Digital marketing – when to outsource?
Digital marketing is essential for a successful business. With the rise of social media and the availability of smartphones, digital marketing has become an essential factor. But achieving success with digital marketing is not easy. It is a complex and multifaceted field with many tasks and without the right expertise and digital marketing strategy, you will burn your money if you invest in digital marketing. Outsourcing digital marketing can help you achieve your goals more effectively and make your business a success.
- How do you know what to keep in-house and which areas should be left in the hands of a professional digital marketing agency?
- What are the benefits of outsourcing?
- What should you consider before deciding to outsource your digital marketing?
- What are the benefits of leaving this area in the hands of professionals?
When is it time to outsource your digital marketing?
This is a common business dilemma. We all know that having digital marketing is not a matter of choice for a business that wants to grow, it’s a must. And making the right decision at the right time is critical to the success of your brand. Let’s look at what you need to think about to make that decision.
If you answered no to any of these questions, it’s time to consider outsourcing your digital marketing.
What digital marketing tasks can be outsourced
The biggest skills gap for businesses is usually in the area of digital marketing. Outsourced tasks may include blog writing and blog management, ad planning/organising, PPC campaign management, social media posting, running Facebook and other social media ads, and SEO management, to name just a few of the most important areas. However, not all agencies are equally skilled in all areas, so it’s worth thinking about what your business needs most.
1. Paid advertising
As we wrote in a previous article, from 2021, Google will own 92% of the global search market and 65% of customers will click on paid ads. With these numbers, there’s no question that it’s important to take advantage of paid online advertising opportunities. And the other paid advertising statistics in this article also show that it is not only Google Ads that should be exploited, but also social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
2. Digital strategy
We have also looked at the issue of digital marketing strategy several times. In order to advertise consciously and effectively through the myriad of tools provided by digital media, you need to know exactly what your goal is. You need accurate numbers, facts and data-driven decision making, otherwise you’ll just burn your money and not get the results you expect. Without a sound digital marketing strategy, you’re shooting sparrows with a cannon.
3. Social media
If you have at least one, if not more, social media platforms, you know exactly how much effort it takes to keep posting: figuring out what to post, finding and sizing images, writing text, timing it, and then managing the incoming follower activity. Social media is indeed an excellent marketing tool, but only if you use it correctly and properly maintain and exploit all its potential. Outsourcing your social media platforms can save you a lot of time, effort and money.
4. Website creation and management
The first step to a digital presence is to create a website and then manage it on an ongoing basis. As well as making sure that the content is compelling, relevant and optimised for search engines, you also need to update it regularly. By outsourcing all this to external experts with years of experience, you can be in safe hands as a key element of your digital presence.
5. Technical SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is something we hear a lot about and is indeed a key issue for any company that wants to ensure that its website ranks high in search results for relevant keywords. Unless you have your own team of highly skilled SEO professionals, it is unlikely that you can manage this activity effectively in-house.
6. Marketing automation
Marketing automation is a very important element of your digital marketing strategy. Repetitive tasks set by the marketing team (such as sending reminders saying “Oops – looks like you forgot something in your shopping cart.”) can be made much easier with software designed specifically for this purpose. These systems, working in conjunction with the company’s CRM, are able to “self-service” activities that would not be possible without the time or human resources available in-house. However, designing and configuring marketing automation systems is too complex a task to undertake without a full team and the right expertise.
7. CRO – or conversion rate optimisation
The goal of websites is usually to achieve conversion. In other words, a specific event (purchase, request for a quote, form submission, etc.) has taken place. In order to ensure that this happens as often and as effectively as possible, we need to continuously optimise our website. We need to look at the entire customer journey, analyse the data, identify the barriers to conversion and then optimise the website to improve conversion. As this is a very complex process with everything interlinked, it’s best to leave it to the experts.
8 reasons to outsource your digital marketing tasks?
In the ever-changing digital space, where not only knowledge is essential but also the technological possibilities are endless, we need to stay up-to-date to compete. This requires a lot of financial, human and time resources. If you leave it all to experts, you have more time to do what no one else can do: run your business.
1. Digital marketing agencies have greater expertise
One of the main advantages of outsourcing is expertise. Professional companies already have years of professional experience of a quantity and quality that is very difficult to match. Even if you have a good marketing agency in-house that you are happy with, digital marketing is a specialised field that requires a different type of knowledge.
2. Agencies have better tools and resources
Another reason to outsource digital marketing is that professional agencies have advanced digital marketing tools that cover the entire process, from planning to implementation to measurement and reporting. These software and various tools usually cost money and it is not enough to work with just one to be effective. But suppose you do decide to invest in these tools – who will manage them? How many people will you need? How long will it take for all the systems to be trained and used correctly, according to your goals? Does that make it seem less of a good solution?
3.More effective campaign management
As well as having the right expertise, (if you have the right experience) your digital marketing agency will have been working with online campaigns for years and will have encountered countless mistakes that they can deal with effectively. They know exactly the pitfalls that often cause others to fail. With this professional knowledge, you can achieve a higher return on investment (ROI) and make your business more effective.
4. Agencies achieve faster results
Agencies have been through the process of marketing optimisation and strategic marketing planning countless times, so it takes them much less time to identify and correct any errors, as they have a complete toolkit to effectively eliminate them. It should be remembered, however, that digital marketing success takes time, and you can’t expect instant results. If any agency or freelancer promises instant results, they are not reliable.
5. Agencies have larger teams
As digitalmarketing is a very diverse field, you need people who are experts in their field. This can often mean 4-5 people, depending on the complexity of campaigns and goals. Keeping all this in-house is a very costly and high-risk decision due to high turnover. In addition, the experts provided by the agencies will be able to look at your campaigns from a wide and varied perspective.
6.You can save on school fees
It’s quite clear that if you put digital marketing in the hands of professionals, you don’t have to learn and understand this area yourself, which is a lot of time and energy. Digital marketing agencies with many years of experience know exactly which areas to start with and which ones are lagging behind in terms of achieving results.
7.The agency has more time
Okay, that statement in itself is not true, I believe everyone has the same amount of time, however, the agency time that is spent planning, creating, managing and reporting on your campaigns is not taking precious minutes away from you and your colleagues.
8. Up-to-date knowledge
The undisputed advantage of agencies is their up-to-date knowledge of marketing trends. As the implementation of a marketing strategy is not an overnight process and often takes months or even years, you may have the knowledge you need at the start, but it is very difficult to keep up with the fast-paced changes in the digital world, and with the constant day-to-day work, you have little time to do so.
As a business owner or entrepreneur, there is always more to do than time. If you want to increase the visibility and success of your business, outsourcing digital marketing can be one of the keys.
How to choose the right digital marketing partner?
Choosing the right digital marketing agency has already been covered in detail in a previous article, but we would like to mention the main points here.
- Check the agency’s website to see if they have experience in your industry? If so, it’s worth checking out their track record and client testimonials.
- Be sure to check how they measure success and what metrics they use to do so.
- See how often and in what format you will receive reports and analyses.
- Make sure their processes are transparent and that you are involved in the decisions.
- And most importantly, make sure you have the same mindset and understand each other’s language.
In summary
If you feel that you have some gaps in your digital marketing and are unsure about how to use some key tools, or are not satisfied with your current results, you should consider hiring professionals to do the job. Not only will this save you time and money, but it can also give you knowledge you would never have had the chance to acquire on your own. Agency digital marketing teams have years of industry experience and knowledge that is essential for any business trying to keep up with this rapidly evolving world, as one of the keys to competitiveness lies in digital marketing.