Marketing Outsourcing: Is It Right for You?

The marketing landscape is changing faster than ever. Recent research found that 80% of marketers say the industry has changed more in the past three years than in the past five decades. More and more companies are turning to marketing outsourcing to keep up and ensure their strategies are aligned with the latest best practices and trends.

If you’ve been wondering about marketing outsourcing and if it’s right for your company, this guide for you. The sections that follow will cover exactly what marketing outsourcing entails, different approaches to doing it, and sure signs it’s the right move for your business.

Quick Takeaways:

• Marketing outsourcing is gaining popularity across industries and types of organizations.
• Benefits include deep marketing expertise, new perspectives, time savings, cost savings, and the ability to scale up and down as needed.
• Companies outsource in different ways. Some choose to outsource certain areas (like content or email), others outsource individual campaigns, while others outsource their entire strategy.
• Almost every company can benefit from marketing outsourcing in some form.
• Marketing outsourcing is probably right for you if your current strategy is underperforming, you feel squeezed for time and resources, or you’re lacking certain in-house expertise.

What Is Marketing Outsourcing?

Marketing outsourcing is when a company hires an external agency or service provider to handle some or all aspects of their marketing operations and strategy. It’s gained popularity across industries and with many types of companies as they look to stay competitive in fast-moving and tech-driven markets.

Along with sales, the number of companies outsourcing some or all of their marketing function has been steadily on the rise and is predicted to stay on that trajectory for at least the next several years.

The business benefits of marketing outsourcing are compelling for any company. When you outsource to an expert partner, you gain:

• New perspective and specialized expertise
• Access to cutting-edge marketing technology tools
• The ability to scale up and down more easily
• Options for optimizing costs with bundled pricing
• Proven processes to enhance efficiencies
• Data-driven performance tracking and reporting
• Time and cost savings

Even better, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model for marketing outsourcing or the services offered by top providers in this space. You can take different approaches to outsourcing depending on your budget and unique business needs.

Some of the most common approaches to marketing outsourcing include:

Outsourcing Email Marketing

Email marketing might be one of the oldest digital strategies in the books, but it’s still far and away the one most-preferred by customers. Across all generational age groups, people rate email as their favorite way to hear from brands.

The thing is, quality expectations are higher than ever. These same consumers also want email messages to be personalized and tailored to their interests and preferences. Plus, with email inboxes more crowded than ever before, email campaigns must be automated and strategically designed to stand out.

That’s why many companies—even those with internal marketing teams—often choose to outsource email marketing. Email marketing agencies have deep knowledge about how to optimize email campaign performance, and they have the right technology tools necessary to do it.

Outsourcing Content Marketing

Content is king. If you’ve been in the marketing world for even a moment in recent years, you’ve likely heard this statement more than once. And when it comes to growing your business, it’s true—prospects engage with a whopping 13 pieces of content over the course of their decision journeys.

They do it over a number of channels, including search engines, company websites, social media, email, video platforms, and third-party content aggregators (among others).

Content is also often responsible for your brand’s first impression with new potential customers, since they do most of their research independently before reaching out to your teams.

To sum it up: It’s impossible to build a brand presence and generate leads without consistently churning out great content.

The thing is, content creation is time consuming. The majority of blog writers say a single article takes anywhere from 2-8 hours to write. To gain any real visibility online, companies have to publish multiple articles every week. That means you could be talking 15-20 hours on blog writing alone.

It’s no wonder, then, that many companies choose to outsource content creation. Marketing agencies have the resources needed to create content at scale, and they have the expertise to create many types of content for a variety of audiences.

In addition to content creation, agencies often bundle related services like SEO research, publishing, or content distribution.

Outsourcing Single Campaigns

Even when your marketing team is operating effectively and yielding results, there are certain instances when outsourcing single campaigns makes strategic sense. 

Whether it’s a product launch, special event, or seasonal promotion (or something else), outsourcing ensures your marketing campaign is well-executed and doesn’t overburden your in-house team. Plus, an outside perspective is often just the thing to give a special initiative the magic it needs to succeed.

Outsourcing Branding and Design

Visual branding isn’t just an afterthought—it’s another huge contributor to your brand’s first impression with your audience. Having a consistent visual brand identity can also boost brand recognition and build trust with your potential customers.

But many in-house marketing teams don’t have the technical design skills or expertise in this area to execute visual branding strategies on their own.

By outsourcing this part of your marketing strategy, you can ensure that your visual brand aligns with your larger brand personality, tone, and messaging.

Outsourcing Whole Strategies

For a comprehensive and all-encompassing approach, some companies choose to outsource their entire marketing strategy. This means entrusting a specialized agency with the end-to-end management of your marketing plan, from strategy development to execution and ongoing optimization.

This approach is usually taken by companies who don’t have in-house marketing teams.

5 Signs You Should Outsource Marketing

Making the decision to outsource is a significant one for marketing teams. Many marketing leaders look for clear indicators that outsourcing is the best option for them. These are some of the surest signs:

Your Current Strategy Is Underperforming

One of the clearest signals that it’s time to explore marketing outsourcing is when your current strategy falls short of your expectations. If you’re not seeing the desired results, it’s a telltale sign that your approach may require a fresh perspective. Marketing outsourcing allows you to tap into the expertise of professionals who can bring your strategy back on track.

You Lack In-House Expertise

If your in-house team lacks the necessary expertise in specialized areas where you need focus, it can hamper your marketing success. Marketing outsourcing brings you access to seasoned professionals who excel in different marketing disciplines and can ensure your strategy is in alignment with industry best practices.

You Don’t Have the Time or Resources to Execute

Effective marketing demands constant time and resources. But many marketers also feel like their workloads are already too big. A recent HubSpot survey found that nearly 79% of marketers said their current workloads were somewhat or very high.

Many marketers find themselves stretched thin, which is a clear sign that marketing outsourcing might be the best strategic solution. Outsourcing frees up your team to focus on core functional responsibilities while experts handle the intricacies of your marketing campaigns.

You Want Another Perspective

It’s easy for in-house teams to become stuck in familiar patterns, making it challenging to innovate or explore new creative approaches. By outsourcing, you can inject new ideas and extra creativity into your marketing efforts.

External experts can provide a different outlook on your existing marketing efforts, helping you see your brand more objectively and develop new creative approaches to stand out in a competitive market.

You Need to Optimize Your Marketing Budget

While outsourcing is often seen as an extra expense, it actually cuts down on marketing costs. Marketing agencies often offer bundled pricing packages and even retainer models, so you don’t have to constantly budget for every new tactic or campaign.

Plus, you’ll save on overhead costs since your marketing agency will be the ones maintaining the team and the technologies in most cases. At the same time, you’ll start earning higher ROI on every marketing investment because you’ll have an expert team executing it.

So: Is Marketing Outsourcing Right For You?

Every situation is different, but weI think it’s safe to say marketing outsourcing is right for nearly every company at some level and in some form. Whether it’s full-scale strategy outsourcing or partnering with an agency on a single campaign, outsourcing can inject fresh energy and deeper knowledge into your marketing plan and helps you drive growth.

Televerde offers industry-leading marketing solutions that fuel revenue growth for our diverse client base. Learn more about how we can help you transform your marketing results.