Growth is a good thing and the digital world is changing fast. In order to support solid online growth for your company, you may need to outsource marketing components (or the whole thing!). It’s okay to admit when you are in over your head. To make the right choice for your business, you need to know the different kinds of outsourced marketing options available.
Types of Outsourced Marketing
You might choose to hire a single professional or a whole marketing agency. Here are the big differences and how they will impact your results.
Platform Specialists
If you are really limited in budget, you can hire a sole specialist to work on just one part of your marketing strategy.
You might employ a social media specialist to help you focus on improving your platforms. You can even dial down further and hire a professional that specializes in just one social platform, like Facebook—hiring them to do your planning and posting. You could also outsource a specialist for your Shopify setup or WordPress site development.
The biggest struggle with hiring a specialist is that you will end up with different approaches that often become disjointed. Your specialist might be extremely skilled at the platform, but that doesn’t mean their work will seamlessly fit into your overarching marketing strategy.
Marketing Consultant
Rather than outsource the detail work, you could outsource your marketing strategy and get help with your direction. The marketing consultant will audit your current approach and pinpoint areas for improvement. They may help you establish the metrics and KPIs that will help support the strategy. A marketing consultant might even help define a content calendar. But, that is where they stop.
Outsourcing your marketing strategy through a consultant gives you a solid direction, but offers no help with execution—creating content, posting, designing, running campaigns, coding or analytics.
Marketing Agency
An agency is going to offer a much broader range of services, staffing the experts needed to outsource your marketing strategy and all that entails.
Not all marketing agencies are the same. Many marketing agencies specialize in one or two platforms, lacking the experience or resources to provide full services.
Beware the former ad agency that has rebranded to “marketing agency” or digital agency. You need a marketing company that will focus on leads, conversions and sales. Some ad agencies will get caught up in the sales copy and fail to truly facilitate your audience. This means that your “marketing strategy” will become ad-centric and completely miss other sources of leads.
Also, beware of the PR agency expansion that has started offering marketing services. They know social media and think they can add strategy easily. They tend to focus on public opinion and struggle to create cohesive omni-channel campaigns.
Full-Service Marketing Agency
A true full-service outsourced marketing agency will offer strategy and foundational marketing support. They will help with website development, campaign builds, marketing technology, social media, content creation and more. Many will provide full-service packages or allow you to choose services and outsource your marketing strategy in part.
A large marketing agency often has a lot of resources and tends to be pricey. You might end up as one of many clients and rarely talk with anyone except your account manager.
A full-service boutique marketing agency offers the same services as a larger firm, but is more agile, and focuses on you. A boutique agency will be ready to work with your team and facilitate a good fit. You will find smaller agencies can offer a more personized experience without sacrificing quality or capabilities.
How to Successfully Hire an Outsourced Marketing Agency
It’s crucial you get to know the key players at the agency. It will take time to get to know the team and help them fully understand your brand and vision. If you plan to retain strategy control, only outsourcing execution, have a clear process with your agency. Make sure everyone knows their role and is on board for your brand’s direction.
Building a solid partnership can be tricky. But, investing time into your marketing agency as you would with an internal marketing department will mean having a team that can help you grow, react quickly to market changes, and relieve you of all the work that comes with working on your brand instead of in your business. If you have questions how we can help, we’re happy to chat.
