The benefits of outsourcing your marketing

Marketing resources and skills are simply not available internally? Not enough time to perform all the marketing activities you would like? Not sure what works and what doesn’t? Or simply not having the budget to hire a full-time marketing team?

These are just some of the reasons why many small to mid-size companies look to outsource to a marketing agency, particularly in these difficult times.

Outsourcing to an agency brings with it a number of benefits.

1. COST

Perhaps the most obvious – the overhead of having a dedicated marketing person (or team) can be costly to a company. Agencies don’t require full-time fixed salaries, benefits and associated overheads but come with strategic insight and technical knowledge. The right agency can help tailor and execute a marketing strategy with measurable results within your budgets.

2. DIVERSE SKILL SET

It’s almost impossible for an individual or small team to have all the skills required to deliver your full marketing plan, or even the time. Agencies give you access to a range of diverse talents – strategy, marketing, content marketing, graphic design, photography, video production, web design, social media management, and SEO. As a company you benefit from an agencies wide skill set.

3. TIME – FREE UP YOUR STAFF

Sometimes companies without dedicated marketing staff still put these tasks on other staff within the company, who may not have time for this additional burden, or the appropriate skill-set. Hiring a marketing agency, frees up these staff enabling them to focus on the job they were actually hired for meaning they can work more efficiently and productively, focusing time on projects and tasks at the core of your business.

4. ACCESS TO LATEST TECHNOLOGIES AND KNOWLEDGE

There’s alway something new happening – whether it is a new Social Media platform or a new marketing measurement tool. Staying abreast of these trends and technologies can be time-consuming in itself. Fortunately agencies can guide you through these, helping you to choose the most productive, reliable for your company.

5. NO NEED FOR STAFF TRAINING

As discussed above, it is unlikely that a small to mid-size companies has the complete breadth of skills that an agency can bring to them. Giving your staff such a diverse set of skills requires additional training incurring time and additional cost. Agency staff have been trained at someone else’s expense but bring this knowledge and skill to you.

6. SCALABILITY

Some companies are cautious about outsourcing and some agencies come at you selling every bell and whistle with a budget to match. But the right agency can work within your budgets and look to achieve the most with it, focusing on the core early objectives and wins . Essentially, any agency worth its salt wants to achieve success for you by delivering and demonstrating their skill and commitment through achieving results to your bottom line. Most agencies are happy to enter in to a retainer over a set time period – three, six, twelve months. This means you have the flexibility in the future to expand on your marketing activity safe in the knowledge that it is achieving results.

7. AN OUTSIDE PERSPECTIVE

Sometimes a company is just too close to its products and services. Directors, managers and staff that know their business and operations inside out, but then fail to see the company offering from its intended audiences perspective. Being able to step outside of the company and put yourself in your audiences shoes enables you to see how they actually perceive you, what they want and what buttons to press to get their attention. A marketing agency when devising a strategy, should help you gain this outside view, showing you your intended target customers perspective