Marketing Outsourcing
Before you think about whether and, if so, which part of your marketing you assign to external experts, you should take a look at the trends in marketing and then think about whether your company is equipped for the tasks of the future.
Trends in marketing for ICT companies: The most important facts from a recent Bitkom study (as of November 2019):
More than half of the companies surveyed outsource marketing tasks to external service providers – and the trend is rising.
Companies spend 6 percent more on their online marketing activities than in 2018.
More than half of the companies expect increasing budget shares for lead generation via content requiring registration, for social media and for SEA /SEO for the coming year.
Almost two thirds of companies carry out success checks of their marketing measures.
Lead management and marketing automation are becoming increasingly important for companies – 46 and 30 percent, respectively, indicate that these measures will be of great importance in the future.
The specialization and technical tasks in marketing are constantly increasing. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many companies to find and retain suitable personnel. As a result, more than half of the companies already assign marketing tasks to external service providers – and the trend is rising.
In many cases, it is recommended to hire external marketing specialists. First, however, you should ask yourself whether it makes sense to set up or expand an internal marketing team or whether you would prefer to choose marketing outsourcing. Or is there a middle ground?
Here are some questions, the answer to which can give you an idea of whether marketing outsourcing is worthwhile for you and your company:
- 1. Is your need consistently so great to employ your own marketing team permanently for years to come?
- 2. Do your employees have enough expertise to cope with the rapidly increasing demands? Keywords here are: Content Marketing, HubSpot, Online and Social Media Marketing as well as SEO & SEA.
- 3. Do your marketing staff actively take care of winning new customers and customer care?
- 4. How fast are you currently growing and do you expect growth rates to increase in the next 12 to 18 months? Can your marketing grow accordingly and do you find enough talented employees?
- 5. Do you have the knowledge and the right tools to check the success of marketing measures and thus learn from each action?
- 6. Are you satisfied with your quality standards and the services that your company provides?
If you answer “no” to even one of these questions, it is already advisable to seriously consider marketing outsourcing and use external experts.
Marketing Outsourcing with EKK Industrial Sales and Marketing Management
The advantages of marketing outsourcing are obvious:
- 1. Fixed costs become variable costs. You pay exactly when – and only when – you have a need for marketing support.
- 2. The costs are known before each marketing campaign and can be calculated exactly. In marketing outsourcing, you use the best external resources and do not have to commit yourself in the long term. This keeps your company agile and lean.
- 3. External marketing specialists are much more up to date and have a high level of technical expertise – otherwise they would have disappeared from the market long ago.
- 4. Increase quality & accelerate projects. A marketing outsourcing agency is always interested in to deliver the best possible quality – otherwise there will be no follow-up orders
- 5. Use experience! A specialized marketing agency has a wealth of experience from hundreds of projects and knows exactly what works – and what doesn’t.
- 6. Investing in success! Everyone should do exactly what they do best. An online agency can create a website much better and faster than a webmaster on the customer side. And in the same way, a content agency can create fresh texts “at the touch of a button” – the various specialist editors ensure this.
- 7. Unobstructed view from the outside without “operational blindness”. Long-time internal employees tend to look at everything through the “we’ve always done it this way” glasses. External marketing support brings creative ideas and a breath of fresh air.
- 8. Share technical resources and tools. In modern digital marketing, various external – often very expensive – software tools are needed (keyword: marketing automation, SEO, tracking, dashboards, …). A marketing agency can spread these costs among many customers. The result for you: you save money.
Outsourcing is not a new topic and has long established itself in many areas: accounting, fleet management, building management, programming, design & media design, …
In the same way, you should benefit from the experience of professional agencies in marketing outsourcing and thus save time and money!
For larger companies, on the other hand, it can be worthwhile to combine the best of both worlds: an internal, dedicated marketing team that knows your company well, combined with a marketing outsourcing partner who is dedicated to specific topics.
Face the constantly new challenges of the digital world – together with technically strong partners who have long understood, mastered and conquered them.
summ-it Consulting
Marketing Outsourcing – What you should pay attention to
When it comes to working with a marketing outsourcing service provider, you should rely on three things: your gut feeling, the external image of the agency and its reference customers.
Your gut feeling comes first, because it is about the trusting and sometimes very close & long-term cooperation with the marketing outsourcing agency. Never underestimate how important it is for personalities to fit together. Does a young and hip brand agency really fit your claim to win B2B customers in the enterprise sector? Can this agency actually reliably implement the relaunch of its completely new product series?
Then take a look at the external presentation. Is the website up-to-date? Does it seem well thought out, does the design, text and – most importantly – the content agree? If you are looking for a social media agency, for example: Is the agency represented in the relevant social networks and actively on the move: is it implementing what you want to buy from it?
Our tip: Start outsourcing with a small project that is not business-critical. So you can immediately see whether the chemistry is right and whether people and working methods fit together.