Businesses today must keep up in a high-speed world, and the rapid fire of new technology guarantees that we won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Consumers receive information from more channels every day, making it crucial to attract target markets early to stay ahead of competitors.
This makes marketing key for your business’ success. But marketing departments have a lot to juggle: development and reporting on a marketing plan, content creation and distribution, internal and external communications, Internet and social media management, and more. It’s hardly surprising that an in-house team can’t always get everything done. Even the hardest working team is going to drop a ball sometimes, especially if they’re missing a skill set or dividing their time among too many projects.
The solution? Outsource your marketing. The concept is far from new. Companies have outsourced creative marketing functions such as advertising campaigns for a long time, but the time to consider outsourcing all marketing operations has arrived. It often saves money and improves quality, and it’s starting to look like the future as more and more companies begin to benefit from outsourcing.
These companies aren’t just taking a shot in the dark; there are cold, hard numbers behind the need to outsource. A Bain & Co. study of 2,000 companies over 10 years found that only one in 10 companies achieved sustained, profitable growth. The numbers aren’t promising, until you look at what the winners had in common: more effective capability sourcing. 85% of the winning companies used capability sourcing more broadly and innovatively than their competitors. Companies must find new ways to dominate their markets, and the numbers prove that intelligent outsourcing is a good strategy to help your company secure its spot in that 10%.
Outsourcing your marketing is the perfect way to start. Here are seven reasons why:
Expertise
Effective marketing requires a wide range of expertise. The ideal marketing team includes; strategists, analysts, product specialists, brand managers, communications professionals, event organizers, SEO specialists, search specialists, marketing automation specialists, copywriters, creatives – the list goes on and on. Hiring a large enough staff to cover all bases isn’t often feasible, and it’s expensive even when it is. Given the rapid technology changes of our era, even the best in-house team can fall behind as new areas of expertise become necessary. Finding and maintaining a marketing staff with the right expertise at the right cost point is very difficult.
That’s where an outsourced marketing firm can step in. Suddenly you have marketing experts with specialized skills that you can assemble into a team that is specific to your immediate needs. This team can then be retained for follow-up efforts, adjusted to meet changing needs, or totally revamped if the next assignment requires a markedly different combination of expertise and skill sets. Marketing firms are also often already familiar with your target market from other projects, as well as more aware of the many marketing channels and opportunities available. Your business benefits from the combined experience brought by the marketing team while avoiding the stress and costs of training and retraining a less broadly specialized in-house team.