Outsourcing Marketing Services: Tips for Success

Before, most of small businesses and even big businesses looking to get more hands and expertise to achieve more aggressive and intensive marketing are left with hiring permanent marketing staff for the task. However, there’s now a more viable and most cost-saving alternative – outsourcing marketing services.

In the past decade, outsourcing has evolved to become a more commonly practiced phenomenon in almost all sectors and spheres of business. Reduced and variable costs, increased flexibility, access to a wealth of expertise, competitive advantage, reduced risk and much more are the major reasons for the increased popularity of outsourcing marketing and just any business function.

However, in order to achieve success with marketing outsourcing, here are some useful tips for you;

Tip 1: Be Sure about What You Want to Achieve

While outsourcing marketing services provide great solution for businesses, you can only get the right result if you identify what you want to achieve with the concept. For instance, here are some typical pointers that you may need to outsource your marketing and will get the right result subsequently;

• You need an experienced marketing director affordably; in this case it means you need a more experienced person to direct your marketing affairs but cannot afford to pay someone on a full-time basis. Another reason could be that you only want the director’s services temporarily. In either case, outsourcing your marketing is likely to produce great result.

• The need for skills transfer; you need a marketing expert just to train your marketing employees in-house within a short period of time. In this case, it will be more costly as well as waste of money to employ a full time marketing trainer/expert for this task.

• Need for variable marketing skill requirements; you probably only have just two marketing employees in the meantime but will be needing more hands in various aspects of marketing in an affordable manner. Obviously, a complete outsourced team could be a better alternative.

There are tons of other pointers that would make outsourcing marketing services a result-oriented direction for your business.

Tip 2: Determine if You Need Marketing Outsourcing on a Long or Short Term

Also, to make outsourcing a beneficial venture, you need to determine the duration for which you need the service. For instance, if you want to save more on fixed costs, or you are not yet ready for long-term employment of marketing personnel, outsourcing would work well for you. But, if what your business needs is full-time, long-term resource, the more cost-effective alternative would be employing someone in-house.

Tip 3: Pinpoint the Cost Advantage

For instance, the cost advantage when it comes to outsourcing versus employing a full time marketing employee for SMEs include not incurring any overhead cost, plus the costs are variable. In this case, there is a clearly identifiable cost advantage for deciding to outsource.

Also, in order to benefit greatly from outsourcing marketing services, you should adopt thorough process in assessing and interviewing an outsourced marketing service provider, just as you would do when hiring a full-time employee. The assesssment should include ‘cultural fit’ with your line of business and so on.

Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.