spam folder.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media marketing is an umbrella term used to refer to managing content on social media. These teams keep an eye out for the latest trends and capitalize on them!
Your SMM team would be responsible for tracking the performance of posts across multiple channels and notifying you of what resonates best with your audience.
Pretty much all the segments of digital marketing work in tandem with one another. Hence, outsourcing marketing services to an agency that manages all the above is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.
FAQs
Still, worried if outsourcing sales and marketing is right for you? Delve into these FAQs to get those nitty-gritty questions answered.
Q1. Why would many firms decide to outsource their digital marketing to an agency?
Outsourcing is driven by many factors, though cost often takes top priority.
In Deloitte’s 2020 outsourcing survey report, we see that companies also outsource for a multitude of other reasons.
Digital Marketing, unlike Accounting and Customer Service, requires many skills. An ideal marketing team would consist of data scientists, SEO strategists, visual designers, PR experts, tech experts, and social media managers.
Thus, outsourcing digital marketing services is a great long-term investment for eventual growth.
Q2. What is digital outsourcing?
Digital outsourcing is a form of outsourcing services that relies on digital products and services. Outsourcing digital marketing is a form of digital outsourcing as this does not rely on any physical resources.
Q3. Do large companies outsource marketing?
You might think outsourcing is something only small businesses do. However, this is not so! As companies grow and have a larger online presence, it is difficult to promote worldwide from a few offices.
Campaigns around the world are targeted differently. And who better knows an area than a digital marketing agency situated there?
Big brands like Nike, Adidas, and Fujifilm are known to outsource their marketing. This allows them to create more customized and location-specific campaigns.
A common strategy among big corporations is to outsource to countries or areas where labor is cheaper. Some larger corporations like Microsoft and HubSpot also outsource their sales. Some like Whatsapp outsource their staffing.
Q4. What are examples of outsourcing?
A great example of outsourcing is the e-commerce company – Alibaba. Alibaba is a company based in China. They manufacture their items in China where labor costs are quite low.
However, to expand in the West and the Middle East, they outsourced web development to the US.
Thus, they could keep resource costs low, while availing US talent for expanding to an area they were unfamiliar with.
Q5. Why is outsourcing marketing the right choice to grow your business?
Outsourcing marketing services is a tried-and-tested method to save your team’s time and allow them to focus on more important tasks. Fears of a lack of control over the brand’s image are baseless.
All decisions are made in tandem, and company representatives have the full right to veto a campaign.
An entire load of determining the best strategy lies on the external agency. Your top-level management can then choose to curate the best strategies from the offered platter!
Final Words
In the end, outsourcing is a highly effective way of channeling growth while removing distractions. Don’t believe us. Believe some of the top companies that also chose to do this! From having an expert at your disposal to being able to see results in action, outsourcing is now a norm that’s here to stay.
