The ultimate guide to outsourcing marketing services

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Interested in outsourcing marketing tasks?

Marketing plays a critical role in creating brand awareness and generating leads for your business. 

However, having an in-house marketing team isn’t always feasible for most smaller businesses.

Apart from the hiring and training costs, managing a full-time in-house marketing staff can be very costly. Additionally, handling the multiple tasks in marketing often directs focus away from your core competency. 

It’s one of the reasons why many companies turn to outsourcing marketing activities. 

But what is it and how can it help your company?

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about outsourcing marketing services, including its benefits. Additionally, we’ll also highlight how to choose the perfect outsourced marketing agency for your needs.

Table of Contents

• What is marketing outsourcing? 
• 4 benefits of outsourced marketing
• Is outsourcing marketing the right choice for you?
• How to choose the right outsourcing marketing agency
• 3 excellent marketing service providers to outsource to

Let’s get started.

What is marketing outsourcing?

Outsourcing marketing involves hiring a third-party marketing agency or a marketing professional to perform your marketing activities. 

The reason?

In outsourcing, the external entity performs the task for you. So instead of managing your marketing responsibilities yourself, you can freely focus on your core competency instead.

So what marketing services can you outsource?

Here’s a quick look at 4 commonly outsourced marketing activities:

A. Market research

Market research involves a thorough study of your company’s marketplace, competitors, and customers. It helps you identify your brand’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition), understand what your customers need and gauge what your competitors are doing.   

However, as it involves a lot of research and analytics, it can be extremely tedious and time-consuming when performed in-house.

Instead, when you outsource marketing research services, marketing agencies deep dive into Google and other social media analytics. They analyze every competitor to understand your position against theirs in the market. 

They’ll also perform your firm’s SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, helping you strategize branding and marketing better.      

B. Strategy and planning

By creating a marketing strategy, you can define or even reconstruct your brand image. It also helps you determine how and when you can introduce your brand into the market.

So what’s it like when an outside marketing agency creates a marketing strategy for your business? 

Through strategy and planning, marketing agencies develop your market persona and generate leads.The several tasks that a digital marketing agency performs to create your brand’s marketing strategy include: 

• Positioning your brand 
• Creating value propositions 
• Devising growth strategies

They figure out the best platforms for marketing your business, and can even conduct keyword analysis for SEO marketing.    

C. Creative projects

Creative projects include the production of marketing materials that deliver your brand’s story and identity to your target audience via the web, social media and/or email campaigns.

These include logos, websites, apps, emails, newsletter and marketing campaigns that offer branding, promotion, communication, awareness and lead generation.

A recent report suggests that almost 84% B2B companies outsource content creation. 

The reason?

Marketing service providers will have an experienced content marketing team, including a content writer, editor, copywriter and graphic designer to perform the task for you. 

Based on your marketing strategy, they create and present your brand’s marketing materials, to help you improve your public relations and connection with the target audience.     

D. Marketing operations

Marketing operations involves overseeing and optimizing your whole marketing process, starting from strategy and deployment to measurement, report generation, and attribution. 

So how can outsourced marketing help your company with marketing operations?

 A marketing expert in an agency performs several tasks like:

• Project Planning 
• Creative Process Management 
• Marketing Technology Management   
• Brand Compliance Check 
• Marketing Performance Measurement  

This is far better than having an in-house marketing department handle your operations as it can be a very time-intensive process. Additionally, you won’t have to invest in the software to perform the tasks as the service provider will have the latest technology to do it efficiently.

4 benefits of outsourced marketing

Here’s a quick look at the 4 major benefits of outsourced marketing.

A. Cost-efficient

With outsourced marketing, you get a team of marketing professionals with a broad skill set at an affordable cost.

From marketing strategists to marketing material producers, you get an experienced outsourced team working for you at a fraction of what it’d cost to hire them full-time.

You won’t pay each one of them individual salaries like you would have to if you had your own house marketing team. 

As you’re outsourcing your marketing, you only have to pay them for their time and the type of marketing service you need. 

Additionally, outsourcing to countries with low-costs of living, like the Philippines and India, can give you a skilled team at a fraction of the cost you’d have to pay for someone from the US.

B. Get effective content that delivers better results

Outsourced marketing promises both quality and quantity.

How?

A marketing agency understands that regular content drives customer engagement in the market. They ensure that the required content marketing materials are of the best standards for maximum lead generation.

With a detailed know-how of current marketing trends, an excellent marketing firm ensures that every digital marketing strategy they devise brings you your desired results — on time. 

The right agency will strengthen your brand’s marketing through quality content production, SEO optimization and graphic design. Their access to diverse marketing tools and platforms also makes it easy to rapidly promote your brand that heightens visibility and organic traffic.

On the flip side, an in-house marketing department weighed down with multiple tasks may not always be able to strategize and run every marketing campaign required regularly. 

This can slow down your marketing process, breaking its consistency and taking you away from your marketing goal. 

C. You can see the bigger picture

One of the issues with an in-house marketing department is that they follow the same strategy repeatedly. And since customer preferences and market trends change often, this approach doesn’t work for long. 

To get a fresh perspective, hiring an external marketing company can be useful. 

As an outsourced marketing agency will have worked with several companies across industries, they’ll have enough expertise to reinvent your old strategies.

By understanding your industry, competitors, services and company culture, they’ll 

showcase your brand in a completely new light. This way, your marketing strategies always stay relevant!

D. Ensures that you get the desired ROI

The prime focus of outsourced marketing agencies is to generate leads for your business through their digital marketing service.

An outsourced marketing agency not only works to provide you with the promised ROI but is also accountable as they send you accurate growth reports. 

So even if your in-house marketing team can’t bring you the month’s desired return of investment, your outsourced marketing agency most likely would. 

Is outsourcing marketing the right choice for you?

Still unsure if outsourcing marketing services are right for you?

Just go through the 3 scenarios we’ve listed below and if you relate to any of those, outsourcing marketing could be your best bet.

A. Hiring an in-house marketing team is costly for your business

Not every business can afford an in-house marketing team right from the start. If you’re a startup or an SMB, hiring a marketing manager can be tough as their average base pay alone in the US is over $54,000 per year.

And even if you can afford a marketing manager, your budget is restricted to a certain number of marketing executives. However, when you want to boost your business’ reach quickly, having a really small marketing department hardly helps. 

That’s why most new businesses choose outsourced marketing over hiring and maintaining an in-house marketing team.      

B. Your current in-house marketing strategy doesn’t work

There can be several reasons that lead a marketing strategy to failure. 

Limited market perspectives, lack of awareness of new industry trends and outdated marketing tools contribute to a poor marketing strategy. 

If your existing marketing strategy is failing and you don’t know why, consider outsourcing.

Through outsourcing, every business owner gets the expert marketing assistance they need to accelerate the marketing process and achieve their expected ROI.   

C. You want to shift your focus to maximizing growth

Most businesses perform multiple marketing trials to see what works. 

And while testing through trial and error can help you figure things out, it takes a lot of time and usually requires a decent amount of investment.  

On the flip side, with the help of an outsourced marketing agency, you get data-driven marketing plans, strategies and marketing materials from the start. 

Through consistent marketing efforts, they help you instantly build your online brand image for maximum growth in a minimum amount of time.

How to choose the right outsourcing marketing agency

Although there are countless digital marketing agencies available, hiring the right marketing firm can be tricky. 

So here are 3 tips to help you hire the perfect outsourced marketing firm for your company:    

Step 1: Know your marketing needs

Consider your business needs first to understand your marketing goals and the digital marketing services you require. 

Ask yourself:

• What is your position in the market? 
• Are you a startup or a larger company with 50+ employees? 
• What type of marketing do you need?
• Who is your target audience?
• Are you a B2B or B2C company? 
• What will be the purpose of marketing: awareness or lead generation?

Once you understand what you need for your business, hiring the right outsourced marketing services will become much easier.  

Step 2: Create a budget

While outsourcing your marketing services is generally a more affordable option, you still need to think about your business situation and capital. 

Some questions you could ask yourself here include:

• Do you have an in-house marketing team? If so, what is your present expenditure on them?
• What extra marketing services do you require?
• What will be your total expense if you opt for digital marketing services? 

Additionally, go through various pricing models of professional services firms to understand what the average price of your digital marketing services will be.   

After you’ve crunched the numbers and observed your overall business situation you’ll be able to determine your outsourced marketing budget.

Step 3: Search for a suitable digital marketing agency

Finalizing your business needs and your budget will lead you to the next step:

Going through the various marketing agencies that cater to outsourcing.

To filter out the right outsourcing marketing agency for you, go through the website of the agency to analyze their marketing expertise. 

Check the industries they have worked in before to understand if they have relevant experience in your industry or not. After all, it’s always a good idea to go for agencies that are familiar with the industry you work in. 

It’s also essential to get an overview of the technology they use to manage your marketing strategy and analytics. This way, you’ll know if they’re using the right tools to boost your marketing efforts. 

3 excellent marketing service providers to outsource to

To help you get started immediately, here are 3 popular marketing service providers you could choose from:

1. Accenture

Accenture is a multinational professional service company that offers advanced digital marketing services to businesses in automotive, banking, retail and other industries. 

Key marketing services: 

• Brand insight and identity.
• Content media and marketing strategy.
• Creative strategy and development.
• Customer engagement and conversion.
• Customer experience development.  

2. Concentrix

A global business services company, Concentrix boosts overall business performance with robust customer engagement through marketing, technology and innovation services.

Key marketing services:

• Marketing campaign management. 
• Creative designing. 
• Website development and management.
• Lead generation marketing.
• Digital ad management.

3. Wipro

Based out of India, Wipro is a popular IT service provider that also offers marketing services across industries like e-commerce, healthcare and telecom.

Key marketing services

• Digital strategy creation.
• Brand designing.
• Market segmentation.
• Search engine marketing.
• Ad-tech content delivery.

Wrapping up

With better expertise, cost savings and ROI, hiring a third-party marketing agency is often the smarter option when compared to maintaining an in-house team or hiring a freelancer for your marketing projects.

Use the tips we covered here to better determine if outsourcing marketing is right for you. And if you feel that it’s a fit for your company needs, go through the companies we highlighted to find the best outsourced partner for your needs. 
Remember, when done right, outsourcing marketing can take your business’ outreach to the next level in no time!