A Quick Look at the Top 5 Marketing Outsourcing Options

If music is the food of love, marketing is the food of business. To build a healthy business and keep it growing sturdily, you must undertake adequate marketing activities, even though it calls for considerable expenditure. Over the years, the function of marketing has evolved immensely, and the skills for comprehensive marketing are almost impossible to find at one place or with one person. With a seemingly unending list of marketing requirements for new businesses, maintaining a  healthy marketing mix is extremely crucial, just like having a healthy diet. Hence, resorting to marketing outsourcing seems like the most viable option. Let’s have a look at what all choices the marketing outsourcing menu has to offer.

Options for outsourcing marketing functions:

There are a number of structuring options for outsourcing marketing. You may or may not outsource the entire marketing department, depending on your capabilities and the control you desire to keep. Some companies choose to work with freelance marketing or content specialists, while keeping the basic functions inhouse. This is viable mostly when there is already a marketing team in place and some specific project needs focused attention or quick turnaround.

The other and more common option is to work with a full fledged agency. Most of the agencies that offer outsourcing services provide individual services to maximise benefits for clients. The following functions can be outsourced as per your requirements:

•  Website design and branding: It’s easy to guess why most new businesses prefer to outsource this part of the digital marketing function. Creating a website that makes an impact is critical. If the design is eye catching, content is compelling and navigation is simple, then visitors are more likely to be impressed and come back. This boosts the traffic, which in turn leads to better marketing results.

Your website is your branding tool for the world. Hence, the look and feel of the website must match the industry image, company vision and appeal to the target group. Outsourcing the branding activity will ensure that it is done by experts who do in depth analysis of various factors before creating the logo and website design.

• SEO marketing: The branding and designing will be beneficial only if the website gets ample traffic and exposure. Hence, outsourcing operations for search engine optimisation to experts will ensure that the website gets high ranking on search engine pages. Understanding Google algorithms, keyword (ranking and competition), PPC and adwords can prove to be a huge challenge for any startup owner. But a SEO marketing expert will be able to perform the task with finesse, giving optimum and prompt solutions.

• Content Creation: There’s a variety of content that goes in to make a successful website, and eventually a profitable business. Web pages, videos, blog posts, articles, product descriptions, info-graphics, news posts, e-books, quizzes and promotional emails are the pieces of the puzzle which must be put together perfectly to create a mind blowing picture of the business. Planning and executing your content strategy is best done by a dedicated content team. Hence, outsourcing content creation is a sensible decision.

• Social Media and Reputation Management: The influence of social media on buying decision of consumers is increasing every day, as shown by data from a number of surveys. Creating a social media presence, having an influence on people’s decisions, interacting with the right people, engaging target audience in conversations and managing your reputation positively is all part of social media marketing. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are the most widely used platforms for social media campaigns. This part of your marketing plan must definitely be outsourced to a credible agency.

• Strategies and Analysis: Lastly, doing market research about your product or services, conducting surveys, managing and analysing data and making sense of it through clear reports is also vital for gauging the effectiveness of your marketing plan. There are agencies that have market research teams with focus on these aspects. They will help you track your RoI and make corrections as needed.

The trend of outsourcing is not new; it has been in vogue for a number of business operations like human resource planning, finance and accounting, logistics, compliance, etc. In the case of marketing, outsourcing has proven to be especially profitable. 

Some benefits that accrue from outsourcing marketing functions are:

1. No need to have a full fledged in house marketing team. Hence, costs for hiring and training are reduced.

2. Technology related to marketing changes at a fast pace. So, an agency specialising in marketing is able to tackle it better.

3. Company’s resources can be focussed on strategic decision making and other vital functions.

4. Maintaining relations with customer groups will be easier through an agency.

5. Adapting to changing market conditions is also less challenging with outsourcing.

Having looked at the spheres where marketing outsourcing can work, you can choose to outsource any of these functions at different stages of your business. The best part is that individual services can be handed over to specialists without losing charge of your entire marketing plan.