For a lot of businesses, particularly ones on the smaller side, digital marketing can be a bit of a mystery, but at the same time, not having a digital marketing strategy is not an option. Digital marketing is the core of what most businesses do to reach customers and build loyalty, but what do you do if you’re a very small business and no one in your organization has the skills for it?
Or maybe your team is already stretched thin, and they simply don’t have the time to dedicate to digital marketing, and you don’t have the budget to bring on new people.
The option for many businesses is to outsource their marketing, and in particular, their digital marketing. Below are the top advantages of taking that strategy, as opposed to trying to handle it in-house.
Lower Costs
The most basic of the benefits of outsourcing your digital marketing is the cost. It can be extremely expensive to do it in-house because not only do you need the employees, but there are other costs associated with it like training and technology, just to name a few.
When you outsource your marketing, you get a lot of technical advantages at a significantly lower cost than you would with any other option.
Expertise
Digital marketing is a rapidly evolving and technically driven environment, and if you want to remain competitive and on the cutting edge of what’s happening in your industry, outsourcing can be best. Otherwise, you’re going to be regularly paying for training, or else your in-house marketing team is likely to fall behind.
For example, let’s say you deploy SAS software as a way to use predictive modeling in your analytics and marketing. Then, you’re not only paying for the software deployment and implementation, but you’ll also have to invest in employee SAS certification.
On the other hand, outsourcing to a professional digital marketing firm will mean they already have the necessary knowledge and expertise, and that comes built into the price of their service.
Technology
Speaking of implementing new software, it’s important to have strong, robust big data software to keep up with digital marketing in today’s environment.
This software changes rapidly, and it’s hard to keep pace, and it can also be hard on your budget.
Again, this is something else that’s built into the cost of outsourced marketing. You’re paying not just for the expertise, but also the technological tools these people have at their disposal, and you don’t have to worry about the cost or time it would take to get new technology up and running in your organization.
Turning Data Into Action
As a final advantage to outsourcing digital marketing, think about whether or not anyone in your team is going to be able to take large sets of complex data and then make those insights actionable. Even if you do your digital marketing in-house and you have the technology to gather data, will your team then have the ability to turn that data into something that improves profitability?
Chances are, the answer is no. There are a lot of elements that come together in digital marketing, and for many businesses it can be advantageous to look outside their own walls to find the talent that can deliver the results they need.