What do you do if marketing really isn’t one of your company’s core competencies? For many businesses, what they’re good at is building, manufacturing, creating, advising, or in some other way applying their expertise to a specific problem. For them, marketing is a “necessary evil”. They know they aren’t particularly strategic about it. And they know they don’t do it that well.
Should you “double-down”, gut it out, and try harder to create a successful marketing program? Or should you enlist the services of someone that specializes in marketing? Here are a few reasons to consider outsourcing your marketing efforts.
Attention: Employees tend to gravitate toward the things they’re good at. Engineers want to engineer. Finance people want to work with numbers. Craftsmen want to build things. Good marketing, however, needs consistent attention and monitoring. It’s not something you can do once in a while. The marketplace is constantly changing and your marketing needs to adapt and adjust.
Expertise: Employees without a marketing background have to get up to speed on trends and tools that will help them be effective. Companies without marketing experience can spend a lot of money on things they think should work. Marketing experts know there are certain activities to avoid. As a client, you get to tap into what these experts have learned with other companies.
Consistency: Many companies take the “Let’s throw something at the wall and see what sticks” approach to marketing. One result of that is branding and marketing that changes all the time. That confuses customers and makes them unsure about who you really are and what you do. Good marketers understand the importance of marketing strategy and consistency. They can ensure that a company’s message is clear and consistent.
Outside Perspective: Nobody knows your company like you do. But sometimes that can be a problem. Your customers don’t work for you. They don’t automatically understand things that you take for granted. An outside agency helps you to communicate to your customers in terms they understand.
Focus: When you turn marketing over to an outside source, you free yourself and your employees to focus on your core competencies. You can focus on what you do well (giving you a competitive edge over your competitors) and let the marketing people focus on what they do well.
Reduced Cost: Bringing in strong marketing talent full time is expensive. In addition to salaries (and good marketing people aren’t cheap), you’ve got benefits to consider. And you have to pay people whether they’re productive or not. With an outside agency you only pay for what you get. And you don’t have all the personnel problems to deal with, either.
Measurable Results: Many in-house marketing efforts are deemed “successful” once they get the message out (even if it’s not the right message). But too often there’s no follow-up and no accountability for the money spent. A good marketing agency will help a business track their results and plan next steps based on what was learned.
At TMR Direct our core competency is helping businesses succeed with their marketing efforts by tailoring our wide variety of marketing resources to their specific marketing needs and producing measurable results. Take a look at the marketing services we provide. If you’d like more information about outsourcing your marketing efforts, we’d be delighted to talk to you and help you focus on your core competencies.
Blog Post Written by Spencer Powell
Spencer is the Inbound Marketing Director at TMR Direct. Spencer specializes in helping clients create and execute effective inbound marketing campaigns.