Has your business grown to the point that you must now decide between hiring an in-house marketing team or outsourcing the workload from an agency? Or has customer acquisition plateaued and you need to revisit status quo? Perhaps you have a slew of new marketing projects on the horizon and are wondering if your in-house team can handle them on their own? Whichever the case may be you have an important decision to make. Here is everything you will want to consider before moving forward.
4 Things to Consider When Debating Between Bringing in an Online Marketing Agency or Relying on an In-House Team Alone
I. An Agency Can Save You Money
This point applies to companies without an existing in-house team and are in the midst of deciding between that route and an online marketing consultancy. There is a very logical and practical case for the latter.
Salaries, benefits, and general infrastructure. Maintaining an in-house marketing team is costly. In most cases it is much more expensive than maintaining a contract with an agency. Beyond the budget, you also remove all HR requirements (and headaches) from the equation. The internal resources that you save can be allocated to all other revenue generating operations.
But what if you already have an in-house team? Keep reading.
II. An Agency Brings No Bias Into Your Strategy
Outside consultants, be it for accounting, IT, or marketing, bring a non-biased perspective into a company. Prior to developing new strategies, they will conduct an audit of your current infrastructure. After all, your in-house team may have already done a bang-up job in many areas, so if it ain’t broke, they don’t fix it! But alas a fresh perspective will absolutely uncover new opportunities to grow your customer base.
For instance, during the audit an agency may recommend that before you can initiate any new strategy, that you may need a new website design – the one thing that may have rendered prior online campaigns unsuccessful. Your current website may experience low conversion rates due to page speed issues that the in-house team has not recognized through an analysis of your Google Analytics. Or your site may even be in violation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). An outside perspective is a fresh perspective, and as such an agency often finds issues and concerns that your team missed because of over-exposure.
If you want a unique and unprecedented analysis of your current online marketing strategy, which will pave the way for a new and more effective one, then you need to bring in an outside consultant.
III. An Agency Has Dedicated Experts for Each Online Marketing Channel
A full service digital marketing agency has a team. That team is comprised of experts from within each field of online marketing, which includes the following:
In-house marketing teams are typically Jacks and Jills of all trades, but not explicitly versed in one specific online channel (SEO, PPC, etc.). This severely limits the opportunity to realize the full potential (i.e. revenue) of any given channel. To serve your overall marketing goals you need to fire on all cylinders. Anyone working on your SEO campaign must not lose focus because they have to write copy for an email campaign. Anyone working on a targeted email campaign can’t shift gears to engage followers on social media. You get the idea.
You can leverage access to these dedicated efforts as you see fit. For this reason, an outside firm can be brought in to work on key projects, versus taking on all marketing efforts for your company. This frees up your in-house team to focus on the big picture and other essential areas, which leads us to the final and perhaps most important point.
IV. An Outside Team Can Supplement (not replace) Your In-House Efforts
if there was an article on the Myths & Misconceptions About Outsourcing Digital Marketing Support Myth #1 would be that outsourcing makes staff redundant and replaces current teams.
We need to dispel this myth right away.
For one, it helps to have buy-in from staff to ensure that your new marketing strategies will be successful. But when they fear that their jobs will become redundant due to new integrations and the presence of outside experts their fear turns into resistance.
They need to understand that this is not the case. In fact, the opposite is true. Outside online marketing services can make their lives easier (so to speak). It will free up their time to focus on larger company goals such as branding, instead of being bogged down in Bounce Rates, Click-Through Rates, and other conversion metrics. By bringing in outside agency support, your in-house team can now divert their attention to big picture projects.
Simply put, an outside digital marketing consultancy can empower your existing staff.
Whether you need an agency to fully manage all marketing duties or you want to support for your existing in-house team, Strategis Consulting Group is here for YOU. Contact us today for a friendly noncommittal conversation.