Outsourcing Your Marketing Team

There are multiple reasons to outsource your marketing team. Several metrics and other moving parts of the marketing machine can benefit from this system and overall increase the rate at which a company can meet its business goals. 

The benefits of outsourcing your marketing team include increased flexibility, nurtured motivation, sharper focus, and an easy time prioritizing the business’s needs. Furthermore, the business has access to more marketing expertise at a fraction of the cost whenever it’s needed. This broadens your perspective and keeps you up to date on the latest marketing trends and technological developments without putting in the time and effort yourself.

Other benefits include: 

• Expertise and Experience: Outsourced teams often bring specialized knowledge and experience that might be too expensive or impractical for a business to develop internally. This expertise enables them to stay on top of current trends and use the latest technologies and methodologies in marketing.
• Cost Efficiency:  Outsourced marketing teams are also more cost-effective and improve your Return on Investment (ROI). Outsourcing eliminates the need for in-house resources, which can be costly due to salaries, benefits, training, and technology. Companies can budget more effectively by paying only for marketing when needed.
• Focus on Core Business Functions: With the marketing responsibilities handled by external experts, a company's internal team can focus more on core business areas like product development, customer service, and sales.
• Scalability: An outsourced marketing team can scale their services up or down based on the company's changing needs, allowing for flexibility in response to market conditions or business growth phases.

When the internal team is struggling to meet certain workplace and marketing needs, an outsourced marketing department can help you fill out those blank spaces in the workflow and reduce the burnout and stress your internal team may be experiencing. There are diverse situations that call for companies to make a change and seek help from an outsourced marketing agency as follows.

1. The company is a startup that needs more marketing expertise from seasoned marketing professionals.
2. The company is suffering from burnout: Companies can suffer from burnout due to the mounting pressures to make their campaigns and content creation a cut above the rest.
3. The company is extremely overworked and needs to balance its workflows and increase productivity.
4. The company needs to save money: For whatever reason, the company could be struggling financially and does not have the appropriate budget to put toward its marketing efforts.

As amazing as outsourced marketing services can be, they don’t work in every situation. That being said, it is important to understand which situations call for it and which ones call for more internal marketing support instead.

1. Financial Barriers: Outsourcing might not be compatible with your pricing model or it might not be in the company’s budget.
2. Leadership Styles: Outsourced marketing demands a shared control and effort in collaborating one team with another. This demands trust and confidence in collaborating and communicating one with another on set objectives and goals.

Luckily, at O8 we pride ourselves on results-driven transparency and open collaboration. If you don’t have a defined strategy, our team can work with you to develop a shared plan of success that eliminates the potential for miscommunication or misaligned goals.

The duties of the outsourced marketing team managing your marketing campaigns and initiatives vary from case to case but normally fall under the general categories of content marketing, digital marketing strategy, and website design or development. These include a wide range of roles, such as marketing operations, marketing strategy, project management, and strategy. 

Outsourced marketing teams typically offer a variety of services tailored to the needs of their clients, including but not limited to:

1. Strategic Planning: Developing comprehensive marketing strategies that align with the client’s business goals.
2. Digital Marketing: Handling all digital channels such as social media, email marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising.
3. Content Creation: Producing high-quality content like blog posts, whitepapers, and video content that engages target audiences.
4. Brand Management: Ensuring consistent brand messaging across all marketing initiatives and communications.
5. Analytics and Reporting: Providing detailed reports on the performance of marketing campaigns and insights into how they can be improved.

There are a lot of important qualities and skill sets to look for in an outsourced marketing company when you consider a partnership with them. Ideally, they would be just as hard-working, smart, and efficient as the best in-house marketing team, if not better.
 

When you are trusting someone else to meet your marketing needs, you need to make sure they are competent and reliable. The qualities to look for include:

• They possess abundant know-how.
• They are industry veterans and skilled at strategy. 
• They can perform simple and complex marketing tasks equally well.
• They can be trusted to monitor the budget and KPIs.
• They have a strong account management program.
• The outsourced team has a good workplace culture.
• They have quality testimonials and case studies.
• They use an integrated and agile approach to sales and marketing activities.
• They exhibit a growth mindset and a dedication to your company growth.

• Lack of leadership, teamwork, and communication. If marketing leadership is poor or nonexistent, then the team can’t function. This might indicate the need for a Fractional CMO that can fill that strategic gap. Make sure that you have plenty of managers that can oversee every element of each marketing project and make sure that they are communicating with each other regularly. Everyone can do their best work in good time if they are all on the same page.
• Ignoring the budget. Keep an eye on the budget and plan it carefully. Make sure that you trust the person in charge of it.
• Lack of research or background knowledge. You need to be absolutely sure that your outsourced marketers are competent, qualified, trustworthy, and have a strong understanding of what you need from them. Be thorough and critical when selecting them.
• Looking through only one lens. There are all kinds of components to a marketing plan. There are various marketing channels and teams assigned to them that you need to hire to focus on every task in every department. If you only choose a few select elements and strategies to focus on, you risk neglecting the others. Have an open mind, consider every part of the business, and make sure to hire enough people for everything that requires attention. The business as a whole will benefit from this balance.

At O8, we value proactivity, integrity, collaboration, technical excellence, and innovative marketing strategies to add real value to your team. Marketing can be hard, but we get it. Get in touch to learn how you could benefit from fractional marketing team services and fractional CMO services today.