Save Time and Money By Outsourcing Marketing Services

Executives often ask us why hiring a marketing agency is better than just hiring an in-house marketer. We explain why it’s important to understand the impact of this decision on your organization and why an internal person may appear less costly, but in reality it may cost you significantly more in added expenses, slow progress, and lost revenue.

This situation occurs when we start working with a President or an Executive through the sales cycle and we get to the point where we start talking about money, sometimes they’ll ask me, “Well, if I’m going to be spending $8,000 a month with you, why don’t I just hire a full-time person? I’ll find somebody with a marketing MBA to be on staff and work with us full-time.”

Why It’s Not Apples-to-Apples

And we always say, “You can certainly do that. That’s always an option, but make sure you understand what goes into that decision.” So let’s take a look at this because it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

If you hire a full-time MBA or an experienced marketing manager, that’s one person and they’re going to come with a static set of experience and skills. If you spend that same amount of money with Shanahan Strategy or with another marketing agency, it looks very different, because we can spend that $96,000 of hours across any slice of the pie that makes up our agency. Maybe one month you need an ebook, the month after that you want to build a new website, you might need help with SEO, you might need some strategy around a trade show or product launch.

The way that we can bring different resources to bear and really use that money in a lot of different ways is much different than having a static person that may have to begin outsourcing to fill their knowledge gaps.

Also, consider the fact that you’re not spending money on benefits when outsourcing your marketing services. You’re not spending money on vacation time or holidays. All of those dollars are being employed directly to your business; they’re not being held up in overhead, internal meetings, other unrelated projects, office politics, et cetera. Instead, that money is directly making sure your marketing is getting executed.

A Broad Base of Skills and Experience

And the last thing that we would say if you’re considering this is: think about how many hours a day inside an agency that we talk about industrial marketing. Right? It’s almost 100% of the time. It’s what we do all day, every day. We talk about websites, email campaigns, marketing automation, and we’re always looking at best practices. Furthermore, we’re constantly testing new strategies, reading and researching, sending people to conferences, participating in webinars, and always staying on the cutting edge.

In contrast, most of the conversations that a full-time staffer is going to have every day is around your product and employing marketing against that. This is really helpful because they’re going to have more context than perhaps we will if they’re internal. But will they always be on the bleeding edge and will they always have a breadth of other campaigns and context to pull from to make sure that you’re not the one spending the dollars on all of the testing.

We’ve figured a lot of that out and so we’re able to map that methodology and that process to our clients every day. This is something to think about. The internal marketing staffer versus outsourcing marketing services is just not an apples-to-apples comparison. Certainly, both models work for different companies, but just be sure you know what you’re deciding and the real impact on your business.

Top Reasons Why Outsourcing Makes Good Business Sense 

• Alleviate Bandwidth Issues
• Reduce Overhead Costs
• Broaden Your Base of Skills and Experience
• Accelerate Your Pace of Execution
• Leverage Unique Industry Experience
• Augment Your Team with New Skills
• Ensure Consistency with Continuity
• Get Clarity on the Big Picture
• Obtain Fresh Input and Ideas from an Outsider

How About a Conversation?

You know the results you want. We know how to achieve them. Let’s talk to see if we’re a fit. This is what we help industrial marketers navigate every single day. 

The initial consultation is free.  If you’re thinking, “this is exactly what we need,” then let’s talk. We want to hear about your goals and frustrations. If there’s an opportunity to work together, great. If not, we’ll point you in the right direction.