The power of a team // more hands, more minds

Hiring an internal marketing director means placing the entire task of strategizing, executing, analyzing, and refining your marketing approach squarely on that individual’s shoulders. You rely on a single background, skill set, and perspective, which can limit creativity and improvement. Given the breadth of a robust marketing strategy and the depth of knowledge needed for it to be successful, you effectively assign this individual with the roles of a strategist, analyst, director, product specialist, brand manager, paid search specialist, copywriter, SEO specialist, and social media specialist. It is incredibly hard – if not impossible – for a single person to manage all these roles, and it’s even harder to execute it well.

On the other hand, leveraging an outsourced team gives you a group of specialists with more hands and more minds to execute and optimize a sophisticated, thorough marketing campaign. There is a variety of backgrounds represented, varying roles, differing specialties, and unique perspectives contributing to and improving your marketing efforts together.

What’s more: when your team is sourced from a firm purely dedicated to marketing – and staying on the cutting edge of the industry – you know that you’re inevitably working with a team of individuals who are deeply interested in the work, hardworking, and passionate. It’s not always so easy to find and attract a similarly dedicated marketer to a company that doesn’t have an equivalent focus on marketing.

The experience of a specialized firm // been there, done that   

It’s difficult to compete with the depth of knowledge and library of resources of an organization that lives and breathes marketing – and it’s most likely not worth the cost to try. While assembling a modest in-house marketing department may sound like a more prudent financial choice than outsourcing, the costs can easily stretch into the six figures across the months (and sometimes years) it can take to find the resources and tactics that make your operation effective and efficient.

In comparison, outsourcing to a larger, established marketing firm can provide significant savings simply by allowing you to completely bypass the time and costs that come from trial-and-error. From years of experience, an external firm has been able to build knowledge and understanding of your industry and target market, and your team will craft and execute a strategy with past learnings in mind, increasing your own effort’s potential for success. It also brings with it a toolbox of proven resources and platforms and a set of refined systems and processes, both of which are part of the foundation for any successful marketing effort, and each of which typically take years of testing to get right.

Leveraging this proven and robust marketing toolbox can also bring your campaigns to market in a much more efficient and rapid manner versus starting from scratch with an internal hire, which is key to decreasing cash burn rates and increasing ROI.

The benefit of no benefits // overhead begone

Hiring internally not only requires investment in the initial start-up of your internal marketing operation; there are also year-round fixed costs accrued when you bring on a new hire. There are retirement benefits to pay for, health insurance to fund, paid vacation to cover, and more. While not traditionally considered a benefit, building a marketing department internally also requires physical space, computers, and other materials, and you foot the bill for these expenses as well.

By enlisting an outsourced team, you circumvent these fixed costs entirely, leaving just a lean and focused external group for about the cost of hiring one mid-level marketing director.

You also get the added benefit of more continuity in your marketing, as at least one member of your team will typically be guaranteed to be available – especially important around the holidays.