Why Outsourcing Your Marketing Is A No-Brainer

In-House or freelance? That is the question. 

They say having a business is comparable to having a child. You conceive it, nurture it, help it grow and, let’s face it, try and keep a firm grip on every aspect of its existence for as long as you can. 

But at some point, inevitably, it must go out into the world and make its mark.

And what was once small enough to be handled by only the closest of individuals must be exposed to an ever-widening circle. 

It’s time to delegate.

It’s time to be practical.

It’s time to lean on the experts.

So, why and when does it make sense to outsource your brand marketing?

Your Growing Business Needs You

Nobody knows how your business works better than you – not even the best digital marketing agency.

You know every nut and bolt, you know the cost and processes of delivering your product or service to a potential consumer. You have your finances down pat. You could probably recite 6 months worth of accounts off the top of your head and these are elements that you must relay to your growing internal staff. It’s essential to keep the integral cogs of the business whirring. 

Often, CEOs and business owners try and take on the marketing function themselves, wildly underestimating the level of attention it requires. Hell, you love it - why wouldn’t the rest of the world, right? Wrong.

Perfecting your inbound marketing requires high-end skills such as the ability to tailor your brand story, and the capacity to create a razor-sharp digital content strategy. To you, the business would sparkle among the glitteriest of backdrops but out there, amid fierce competition and countless alternatives preying on your target audience, your brand easily fades into the background and won't be heard over the noise. 

Your brand needs to make a statement. 

Your brand needs to command attention. 

Enter your marketing experts. As I always say, people don’t buy products, they buy into them. So your messaging needs to be bang on point. Why wrestle with this when there are other plates you can and should be spinning?

It may seem economical to pivot your focus as the needs of the business alter but, unless it’s your area of expertise, then this division of labour is genuinely impractical and unjustifiably costly.

Consider the Cost

Seeking an appropriate in-house CMO and hiring a top-notch marketing team thereafter is expensive. It just is.

Given that marketing (unlike, say, sales) is an expense - it’s crucial to keep your overheads as low as possible.

Before you’ve even lured and secured your perfect CMO (with a 6 figure salary for a single member of staff), you need to think about the HR, recruitment, paid holiday and benefits and that’s all before they have even started building out their own team.

At the top level (far less so in more junior roles), marketers don’t come cheap. 

Why? 

Because getting your marketing strategy right is so crucial to the success of your business. 

And most of the very best marketers have been snapped up by bigger companies with more to spend and more appealing marketing budgets to work with. I’d be willing to bet that, in the initial stages, those companies built up their marketing arm by outsourcing. 

Oftentimes, freelance marketing consultants are enticed to become in-house staff members after cutting their teeth with a company and developing that perfect cocktail of knowledge, chemistry and passion for the business. 

Those are your unicorns - your tailor-made, tried and tested, risk-free hires.

And you’re far more likely to find them by keeping your options open.

Fresh Perspective

Having raised your business from its infancy, it’s all too easy to get tunnel vision and lose sight of what is going on in the landscape around you. 

Expert marketers will not only define your story and make noise about your business, they will position it on the grounds of a forensic analysis of all your competitors, locate your ideal customer, and work out how best to target them. 

The more varied a marketers portfolio, the more adept they are at taking an objective stance on your project. You don’t need people who are expert in your sector - you have all that knowledge already, you need people who are expert in their sector - marketing. It’s when the two come together that you get that magic elixir of skills required to apply the very finest finishing touches to your great idea. 

Bring in a fresh set of eyes and you will start to view your brand from angles you hadn’t previously considered. Potential problems may be highlighted too - but underneath that polished veneer, your business needs to be ironclad, ready to take on the most treacherous of crises - and that is what we do best. 

Time is of the Essence

When it comes to brand management, one of your core resources, alongside money and people, is time. And the thing about time is, it's finite. It's the old 'if only there were more hours in the day' adage. 

Outsourcing your marketing to an expert frees up time at every touchpoint. And your time is precious.

I cannot begin to tell you the number of my partners (or ‘clients’ for the more formal among you) who have wasted so much time (and therefore, money and resources) trying to fulfill the marketing functionality themselves. 

When I partner with an individual or brand, I consider it a duty to take on, not only the key deliverables, but to bring in support as and when needed to free up as much time as possible for every person to be doing what they are best at. So everyone is running at the full capacity of their skill set. That’s how you make time. Much like how you make money. 

I say as and when needed,  because unlike other departments, marketing fluctuates around a variety of need states. There will be peak times, say, launching a campaign or bringing a new product or service offering to market when it’s all hands on deck. 

This is when your marketers are at full force. 

You may require a graphic designer to deliver enough creative for a single campaign. 

Your outsourced marketing arm should have access to these capabilities for a one-off job. 

Why hire a full-time designer for a ‘seasonal’ gig?

It makes sense to give yourself the flexibility to amplify this section of your business at these times and scale back when things relax a bit. 

Having options is everything. A good freelance marketer will bend to your needs. 

Access to Tools and Resources

Professional freelance marketers, particularly in digital marketing, know the game inside out. 

There are the rules of the game and the tools of the game. Often the reason a competitor is nabbing your market share is as simple as them being better tooled up. Thanks to the wonders of digital marketing, we have access to behavioural analytics, psychographics, demographics, A/B testing and enough data to reduce your ad spend so that it targets your dream customer without wasting a penny on buying visibility to non-prospects. 

We can also view the marketing activity and strategies of your competition on a forensic level - see what’s working for them, what isn’t. Chances are they are doing it to you already. You don’t go into battle unarmed. Know thine enemy, as the saying goes. 

Problem is, there are hundreds of these service providers, all with their own USPs and all vying for your business. Not a week goes by in which I don’t listen to a pitch from a service provider offering up a free trial. Yes, it’s time-consuming, but it allows me to make educated recommendations for my partners or, indeed, just grant them access to my own tools should the circumstances make sense. 

But beyond digital tools, access to resources is a huge benefit when it comes to outsourcing. This remedies all the downside of recruitment, investment in people and time management and leverages that all-important flexibility in your marketing arm. 

As a voracious networker and an avid supporter of start ups, I’ve met and worked with top tier talent across all marketing touchpoints. These are the people I call upon when there is a gap to be filled. They’ve all been vetted, tried and tested and, unlike the digital tools, bring bags of personality and enthusiasm to the table. Along with those fresh bright eyes, the attention of which your business deserves. 

Thinking of outsourcing? Let’s Weigh Up Your Options.