Marketing is without a doubt one of the key drivers of a company’s success; without it, defeating competitors and reaching potential customers would be nearly impossible. But once you want to make some steps towards implementing marketing, you may ask “Which is the best — going in-house or outsourcing marketing?” The short answer is if you don’t have enough budget, it’s better to go for outsourced marketing, but if you have enough internal resources within your company, then in-house marketing can be a better choice for growth.
But don’t rush to make your final decision yet, instead read the blog for more details. Today, we’ll dive into these two marketing approaches and look at their cons and pros, so you will be able to understand which one is good for your company. Let’s jump right into the basics.
What is In-House Marketing?
In-house marketing is about having employees who are going to use marketing skills and techniques inside your business. This means that you have employees who will work with content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing (SMM), etc. This is about having an entire internal marketing team. Let’s see the cons and pros of going in-house:
Cons
Here are the disadvantages that come with going in-house:
- Higher cost: It’s obvious that employing an in-house team is more costly than hiring a digital marketing agency. You must take into account the cost of additional features, such as purchasing assets (such as chairs, computers, desks, etc.), paid vacations, and other expenses in addition to hiring an employee and paying them separately. Imagine how many employees you need to hire for specific areas, including search engine optimization (SEO), copywriting, pay-per-click (PPC), email marketing, etc.
- Few employees and limited resources: Once your budget is tight, you will have a limited number of employees and resources. A limited skill set prevents you from taking advantage of all marketing opportunities, and when you also can’t afford marketing tools, your marketing will be ineffective.
- Too many tasks for employees: First and foremost, one of your company’s goals is to have happy employees as once your employees are not overloaded, they also are more productive. A heavy workload might decrease productivity and increase personnel resignations.
Pros
The following are the benefits of in-house marketing:
- Smoother communication and transparency: With an in-house team, you have smoother and more effective communication as you don’t have to email and wait for a response. You can just approach the employee and give your questions at the office. Additionally, it’s less likely to miscommunicate as the overall team knows the company’s mission and goals. Moreover, once you know who does what and your employees get access to data, you have more transparency.
- Familiarity with the brand: As your internal marketing team is involved in your daily tasks, they know better about your brand. This means that they also dig deeper into your company’s culture and have a better understanding of your mission and different aspects of your brand.
- Time-saving: Another benefit is that you can save time by going in-house, since you won’t have to look for agencies for hours to make a choice.
Let’s see when to keep in-house marketing:
- You have enough staff.
- You have enough knowledge of marketing.
- You have a budget to hire new employees.
What is Outsourced Marketing?
Outsourced marketing is about collaborating with a full service marketing agency to provide you with the experts you need. For one price, you’ll get SEO, email marketing, PPC, SMM, content marketing, public relations (PR), etc. Now, let’s take a moment to see the drawbacks and advantages of outsourced marketing.
Cons
Sometimes, you need to have a look at both minuses and pluses to make the right choice, let’s first look at the drawbacks of outsourced marketing:
- Tricky Communication: As mentioned above, with outsourced marketing you don’t have immediate communication and need to schedule meetings to discuss any possible issues. So, it’s better to over communicate to be sure that both you and your partners understand the expectations and values better. But keep in mind that with a reputable company, most probably this won’t be an issue. So, once you don’t want to lose money, try to find the right agency.
- Less Control: You may lose control with an outsourced company, as sometimes it’s difficult to monitor and see how daily operations are performed. This means that marketing tasks are not managed by you, but instead by the external agency. Though, with the right marketing agency, this wouldn’t be a big problem since, during the month, they show what they’ve done and share reports.
- Security: Outsourced marketing has some issues with security. You share some confidential data with the agency which means that data may be at risk if you choose the wrong partner.
Pros
Outsourced marketing has many benefits, but we are going to cover three of them:
- Having the opportunity to focus on what’s important: Let’s say you have an SEO team and only need resources for content marketing. This way, you can focus on your business goals while hiring an agency that can deal with your content marketing tasks. Your company may have so many other priorities that are crucial for your goal. You may therefore put your marketing in reliable hands by working with an agency.
- Cost-effectiveness: For instance, if you need only one field of marketing, such as SMM, you can hire an agency and pay money only for that specific service. Additionally, you can charge a single price for the complete marketing campaign and skip hiring employees or conducting interviews. Consider the advantage that you get from partnering with an agency as you can also use their resources once you don’t have enough budget for acquiring new technologies and tools. You can also access the latest technologies, including Photoshop, Google Analytics, etc. But, ensure to check the contract carefully to prevent your company from hidden fees.
- New perspectives: Sometimes, when we use the same strategies over and over again, they don’t have any results. By partnering with an external agency, you get opportunities for fresh perspectives as the agency can offer new ideas and share their points of view. And as they are experts in the field, it’s obvious that they will have better solutions and strategies.
Let’s see when to choose outsourced marketing:
- Your team is overloaded.
- You don’t have enough budget for new employees and tools.
- Your team doesn’t meet your expectations.
- You don’t manage your tasks.
- You can’t focus on what’s important.
- You need new strategies.
Choose the one that is ideal for you based on your financial situation and the requirements of your business.
Ariana Martin is a digital marketing enthusiast writing about digital innovations, technology trends and providing marketing tips and insights.
Marketing stock image by XArtProduction/Shutterstock