Three factors to consider when deciding whether to hire an employee or utilize a firm
The age-old pursuit of customer attention now takes place in a fast-paced, ever-changing, technologically-evolving world. There are dozens of places to connect with your audience, but identifying the best ones and managing multiple marketing channels takes a lot of time, expertise, and creativity. And that coveted attention is fleeting, so when you do get in front of your audience you better have a great message to share, along with recognizable branding that lingers after your customer clicks away.
The diverse skill sets and sheer volume of work required in this daunting new landscape leave a lot of internal marketing teams feeling shorthanded. So it’s common to see businesses weighing the benefits of outside marketing support versus additional full-time employees
When making those considerations yourself, here are three key factors we encourage you to consider…
1. What is the make-up of your current internal marketing team?
Marketing encompasses many sub-specialties: social media management, branding, web design, content development, SEO, graphic design, and data analytics to name a few. Simply put, it’s a lot! And the domains of expertise that fall under marketing continue to be specialized.
If you already have a sizeable in-house marketing department with a diverse set of skills, you may be just one or two people away from successfully covering all your bases. In that case, it might make sense to incur the cost of adding full-time employees to meet your marketing goals. Though it could still prove worthwhile to explore the comparative cost of supplementing a missing core skill or lightening your team’s overall work load through outsourcing.
For businesses with fewer marketing team members juggling a variety of responsibilities, outsourcing is a valuable tool to leverage. If you have limited marketing resources and ask employees to wear multiple hats, you may often encounter frustration and missed opportunities. Partnering a small in-house crew with a highly skilled team of experts can quickly amplify your company’s marketing efforts, ensuring all tasks are handled by full-time experts.
2. How quickly do you want to expand marketing efforts?
When a new opportunity arises, it’s essential for your company to be nimble and reactive. When efforts need to be scaled quickly, partnering with an outside marketing company can be an ideal solution. Growing a marketing team through recruitment and hiring takes time. An existing relationship with an external marketing partner can be a real asset when turnaround is critical. Lead time to getting a project up and running could be measured in weeks with an external partner, compared to untold months for recruiting, hiring, and training, and executing.
3. Is the marketing need ongoing or project based?
Often a company’s need for expanded marketing resources is temporary or specific. Third party marketing providers are a great source for one-time projects or short-term amplification of marketing agendas. If you’re looking to refresh your brand or redesign your website, you may find that outsourcing the work is preferable to onboarding a new employee.
Whether as an extension of an internal team or a completely outsourced marketing department, external marketing providers fill key roles for all types of businesses. They offer access to a team of specialists who stay up to date on the latest marketing trends, and can cater to your company’s needs in terms of their scope of services and timeframe for execution.
If your marketing wish list is outpacing your team’s capabilities, TMC can help you close the gap and put your plans into action.
And stay tuned for our next blog on questions to ask when hiring an outsourced marketing firm. Until then take a look at The top 5 reasons you should outsource social media management.
