Marketing plays a key role in growing a small business. No matter how good your brand, products, and services are, your efforts will go to waste if you don’t invest in significant ways to let people know about what you have to offer. Hence, this part of your business strategy must not be overlooked and instead be one of those you consider among the most important.
In doing so, knowing and weighing your options on how you should go about this is the first step. One option to consider is to partner with a third-party service provider to take care of your needs, which is called outsourcing. Marketing outsourcing for small business has been a popular strategy for years now, and its relevance in today’s market is something you should look out for.
In this guide, we’ll talk about how marketing outsourcing works, why you must consider it due to its benefits, its common types, and how outsourcing experts can help you achieve your goals in no time. Let’s dive in.
What is Outsourced Marketing?
Outsourced marketing is an approach or strategy of hiring a third-party service firm to work on an organization’s marketing efforts. The nature of the operational and strategic functions that can be outsourced in relation to marketing can vary based on a small business’s needs. Third-party firms have teams with specialized expertise in marketing strategy solutions, tools, and services which make them viable partners for small businesses.
Also, outsourced marketing teams can either replace the need for you to have your own in-house marketing team or serve as an addition to your internal team members to improve your marketing strategies.
Why Should Startups or SMEs Outsource Marketing?
Startups and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) like you can know if marketing outsourcing is right for you if you want to:
1. Build a sustainable growth path.
Some business owners, at a certain point, come to the realization of when it’s time to prioritize growing their business quicker to achieve their goals. So, instead of hiring more full-time marketing team members, they consider hiring outsourced staff to ensure scalability and flexibility.
2. Test out a short-term outsourcing contract.
If you’re not ready to hire a full-time marketing team, working with a third-party firm with a fixed, short-term contract can also be a good option. This way, you can try entrusting a specific marketing campaign first to your outsourced staff. If the results are favorable, then you can then opt to work with them for more marketing tasks and enter longer outsourcing contracts.
3. Upgrade your current campaigns.
Whether you have an in-house team or not, some campaigns you might have may need extra support or expertise that you can either get from hiring and training new members or partner with outsourced staff.
For certain campaigns, outsourced marketing services can be a better option especially if you just want to upgrade your efforts for a short-term period and don’t need to keep them for a long time. This way, you can have more flexible ways to keep your marketing campaigns trendy, updated, and competitive.
4. Implement strategies but you’re pressed for time.
Since marketing is an ever-changing landscape, there might be times that you’ll be obligated to create campaigns and implement them with only so much time in your hands to account for evolving consumer trends and behavior. Hence, keeping up with them must also be part of your approach to your marketing strategies.
This is where professional outsourcing services can help. Since hiring and training new members just to cater to a specific marketing tactic with limited time can be challenging, choosing marketing outsourcing for small business can help you maintain your visibility in the market.
Benefits of Outsourcing Your Marketing for Small Business
Now, how does marketing outsourcing for small business really help in streamlining and sustaining your marketing efforts? Here are just some of its benefits that you can also reap if you choose this approach.
1. Collaboration with Skilled Marketing Professionals
Having an outsourced marketing team lets you gain new viewpoints and learn new ways of doing things in your marketing function as you work with members outside your in-house team. Also, you can choose outsourcing firms that have employees with various job levels that you can leverage in improving the way your marketing tactics are implemented.
2. Easy Access to the Right Tools
An outsourced marketing agency is typically big on investing in specialized tools and tech to provide stellar services to their clients. Once you’ve decided to hire one, you can also ensure that the ones working on your marketing projects have competitive skills and use topnotch tools to carry out your unique needs.
3. More Affordable
Since you won’t have to buy extra tools and equipment for your outsourced staff, you can then save money. Likewise, you won’t need to recruit, hire, and onboard new members the way you do for full-time, in-house employees. That said, you can avoid spending too much of your resources such as time, money, and effort and make use of them more efficiently through outsourcing.
4. Ability to Refocus Your Resources
In relation to the benefit of saving money, you can then focus on reallocating your resources to the other key functions of your business. These may include sourcing quality suppliers, building your brand through public relations (PR), and improving your internal operations. In the long run, you can gain insights on how to better manage your resources and where to focus your main strategies toward growth and success.
5. More Efficient
Running or managing a small business can be overwhelming and mean never-ending to-do lists. If you can’t afford having an in-house team for now, consider working with an outsourced marketing firm to do the job. This way, your other business processes won’t suffer while you create or find ways to sustain your marketing efforts. Also, you can get more projects done at the same time and maximize your time across various functions in your organization.
Common Types of Marketing Solutions for Small Business
While it’s always best to consult third-party marketing firms for custom services to fit businesses’ unique needs, the following are the most common types you can hire.
Content Marketing
One of the many ways for you to reach and gain more of your potential market is through creative and authoritative content that can inform and entertain them as well as persuade them to buy from you. The benefits of content marketing when outsourced include:
- expanded brand awareness;
- industry authority; and
- quality leads.
Email Marketing
Another way for you to effectively market your products and services to gain new leads and retain existing customers is through outsourced email marketing. It’s a helpful way to increase your conversion rates through enticing calls-to-action (CTAs), well-targeted email promotions, and “human” spiels.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Creating a social media marketing plan, an in-depth strategy document or reference that outlines a business’s specific strategies and goals for their SMM efforts, can be tedious and challenging. This is especially true because navigating the world of social media entails being keen on trends, tone of voice, and unique approaches to cater to the online audience. This explains why outsourcing SMM is key to be able to create a robust strategy for many marketing channels where your business is fit to thrive in.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Having a website set up for your business is a good beginning, but it shouldn’t stop there. Aside from having a well-built and designed website, it must be optimized for search engines such as Google to ensure your business gets noticed and known by users searching online. SEO lets you drive more quality leads to your website and improve your conversion rate through optimized content and high-ranking positions on Google’s search results pages.
Influencer Marketing
As a fairly newer strategy, working with influencers to introduce and reinforce your brand’s products and services to specific audiences is also one thing to consider in marketing outsourcing for small business. Influencers are industry tastemakers from a wide range of niches, which include beauty, lifestyle, travel, pop culture, and fashion. These trusted figures get hired or contracted by businesses to try out their products, give their honest reviews on them, and let more audiences learn about such and potentially decide to purchase.
Public Relations (PR)
This marketing tactic refers to a set of techniques used to manage the way pieces of information about a business or brand gets to the public, especially the media. Its most common goals include choosing the best ways to share company news and updates, manage brand reputation, and devise positive angles on negative events to minimize backlash.
How Does Outsourcing Save Money?
Relatively, outsourcing costs can be more flexible and bearable compared to the traditional way of doing your marketing efforts in-house. In this sense, professional outsourcing services let you control when you should outsource your projects and which aspects of your marketing campaigns need more hands. This can also help you avoid overspending on unnecessary resources and make wiser decisions on what’s better and best for your business.
Work with a Trusted Outsourcing Firm for Your Unique Needs
Now that you’re more familiar with the basics and benefits of marketing outsourcing for small business, it’s time for you to be the next business owner who can reap the advantages this approach can present to their marketing campaigns.
Outsource-Philippines’ digital marketing services aim to help small business owners like you to improve your marketing efforts across channels and reach your short- and long-term goals. With our wide-ranging experience, up-to-date knowledge, and high-quality services, you can trust us to boost your strategies while making our partnership worthwhile.
Want to know more about our professional outsourcing services? Contact us now to get a free quote!
