Do You Know When It Is The Right Time To Outsource Your Marketing Functions?

To ensure substantial sales, businesses need to make sure their target audiences are aware of their offerings and marketing plays the most crucial role in creating awareness and helping potential customers make the buying decision. Technically, marketing is a term that encompasses a whole range of activities that aim to eventually persuade the target audience to buy the promoted products/services. There are different types of marketing strategies like business-to-business or B2B, business-to-consumer or B2C, consumer-to-business or C2B and consumer-to-consumer(C2C), but the motto of all is to create and maintain demand, reputation and gain a competitive advantage. Hence, marketing is often considered the most essential activity of any business.

However, marketing practices are evolving every day to cater to the changing priorities, needs, lifestyles, habits etc. of the urban as well as rural masses. Therefore, small to medium-sized companies, that have a limited workforce, often find it difficult to stay updated on all the latest marketing trends, while handling other unavoidable business activities like finance/accounts, sales, business development etc., simultaneously. To prepare an impactful marketing strategy and conduct a successful campaign, a company needs a team of marketing experts, who have the market knowledge and ample experience in the particular field. However, hiring an in-house team is quite a costly affair and also does not assure fruitful results. Therefore, instead of investing money and time, many businesses these days are contracting out or outsourcing marketing activities to external marketing agencies that are not only equipped with skilled and experienced personnel but also offer their clients a guarantee of high-quality and timely output.

Types of companies that immensely benefit from outsourcing marketing activities:

• • • Small to mid-sized, privately-held companies where the owners have been executing their marketing activities along with other business operations.
      
    • Companies that have little or no in-house marketing staff.
      
    • Companies that have in-house marketing teams, but need to expand those to cope with the increasing workload and ensure timely delivery of outputs.
      

5 signs a company needs to outsource its marketing functions:

• • • When there is no real plan.
      An insightful and dynamic marketing plan can only assure maximum reach and foolproof brand positioning. Therefore, when a business carries out regular marketing activities but in a random pattern with no specific roadmap to stick to, its owner should consider outsourcing the marketing functions to external agencies, which can adeptly perform various tasks like redesigning their clients’ websites, planning social media roadmaps and impactful strategies, designing both print and digital ads, writing and putting up blogs, designing and sending out newsletters etc. Also, outsourcing marketing agencies analyze the results of the initiated campaigns and keep on refining them till the promised results are achieved.
      
    • When an entrepreneur needs to primarily focus on expanding the business.
      Entrepreneurs running small businesses or start-ups often wear many hats, irrespective of their skill sets and interests. But, there are times when multitasking turns out to be burdensome as the entrepreneurs need to shift their focus to just business development functions to thrive in today’s highly-competitive business environment. This is when crucial operations like marketing should be outsourced to external agencies to make sure the branding, communications, website work etc. are being done with utmost efficiency.
      
    • When there is no consistency in the in-house marketing activities.
      Consistent social media initiatives are the key to reaching out to maximum potential customers. Also, consistency makes sure the search engines recognize a company’s site as relevant. Hence, when companies are unable to produce fresh marketing content, like blogs, posts etc., regularly, even after having an in-house team, the business owner should consider outsourcing the marketing functions.
      
    • When it is time to take the company’s marketing to a different level.
      Today, technology is getting updated at a considerable speed and so are the marketing techniques. The rapidly changing marketing trends compel companies to keep on upgrading their programs and increasing their resources to be able to use all the latest tools. However, small to medium-sized companies or start-ups often fail to do so due to budget constraints. Hence, companies looking to create high-quality marketing content as per the ongoing trends should consider outsourcing marketing activities to reputed marketing agencies.
      
    • When the existing marketing team is not enough to handle the increasing marketing needs of a company.
      In a situation where a company is witnessing rapid growth and looking to enhance its marketing efforts, but its in-house marketing team, despite being big and adept, is unable to churn out desirable outputs on time, outsourcing marketing activities can turn out to be quite beneficial. This is because hiring additional employees, training them and offering them all company benefits usually drain a lot of money and time, but outsourcing a portion of the marketing activities to external agencies will not only save money and time but also assure high-quality timely outputs.