For many startups and growing companies, the marketing department often (sadly) gets the short end of the budgeting stick, as sales and customer service become highly prioritized. With a limited budget, marketing managers must decide which campaigns should be outsourced to a marketing agency.
Which campaign should be organized by your internal marketing team?
Firstly, we need to define which campaigns shouldn’t be outsourced and should be executed by your internal marketing team only. This will help us identify the non-negotiable key elements of a campaign that cannot be outsourced.
1. Public relations campaign
Since you know all the major players of your market, from partners to influencers, you should assign someone in the internal marketing team to communicate with them.
Outsourcing a marketing agency to do public relations is technically possible, and there are instances that work for a company, such as creating a large pool of affiliate partners using scripted messaging (e.g. cold calling or emailing). This may not work if your brand’s image is already well-known and too sensitive for an agency to do the work on your behalf.
2. Organized event marketing (offline or online)
Event organizers can help you with your offline events, but ultimately your brand representatives (i.e. your sales, customer service, and product developers) must be present to deliver the key messages directly.
Outsourcing a marketing agency or event organizer can only save time to prepare the space and logistics for the event, whether online (such as a webinar) or offline. It’s often useful to consult with a marketing agency to regulate and experiment with various brand messaging tactics, but ultimately it must be the brand’s representatives who interact with prospects directly.
3. Creating visual Assets
A photographer or designer can help present your products professionally, but it is up to the internal team to communicate what unique selling points should be emphasized, what the best parts of the product or service entail.
Which campaigns or projects can be outsourced by a marketing agency?
From the three points above, we can conclude that your internal marketing team should have absolute control over campaigns that heavily relies on your brand image, brand personification (human representative), and is going to affect the way buyers see your brand in display media.
These are some of the core elements that no third party should touch or modify. However, you can still delegate tasks around the core branding elements, that is where and when the brand messaging is going to be displayed.
In fact, it would be so much cheaper to seek help from an outsourced marketing agency such as Island Media Management to place your brand messaging online or offline.
1. Web design for user experience
Once you’ve provided a selection of photos, videos and authorized a brand visual guideline, it is then safe to hand over your marketing project to a third-party web designer to adopt the visual elements to your website.
2. Graphic design
Once again, a graphic designer can only translate your brand’s visual messaging into digital form. An outsourced graphic design can save you the need to employ a designer into your internal team, especially if you only need to design something once and for all, such as a logo or a web design.
3. Website development
A website development project can potentially run into setbacks if your team lacks a web developer, or the resources to facilitate a newly employed web developer. An outsourced digital marketing agency with years of experience in building dozens of websites can save you time and budget while building a custom website for you.
4. SEO content marketing
Writing about general topics (educational problem-solving-oriented content) are easy traffic generators, but many businesses tend to ignore them because the marketing team may lack the time or copywriting skills.
If you delegate writing general topics that do not require the writer to know everything about your product, it can save time. You may even get involved in writing content about your own products, since you know them so well.
5. Social media marketing
Contrary to popular belief, maintaining an active and engaging social media channel is not an easy task. Unlike blogging where content tends to be relevant for a longer time, consumers of social media demand to see fresh content more often, even daily.
Once you know the kind of content you want to post, and have provided images or videos to post, an outsourced creative writer can assist you in creating captions that accompany your visuals.
6. Digital advertising
Ads are risky and costly if not maintained well. However, they can be your best lead generator in the short-term. In order to maximize your budget, you should consult with an experienced online ads marketing service, and allow them to help you bid cost-per-clicks effectively.
If you haven’t employed a PPC and social media ad specialist, we encourage you to delegate the task to a trusted agent.
About Island Media Management
Island Media Management is a digital marketing agency based in Jakarta and Bali. If you’re looking to save time and budget on digital marketing, look no further than the blue wave logo. Delegate and leverage your marketing efforts with us.
