How to Create a Digital Marketing Outsourcing Strategy
“Here’s my problem. I’ve got a limited budget and just couple of people in-house with some marketing experience. Which digital marketing services should I be outsourcing? My priority is to provide the time and space for my own people to focus on what they do best?”
This is the kind of enquiry the Outsource Your Marketing team gets regularly. Growing businesses know they can benefit from outsourced marketing services, but they lack the headspace to create a strategy for blending outsourced and in-house digital marketing. Get it right, though, and it can feel like you’ve doubled your marketing resource overnight – and improved the quality and creativity of your digital marketing output.
In this article the OYM team offer an answer to the ‘which digital marketing services should I be outsourcing?’ question, by offering a clear strategy for making your decisions.
Digital Marketing Outsourcing Strategy
First, carry out an audit of the solid marketing skills you have in-house, the hours you can afford to spend on marketing (rather than running the business), and the tasks that are currently not getting done because there’s no-one to do them.
Second, list the digital marketing priorities for the business. These are the activities that are foundational to growing the business and converting leads:
- Web Design – responsive, fast-loading, search engine optimised.
- Ongoing SEO – generating new SEO enriched content to establish your ranking in search engines.
- Pay-Per-Click – paid ads, strategically placed and SEO enriched, that are designed to target your customer demographic and drive traffic to your site.
Web design, SEO and PPC all play their part in driving search traffic to your website. The better they are able to do this the higher your search engine ranking, which grows your traffic further. It’s the online growth cycle that every business needs in order to succeed. The skills required are specialist and are normally fulfilled by people with detailed expertise and experience. If you don’t have anyone in-house who can cover them, we recommend that you prioritise outsourcing them.
Digital Marketing Services to Outsource
Web Design
SEO
Pay-Per-Click
To Outsource or Not to Outsource?
You may find that tasks such as email marketing, social media or copy writing are the ones that your in-house team feel more comfortable with. They do, however, eat up time and resources, so if you feel that your time is better spent growing the business, outsource the task to a specialist.
- Email Marketing Campaigns. This is something most in-house teams feel confident with. There are plenty of platforms, such as MailChimp, that make the process simple. Automation can be difficult to set up initially, so you might want to outsource a set up and tutorial, after which the in-house team should be able to manage it themselves.
- Social Media. This is a time-consuming task which needs patience, creativity and stamina. If a member of the in-house team is enthusiastic about building a community of followers, and is able to commit time each day, it is an excellent option to keep in-house.
- Copy Writing. This is a skill that all members of marketing teams are expected to have, so it makes sense to keep everyday tasks such as blogging, creating content for SM posts, and email marketing in house. There is an argument to be made for outsourcing copy writing on larger projects such as: white papers, eBooks, website copy or webinar/podcast scripts.
Goal Driven Outsourced Marketing
Businesses sometimes delay outsourcing digital marketing in fear that it will be a drain on the limited resources. In fact, the opposite is true. Outsourced marketing is always goal-driven, and founded on a 3-step process:
- Identify business goal/s.
- Determine the appropriate marketing activities to achieve goal/s.
- Create a strategy designed to deliver results and business growth.
Your outsourced digital marketing budget is an investment for growth; if the strategy is sound, your return will provide a profit on the initial outlay.
About Working With Outsource Your Marketing
OYM is a digital marketing agency that does the work you don’t have time for. We can do as little or as much as you need us to do, and we’ll work for you only when you need us. Our team is made up of web designers, SEO specialists and digital marketers who work across a range of sectors and are hugely experienced.
