Outsourcing vs. in-house marketing: Which solution is best for you?
By this point in the year, your 2023 marketing strategy is well underway. You’re either on track to meet your targets [congratulations], or you’ve realised that somewhere along the line, something hasn’t worked for your business.
Maybe your Instagram posts aren’t getting the engagement you’d like to see, or your Facebook ads aren’t converting and your newsletter open rate has gradually gone stale. Perhaps you’ve lost the login to your Google My Business account or you can’t even find your website on the first [or second] page of results when you search for your services.
So, it appears that your marketing activities may not be meeting the mark and you might be considering a new marketing solution. There are two main options. Either you keep your marketing activities in-house and hire new talent and take some digital marketing training to advance your skills. Or, you outsource your marketing activities to an agency that already contains all of the specialist skills and industry knowledge to relieve your marketing migraine.
These are two very different solutions, and to some degree, both can work for a business. However, in order to excel in a competitive market, you need a solution that works best for the unique requirements of your business. It can be tricky to understand exactly how both can help or perhaps even hinder your marketing performance, but we’re here to help.
If you’re looking to understand which is the better solution for your business, read on for your complete guide to the pros and cons of outsourced and in-house marketing.
Understanding the difference between in-house and outsourced marketing
In-house marketing means that you have an internal marketing team that manages your activities. This is usually a small team led by a head of marketing, or a single marketing manager leading all of your efforts if your requirements are less demanding. Even with an in-house marketing team, you can still outsource certain services, like SEO and website development, when additional specialist knowledge and skills are required.
Outsourced marketing involves using an external agency to manage your marketing activities. They’ll either take the reins on your entire strategy or simply assist with a few specialist areas, such as managing your social media ads or pay-per-click campaigns.
When is it best to outsource your marketing?
Typically, outsourced marketing can be more cost-effective when you only pay for individual services rather than employing a full-time team member or an entire team. Ideal for businesses where the marketing requirements are lighter, outsourcing individual services can help to save unnecessary costs of employing a full-time team member. So, if you’re a smaller business and budget is a key consideration, outsourced marketing really works in your favour.
The benefits of in-house marketing…
It embeds marketing in your culture
If you have an internal marketing team, they’re able to represent the best interests of your company from a marketing perspective. This involves reporting back on which posts your audience engages most with and which demographics make up your target audience.
It’s an investment in your brand
By cultivating an in-house team, you have access to marketers whose role is to execute your marketing strategy in line with your overall business plan. Think of them as your brand guardians, making sure you look [and sound] your best.
Quick turnaround
By operating your communications and activities internally, your business can produce marketing work as and when it’s needed, as your staff are on-call throughout the working day. So, if your business attends events and likes to post reactively, this process is slightly simpler.
… and the drawbacks
Limited perspective
By embedding themselves in your business, in-house marketers can also lose the objectiveness that allows them to identify any issues and obstacles. Without this perspective of what works beyond your current activities, it’s hard to think outside the box and move your brand forward.
It can be expensive
Having a strong internal team in place is central to the success of your in-house marketing activities. Hiring the right team can be a lengthy and costly process, so be prepared to wait longer to see a return on this investment in your leads generated and conversions.
Lack of varied expertise
Perhaps the biggest appeal of opting for a marketing agency is the variety of expertise across all areas of marketing, from web development to graphic design. When you hire an in-house team or marketing lead, they tend to oversee all of the digital functions within your marketing strategy. But no matter how experienced they are, they won't be an expert in all of these key areas and will be unable to match the performance of an agency’s services.
The benefits of outsourced marketing…
Leverage industry links
The nature of marketing networking means that agencies have several vendors and professionals that they connect with, giving you a greater variety of services and products.
Access to diverse perspectives
With specialists in search engine performance, design, copywriting and strategy, an agency can provide many different approaches to strengthening your marketing strategy. These approaches are informed by specialist knowledge and varied experience, which opens up a lot of potential for your business.
Accountability [and results]
When you outsource your marketing activities to an agency, you’re paying them to deliver on a number of performance indicators. It’s their job to help you reach your goals more efficiently and to exceed them, with regular reporting on your performance and results.
Freer internal capacity
Outsourced marketing takes the stress of implementing a successful marketing strategy off your hands, as the experts take care of your marketing. Your agency will follow the strategy that you design [or create one for you] and work alongside your team to review its success. By executing your marketing activities on your behalf, outsourcing allows you to focus on managing the complex internal operations within your business.
… and the drawbacks
They won’t always tell you what you want to hear
Marketing agencies cultivate experts across all aspects of the marketing process to ensure they’re optimising your campaign in all available areas. With their insights into processes, technicalities and tools, their perspective will vary from your own in places. This may mean that they want to lead your business down a new route previously unexplored, and learning to trust their direction can take time [and results to back it up].
Finding the right fit
Clearly identified KPIs, increased conversion rates and strengthened branding are just some of the magical effects of successful marketing. To achieve them with an outsourced marketing agency, you need to find an agency that understands [and delivers] what your business needs. Not all marketing agencies will have an approach that works for you, so you’ll have to understand your goals, challenges and capabilities to get the most out of your agency.
Which should you choose?
It’s time to look at your KPIs and make two considerations. Firstly, which ones are you already achieving? Secondly, where are the biggest weaknesses in your current skill set that prevent you from achieving the others?
If you believe that you just need an extra set of hands to create more content and free up the capacity of your wider team, hiring an in-house marketing specialist might be an effective solution.
Once you understand what you do well and where you need a helping hand, you can decide how much of your marketing activity needs to be outsourced to an agency. You’ll also better understand which specialisms they must offer to give your business a competitive advantage.
When it comes down to truly excellent marketing, outsourcing ensures you get the top pick of industry expertise as and when you need it.
Outsource your marketing strategy from our saucy experts
[We don’t mean to brag, but…] When it comes to outsourced marketing, we’ve proven ourselves to be quite the trailblazers – just look at our 97% client retention rate. We can completely take the stress of managing your marketing strategy off your hands, or just take the lead on a few specialised areas.