Many companies opt to outsource marketing activities in the hopes of freeing up time for their managers and employees, but these organizations also provide greater benefits.

When you outsource marketing activities, you can access a broad knowledge base, a high level of expertise, and other perks that give you great value for your money.

What is Outsourced Marketing?

Outsourced marketing is when a company hires out their marketing activities to another firm, and there are a variety of reasons an organization would take this step.

When a company outsources their marketing efforts, they free up valuable time for their managers and operations staff while also gaining crucial perspectives from outside experts.

Outsourced marketing varies depending on the type of marketing channel, but popular categories include:

• Email marketing
• Social media
• Visual display ads and visual content
• Video content

Outsourcing the marketing efforts of a business also helps integrate excellent marketing talent.

This tactic allows companies to save money on overhead costs but still get the expert-level skills and knowledge necessary to succeed.

Why Do Companies Outsource Things?

Hiring staff to cover every inch of your business needs means higher payroll and overhead costs to contend with.

If you don’t need a full-time employee for your marketing functions, this translates into wasted funds.

When organizations outsource marketing activities, they get all the talent necessary to reach their goals without hiring someone full-time.

Many business owners and managers are also busy, and outsourcing certain business activities help ensure they have the time necessary to complete their tasks.

It also doesn’t hurt that outsourcing your marketing tasks isn’t difficult, as there are many high-quality firms with reputable track records to suit every type of business.

Problem: High Churn Rate Among CMOs

According to Harvard Business Review, about 74% of CMOs don’t believe their positions allow them to make the most impact possible on the organization they work for.

This feeling often leads to high CMO turnover.

It’s often the case that a company hires a CMO with many promises about the power they’ll have to drive growth with their marketing expertise.

But, unfortunately, this promise comes up short when CMOs lack any influence to make changes in specific areas.

Since this problem plagues many relationships between CMOs and CEOs, it’s no wonder that about 80% of CEOs don’t trust or appreciate their CMOs the same way that they find their CFOs and CIOs.

It’s also not surprising that given this lack of trust and influence over their success, just over half of CMOs have been in their current job for three years or less.

This statistic is particularly troubling since CMOs have a certain amount of effect on how customers engage with an organization.

When CMOs don’t have the tools they need, the organization tends to suffer.

Marketing Activities You Can Outsource

Organizations can outsource marketing activities like content creation, placement, strategy, and analytics, but there are other tasks organizations can offload as well.

1. Marketing Content

Creating high-quality marketing content is something most organizations need to stay relevant.

There are many different ways to cultivate the required content, but outsourcing this type of task saves a ton of time.

Writing

Writing takes time, and creating good quality content is even more challenging when it’s not one of your core business functions.

Furthermore, if you share a piece of writing that is unfocused or lacks proper grammar and punctuation, you risk your reputation as a professional company.

Editing

Editing is another time-consuming activity, but it’s easy to outsource through a marketing firm.

Editing takes a bit of skill and a sharp eye, and since many marketing firms already have established relationships with excellent editors, it also saves time.

Uploading

Social media, in particular, has select times when it’s best to post new material, but for some organizations, there need to be multiple posts each day.

In addition, creating, editing, and sharing these posts often takes a bit of time and a greater understanding of the overall marketing strategy, so you reach your target audience efficiently.

2. Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics involves studying collected data from marketing campaigns with the intent to find patterns.

These patterns can include consumer behavior, preferences, and other factors that assess how successful the marketing campaign was and expose areas needing improvements.

3. Marketing Strategy

When we talk about marketing strategy, we refer to an organization’s overall plan for reaching its target market and turning those individuals into paying customers.

Here are three areas where strategy matters, and outsourcing is a good option.

Overall Strategy

Hiring a marketing firm ensures that you get a second opinion on your overall marketing strategy for your organization.

This strategy is of vital importance as it’s the plan that ties together multiple segments of your business and ensures harmony and maximum profits.

Your overall strategy also helps you see the bigger picture of your marketing efforts and allows you to tweak certain underperforming areas or designate further resources to segments of your business experiencing growth.

Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is a powerful way to reach segments of your target audience, but creating polished emails with a high conversion rate is tricky at best.

However, when you work with a team of experts, they likely have tips and tricks to refresh this type of marketing to optimize performance instantly.

Social Media Strategy

If your company uses social media, it’s probably a good idea to engage with a marketing firm to ensure that you’re using this valuable tool to its full potential.

More and more businesses operate solely online, which means they need an effective strategy for reaching their customers that also keeps them relevant.

Social media strategies tend to include specific elements like curating quality content and posting that content at very selective times.

Outsourcing this particular strategy in full can save you time and labor and ensure you reach customers while collecting valuable feedback.

4. Repetitive, Time-Consuming Tasks

Some tasks don’t take a lot of skill once you know how to start them, but they take a lot of time.

So these tasks are the ideal type of task to outsource which frees up time and expertise in your organization.

Editing, Formatting, and Uploading Blog Posts

Most marketers outsource their writing, and if you’re a firm that maintains a blog, then this is an ideal time to join this group.

When you work with a marketing firm, they’ve already secured the best writers for their clients.

These individuals also handle the editing and formatting, so you end up with a professional and polished bit of content.

Managing, Sharing, Creating, and Scheduling Social Media Content

Social media can take a bit of time to manage, but the actual tasks involved with keeping it going aren’t all that complex.

Once there’s content created, it’s easy to share that content or schedule it.

Social media is an activity that outsources well since curating quality content takes a lot of time.

Creating Catchy Headlines or Finding Keywords for Optimal SEO

When you’re looking to create content that will lend itself well to SEO and drive traffic, it requires a bit of time-consuming research.

Finding the right keywords, and crafting a catchy title, for example, is a pivotal part of enhancing your SEO, but it’s also an activity you can outsource easily with positive results.

Advantages of Outsourcing Marketing

There are many advantages to consider when it comes to outsourcing your marketing efforts.

Here are a few essential items to consider as you dive deeper into how these types of firms work.

1. Reduce Overhead

Not every business needs to hire a full-time marketing team to complete marketing tasks.

Instead, many small businesses have just one person who performs various activities with limited expertise.

When you outsource these tasks, your business gets the exact amount of expertise and help necessary without paying for other overhead costs, like an office.

A marketing firm also provides the precise mix of expertise your business goals require, so you end up getting a better value for your money.

2. Increase Internal Team Bandwidth

When you outsource your marketing efforts, the result should be increased time or bandwidth for your in-house employees.

However, since the marketing firm handles most of the time-consuming elements associated with achieving marketing-related goals, your team can get back to working on other priorities.

3. Take Advantage of Broad Industry Expertise

Marketing firms possess the most up-to-date information related to their fields, including rising trends, industry standards, and how to blend a variety of marketing tactics for the best effect.

These same firms also employ a wide range of marketing professionals that can lend their expertise to your marketing needs and increase the value you get for your money.

4. Consistency of Work

Marketing firms know what they need to do to help their clients reliably achieve their goals.

In addition, these firms have a wealth of experience in engaging with businesses and setting reasonable expectations.

When you work with one of these organizations, you get more consistent marketing throughout the year.

Most businesses have a busy season, and the best way to capitalize on the fluctuations in your business is to use marketing tactics consistently and pair them carefully with useful metrics to track their effectiveness.

Disadvantages of Outsourcing Marketing

Although outsourcing your marketing efforts seems like a no-brainer, there are some drawbacks to consider.

1. Potentially Longer Delays

Since you have less access to the marketing team, it may prove harder to keep track of their progress day to day unless you’re used to a remote working environment.

When delays happen, it might also take a little longer to find a solution, especially if the marketing firm needs your input before proceeding

2. Usually Require Defining Deliverable Before Getting Started

Before you outsource marketing tasks, it’s essential that you clearly define the deliverables you need.

Once you hire a marketing firm, they will look over your needs and determine where further details are necessary.

Communication is key, which does take some time, but it’s worth it, so you get the results you desire.

3. Non-Exclusive Work Agreements (may be working for competitors too)

The marketing firm you work with may also work with other organizations that you would consider the competition.

Non-exclusive work agreements are relatively common when using a marketing firm, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work together.

Most marketing firms assign different teams to work on competing campaigns, and, likely, the strategies used will also differ.

How to Outsource Marketing Efforts

There are a couple of ways you can outsource marketing activities, so once you’ve considered your needs, here are some paths forward.

Hire yorCMO.com

When you hire a marketing firm, you not only get their incredibly talented staff and extensive knowledge base, but you also get to benefit from the powerful tools they use to track metrics.

Marketing firms are the experts in their field, and most of them provide detailed plans for how and when they expect to reach the milestones you decide on together.

Find a Freelancer on a Talent Marketplace

There are several freelance marketing professionals available online, and you can hire them as a contractor.

When you contract with a freelancer, you’ll likely need a detailed layout of what you need from them, and there should be a little back and forth before your agreement gets completed.

Examples of these marketplaces include Upwork, Source Forge, Toptal, and Flex Jobs.

Have Full-Time Employees Go 1099 Contractor Instead

Another route you can take is making a full-time employee into a contracted employee or choosing to use a contractor either full or part-time in addition to your regular staff.

When you add a contractor to the mix, you simply pay them the agreed-upon amount, and that usually doesn’t include any type of benefits or bonus pay unless that’s decided on upfront.

How Much Does It Cost to Outsource Marketing?

In general, you can expect to pay the same for an outsourced marketing firm as you would for one regular full-time employee.

The cost ranges from somewhere around $50,000 to $75,000 annually.

This number changes based on the marketing activities you choose to outsource, the complexity of these activities, and the amount of expert input required.

When you pay for a marketing firm, you are paying to replace one highly skilled marketing employee with a team of experts specializing in a different subject.

Although this cost might seem high, you’ll likely get higher quality work at a lower price than you would by hiring your own team of marketing experts.

Get a Quote from yorCMO.com

Feeling overwhelmed when you start looking to outsource marketing activities in your organization is normal, but yorCMO offers free quotes to help jumpstart the process.

It’s best to schedule a consultation to begin and then prepare to discuss how yorCMO can help your organization achieve essential milestones.

Wrapping Up

If you’re looking to grow your business, then you might want to outsource marketing activities.

Outsourcing can help you reach more significant portions of your target audience, increase your conversions, and make the most out of the money currently spent on marketing activities.

Hiring a marketing firm, like yorCMO, is one way to get started fast and see results that you can carefully track with worthwhile metrics.

Visit their site today and request a free quote or schedule a free consultation to get started!