Outsourcing Marketing: The Smarter and Proven Way

Contracting, sub-contracting, or ‘externalizing’ marketing activities to free up cash, personnel, time, and facilities for activities where the firm holds a competitive advantage. This results in your organization being able to concentrate on selling your solution, and thus reducing your average unit cost

There are four primary scenarios when our clients call Direct Objective for assistance:

• • When the company is too small for a marketing team, or their current employees lack specific expertise
  • When a company is too busy with daily operations and simply does not have enough time to implement a well-strategized and effective marketing campaign
  • When someone is looking for a second opinion, seeking an alternate direction, or trying to analyze a campaign failure from the past
  • When they realize that there are certain tasks that cannot be done internally. For example, most companies will outsource market research and strategic marketing work, as these tasks require a non-biased approach and fresh external outlook

You can outsource whatever portion of marketing activities that you feel comfortable to outsource. Moreover, if you prefer to do most of the work in-house and just have us review your work and provide you advice on how to improve it and get better results, we are also equipped to coach you.

Marketing has evolved into many areas formerly controlled by sales. Today, marketing consultant firms still help companies create marketing strategies, but can also develop branding designs, generate and nurture leads, and measure the results of marketing campaigns. By offering a diverse range of services, firms like Direct Objective can get involved at almost any stage of business growth. Read more in our B2B Marketing Services page.

Though some salespeople can also do marketing jobs, they are usually not trained for the broad spectrum of marketing tasks. More importantly, they often do not have the time. Salespeople are better doing what they do best, which is converting qualified leads into sales.

If your marketing professional has extensive experience, can keep up with the evolution of marketing, has the time to strategize, create branding, develop content, execute, nurture leads, automate, and assess the results, then outsourcing is probably not the solution for your company. On the other hand, the marketing professionals that we meet tell us that it is very difficult for them to execute everything. Thus, they ask for coaching in certain areas to allow them to better outsource a standalone area of expertise, or to assist them in defining the marketing ROI for certain activities.

Experience, experience, experience. Any outside hire should have a proven record of marketing consulting for at least five years, and not just a consultant between jobs. Prior business experience in fields outside of consulting is also important to gain perspective and understand the day-to-day procedures of the companies they’re working for. If your hire has a solid understanding, or even first-hand experience, within your own area of expertise it is incredibly advantageous for you. For example, if you’re a technology company you must make sure the consulting group fully understands the complexity of your innovation, or if you’re targeting international markets, make sure you outsource your marketing to someone with a proven track record in the international arena.

Here are a few of the common symptoms that can be effectively solved through outsourcing your marketing:

• Unsure of how to turn your website into a lead generation tool
• Inactivity or weak online presence in your social media channels
• Marketing material hasn’t been updated in over a year
• Salespeople continue to complain they do not have enough material, or their leads are dead ends
• You plan to engage your clients with an interesting new blog every month, but do not have the time to do it
• Your company is buried deep on page 20 on Google Search and you are not sure what to do
• Confused about attending a trade show, or what to do to have a return for your investment
• A very promising prospect said they might be interested in six months, and you’re not certain about the way to keep this lead alive