Outsource Your Marketing or Keep it Inhouse

If you’re serious about catapulting your business to new heights of success, a well-crafted, comprehensive, and diverse marketing strategy isn’t just an option—it’s a necessity. Many small and growing businesses, however, face the challenge of limited budgets and manpower, making it difficult to handle all their marketing needs in-house. In those cases, it’s often a better strategy to outsource your marketing, which is often a game-changer. But relying too heavily on external professionals can leave you blind to how marketing truly works in practice. That’s why it’s crucial to find the perfect balance—leveraging different strategies to maximize your results and truly understand what drives your success. Today, we’ll discuss when you should outsource your marketing and which parts of your marketing are best done in-house. So, read on!

Why you should outsource your marketing

You might think it’s expensive to outsource your marketing. After all, your provider has to make a profit after paying for their own staff and overhead. It seems simpler and less expensive to just do your own marketing. However, the reality is very different.

Hiring the right people

Hiring marketing staff with the expertise and experience required to do the job well costs money. That’s especially true in the area of digital marketing, where demand far exceeds supply. When you consider the fully loaded cost of hiring a marketing specialist, which includes salary, benefits, and ongoing training, as well as the increased overhead you incur by adding staff to your business, you’re talking about spending around $125,000 a year, according to Glassdoor.  Likely, hiring a specialist means you can only handle simple marketing tasks and will still need someone to supervise and manage the specialist if you want to optimize your marketing performance. Hiring a marketing manager who can likely work without this supervision and deliver better results can cost you $246,000 a year or more. These costs go up when you consider hiring specialists in areas like digital analytics, where the gap between supply and demand is even greater.

If you don’t have sufficient tasks to keep these folks working full-time, you’re wasting a lot of money you could save if you outsource your marketing. If you hire folks who can perform multiple functions in the misguided notion that you’ll save money, you’ll find that your marketing suffers from both a lack of focus and less skilled staffing.

Purchasing the right tools

You not only need the right people, but the right tools, if you hope to avoid the need to outsource your marketing. And, these tools don’t come cheaply. Here are some of the tools you’ll need:

• social media management
• SEO (search engine optimization)
• marketing automation
• CRM (customer relationship management)
• email marketing
• website management
• image and video creation
• project management
• content creation tools

These tools vary from free (with limited functionality) to over $10,000 a month. As a small business, it’s hard to justify these fees, but trying to do good digital marketing without them cripples your marketing strategy, further stresses your staffing needs, and increases the skill level needed by employees.

Should you outsource your marketing or keep it in-house?

It’s important to note that this shouldn’t be an either/ or decision. You can keep some tasks in-house while you outsource your marketing for specific tactics. Here’s an overview of some critical marketing tactics that fit into this decision.

Content creation

Your content marketing efforts—whether through blogs, newsletters, videos, or other formats—serve as a reflection of your brand’s voice and values. To effectively engage your target market and stay relevant in a competitive landscape, it’s essential to produce content that fits your brand’s voice consistently. Plus, unlike traditional advertising where you have months to work on a campaign through layers of approvals, digital marketing often happens at the speed of electrons. A negative comment on your Instagram Reel requires and immediate response from your content team, not something that is wordsmithed through various levels of the organization and published in a few days or even weeks.

As a small business, making the commitment necessary to create this volume of content may prove challenging. At the same time, outsourcing your marketing content to an outside firm represents the potential of losing your uniqueness in a sea of content that’s either generic or off-brand.  However, content marketing doesn’t have to be an either/ or decision.

You might hire a tight team of a single individual to manage your content marketing in-house, This group sets the tone for content marketing, establishes a content marketing calendar with topics, resources, and goals for each piece of content produced, and oversees freelancers or an outsourced agency to handle the actual content creation. A short approval of this content by the in-house manager, along with constant monitoring of content once published offers an optimal solution to the issue of consistency, frequency of content distribution, and managing feedback.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical component of your overall digital marketing strategy, directly impacting your online visibility and traffic, which determines your performance. SEO involves optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results, which requires ongoing efforts such as keyword research, technical website audits, backlink building, and staying updated with frequent search engine algorithm changes.

Hiring a reputable SEO company often makes sense because SEO is complex and ever-changing. Many businesses choose to outsource these tasks to reputable SEO firms that use advanced tools and strategies to improve their site’s performance. These agencies typically handle technical issues, backlink strategies, and competitive analysis. However, strategic decisions—such as which keywords to target, how to segment your market, and what goals to prioritize—should be determined internally. Maintaining control over your core SEO strategy ensures it aligns with your unique business objectives and brand messaging, yielding better long-term results.

Social media management

Your social media presence requires active management and ongoing nurturing to enhance not only your reach but also the quality of engagement with your followers. A big part of social media management was discussed within the general topic of content marketing, since social media involves frequent cotnent updates and responding quickly to brand mentions, feedback, and queries.

Effective social media management involves consistently creating and scheduling content, monitoring conversations, and responding to brand mentions. Various social media management tools have made these tasks more accessible and manageable for in-house teams by allowing scheduling, analytics, and monitoring from a single platform, such as Hootsuite, Hubspot, or Buffer. You can outsource your marketing content, especially graphics and video to agencies or freelancers who specialize in these more technical aspects of social media management.

Building a strong cultural identity and establishing genuine connections with your audience are vital for long-term success, and this often benefits from dedicated oversight. However, when it comes to paid social advertising campaigns, partnering with external specialists can be advantageous. These experts stay current with the latest advancements in targeting strategies, ad formats, and platform algorithms, ensuring your advertising efforts are optimized for the best possible results.

Marketing strategy and planning

When developing your marketing strategy and aligning your messaging with your business goals, it is crucial to maintain internal control over the decision-making process. While engaging with marketing experts and consultants can provide valuable insights and fresh perspectives, the core knowledge of your business’s objectives and target market should remain within your internal team.

Ongoing market research and data analysis are essential to understand industry trends and customer needs, ensuring that your marketing strategies are effectively tailored to support your goals. Since these activities are more complex and less subjective, you might consider outsourcing them to specialists. This leaves the internal leadership time to oversee the strategic decisions to ensure consistency, long-term alignment, and adaptability throughout the campaign process, rather than relying solely on external parties who may not be involved in every stage.

Conclusion

In conclusion, carefully balancing in-house marketing efforts with external support is key to developing an effective long-term strategy that aligns with your budget and goals. Making thoughtful decisions now will set the foundation for sustained success.

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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.