Smart marketing leaders are taking advantage of technology to increase efficiency and make campaigns as personal as possible. Since technology can be expensive, you might want to outsource some technology-intensive functions, such as marketing automation, to a company that already has leading edge technology at their fingertips.
Even as the economy becomes more robust, companies are cautious about onboarding new hires too fast and increasing overhead costs. After all, boom and bust cycles quickly turn hiring frenzies into layoff nightmares.
Also, marketing activities don’t occur in even increments over the year. Companies need to invest more time in marketing when they are introducing new services and solutions or are gearing up for conferences. In situations in which they cannot adjust internally quickly enough to meet work demands, it only makes sense to outsource where possible.
If you’re suffering the same predicament as John, you need to take action. Now. What should you do? Well, it depends on where you are today. So, first identify your exact problem, and then the solution.
To compete successfully, marketers need to use best practices. But it’s difficult to stay up on them when they’re always changing.
So, it’s best to go to a firm that focuses on the area of expertise you need. They have experience implementing solutions for multiple companies, so they’re likely to know what works best in a variety of situations. If you go it alone, you may have to build your expertise using trial and error. The learning curve will naturally slow your path to growth.
Also, don’t discount what you’ll learn by working with the experts and the new perspective they’ll bring to your business.
Professionals often believe that doing work in-house is less expensive than outsourcing. However, because marketing firms are structured to provide the services they offer, they can often provide them for less money. Plus, they may have access to less expensive labor sources.
Also, consider how much time and money you can save by averting the costs of recruiting, hiring, training, office space, computers, benefits and more.
Marketing is not limited by geographic borders. However, your firm’s knowledge may be. If you work for a U.S. company and want to expand into Europe, for example, you’ll want to partner with a firm familiar with the varied local cultures and languages.
Every day there are new marketing tactics to consider: social selling, influencer marketing, mobile apps, visual marketing, micro-segmentation and more. You might want to test one or more of these marketing methods without gearing up for it internally. The solution is to outsource it.
Probably one of the most important reasons to outsource is to help you stay focused on your business. That means: do what you do best and outsource the rest.
The good news is, it’s easier than ever to outsource marketing functions. The web puts the world at your fingertips, making it simple to find and assess firms’ capabilities. Also, once hired, technology makes communication seamless, whether you’re working with a company across the street or in another country.
The reasons discussed above may help you decide what you should outsource. For example, if you’ve never tested qualifying your leads via phone calls, it’s a new tactic. Do you really want to test it out in-house? After all, it would take a lot of time to get up to speed and learn best practices. Also, you’d need to hire business development specialists skilled in asking the right questions and developing rapport over the phone. And you would also have to surmount some hefty upfront technology costs.
If you want to go beyond making a qualitative argument for outsourcing to a quantitative case, you need to determine the return on investment (ROI). To calculate the ROI of outsourcing telemarketing, download our guide: “Telemarketing Execution: In-House or Outsource?” You can do a similar analysis to the one shown in this guide for any other marketing function you’re considering outsourcing.
