Any marketing webinar will tell you running a business isn’t the same as advertising it. Many great products gather dust on shelves because they haven’t been marketed properly. Marketing is a continuous process. It involves a smart yet flexible strategy, market research, awareness, impactful design, and a core message that can connect to people. Crafting this core message in-house takes skill and experience. More importantly, it can cost you.
Some businesses try to work with in-house marketing and creative teams but find this exercise expensive and inefficient. This is because of the sheer number of professionals that need to come on board. There are strategists, copywriters, media planners, digital media managers, community managers, developers, designers, and more. Each of these roles is distinct, meaning you will have to pay to hire freelancers for these roles or hire full-time employees.
Most companies can’t afford to spend much revenue on hiring marketing resources. Most of them don’t. Take brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, for example. Both these corporations work with numerous marketing and media planning agencies worldwide. They do this because outsourcing their business marketing is cost-efficient and impactful.
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Conventional and Digital marketing work on a team-based system. Agencies can churn out appealing ideas because a team of talented creatives huddle and brainstorm. They bounce ideas off one another and produce a finished and aesthetic result. You don’t want your business to miss out on this pool of ideas by trying to hire hybrid resources within the company.
Think of it this way: you want to improve your customer service. You set up an auto attendant phone system to receive customers’ calls and move them along the sales funnel. The issue arises when you can’t consult your agency to craft the perfect greeting.
This greeting should align with your brand values and build a positive association in your consumers’ minds. An agency can help you rope in customers creatively, which isn’t something you can expect from an in-house brand manager.
Your focus should be on broadcasting effective messaging so you create loyalists and attract new consumers.
An agency packed with talented professionals can help you get the results you need with the KPIs you’ve set. Also, you won’t need to pay exorbitant amounts to get your point across or grow your business.
Consider the importance of a seemingly trivial tactic: online reviews. Many businesses erroneously ignore adding positive reviews to their landing pages and this costs them customers. The Drum reported that 93% of consumers read online reviews before deciding to opt for the respective company’s product or services.
In short, it’s not enough to establish high-tech inbound contact centers. Ensure that consumers are speeding along the marketing and sales funnel optimally. This happy occurrence is possible when you let expert marketers do the job for you. Let’s look at more reasons to outsource your marketing to an agency partner.
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It can be time-consuming and expensive to conduct skill refreshers. Marketing has become digital heavy, which means the mediums used by advertisers shift constantly. Certain apps that were once relevant drop out of the digital scene a few months later. Even tech giants like Facebook have to aggressively advertise to outsmart competition.
You don’t have to worry about being on top of the marketing game if you have an expert agency on the job. Digital marketers are learning round the clock and are aware of new tech, platforms, and advertising strategies. It saves you precious time in continuous training and implementation and cuts down on opportunity costs.
For example, if you’re having trouble organizing or analyzing big data, you can ask the agency’s resident data expert. You won’t have to learn details or compare programs like Apache Kudu vs. Hive vs. Spark, etc. All it’ll take is a brief to your agency, and they will sort out your data warehousing and analytical needs.
There are numerous risks associated with growing too big too fast. This applies to your business even if products are flying off the shelves. It’s a prominent concern if your demand has rapidly increased. As more people place orders, you might struggle to keep up. The worst thing that can happen is your website crashing or orders being delayed.
An in-house team can do so much. Developers working on the backend can try to resolve server overload, but other actions need to be taken in the meantime. Customers with late orders will get progressively angry as they wait for their packages to arrive. This can harm your brand’s reputation and drive consumers away.
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When you outsource your marketing to an agency, you have a team to call on in case of these contingencies. Expert marketers usually have emergency plans that they break out if a potential PR crisis threatens their clients. Asides from firefighting, your agency partners can provide you with digital managers who can look after your ecommerce order processing and help optimize the process.
You might be uncomfortable outsourcing your marketing, but there’s no denying that it’ll give you better results. Brands are constantly competing to get ahead and achieve iconic status, i.e., become a household name or replace a verb. For example, no one says they will ‘use a search engine’ nowadays. Everyone just Googles things.
Your company can’t enjoy this competitive edge if you’re always inside looking in. Hiring marketing experts from outside your business gives you the advantage of an outside perspective. You might overlook many issues because you’re too close to the brand, but the agency can pick up on them.
For example, you might not notice that your main font has become dated and looks tacky. A designer or creative at the agency will instantly pick up on it and make the necessary changes so your brand can compete equally with everyone else.
The best part is that agency experts are available whenever you need them since they emphasize client servicing. You can go to them with questions, concerns, or general ideas when necessary. Some companies add a couple of their agency hires to their private branch exchange (PBX) for easy access. This also allows the agency professionals to give better feedback since they’re closely connected to the system.
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One of the great things about external agencies is that they’re connected to many vendors. Say you want your website to have a blog section so you can boost your SEO ranking. It would be arduous to look for experienced blog writers, interview and hire them. This would waste time you don’t have.
Marketing experts at your agency know everyone from bloggers to content creators to filmmakers and more. All it takes is you making one call, and the agency will find the perfect resource for whichever project you want to be done. They will take care of the strenuous selection process too, so you can spend time growing your business.
The best part is that you won’t have to pay these vendors their typical affiliate commission. Most content creators sign up with agencies knowing they will be paid less but will get exposure and more job opportunities. Your agency partners can get you discounts so you can get your message out the way you want.
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If you’re worried about committing to an external marketing agency for a long time, you could consider integration with Salesforce CRM to track your outsourced marketing efforts. Or you could hire external agency partners for certain key events, campaigns, or projects.
For example, if your company is launching a new product and you want a launch event that gets maximum eyeballs, you can outsource it. The marketing agency will team up with an activation agency, and you’ll have a talk-worthy event ready to go.
This also applies to campaigns. Let’s say you’re a small business that does in-house marketing during the normal year but want to invest in a new campaign. You can hire an agency partner to execute the campaign from start to finish. The commitment will apply until the campaign ends. There are no strings attached. It’ll save you the hassle of trying to draw up an integrated marketing campaign (IMC) plan on your own, especially if you don’t have experience.
Result-driven marketing is about more than placing ads on social media. Effective marketing starts from market research and goes to creating iconic brands. It’s about what your ad says, where it’s placed, who interacts with it, whether anyone clicks on it, and more. Outsourcing this complicated process will give you great ROI and grow your brand effectively.
Grace Lau, Director of Growth Content at Dialpad
Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform with cloud PBX solutions for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. She has also written for sites like Trans4Mind and Klipfolio. Here is her LinkedIn.
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