Outsourced Digital Marketing: Risks, Benefits, & How To Do It Right

If this resonates with you and you're ready to take your marketing and business to the next level, this comprehensive guide is for you. First, we'll walk you through a few different types of digital marketing agencies and some key risks and benefits to be aware of. Then, dive into some key components that can help you ensure success.

Your Go-to Guide for Outsourced Digital Marketing

Outsourced digital marketing refers to hiring an external agency or team to handle various aspects of a company's digital marketing efforts. Some potential tasks include creating and managing social media campaigns, developing email marketing strategies, optimizing websites for search engines, and running pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Digital marketing agencies offer a deep understanding of the latest digital marketing trends and techniques that most in-house or freelance marketing professionals can’t. They apply this knowledge to help their clients achieve marketing goals beyond what they could do with their limited team or resources. But, of course, outsourcing digital marketing has its challenges. 

You need a reputable agency with a proven track record of delivering client results. In addition, maintain open lines of communication with your outsourced team to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal: your digital marketing success.

(P.S. If you’re looking for an outsourced digital marketing team to help you grow, let’s talk.)

Different Types of Outsourced Digital Marketing

Outsourced digital marketing comes in many different forms, and there are a wide variety of different kinds of agencies that you can work with, like SEO specialists, CRO experts, and even video production teams. Larger agencies, or those that offer various services, will often employ specialists in all areas to serve their clients in multiple areas. 

Let’s dive into the specifics of some of the more popular agency types:

Social Media Agencies

Social media agencies manage your channels and build a formidable online presence and brand identity. They actively interact with customers, share captivating stories, collaborate with influencers, and establish connections with other players in the industry. They're an excellent choice for companies that want to fortify their community engagement and develop deeper relationships with their audience.

Ad Agencies

Ad agencies specialize in identifying the most suitable channels and ad placements based on your target audience and demographic to expand your reach. In addition, they recommend ways to optimize those ads and collaborate with you regularly to ensure you optimize your resources and see a steady flow of leads from your investment. Finally, ad agencies typically lead the development of ad copy and creative content, and they may also construct landing pages for their ads to direct traffic to.

Marketing Consultants

Marketing consultants are different from agencies in just that way: they’re consultants! These highly-experienced individuals are valuable resources for teams lacking a marketing leader or director to oversee a specific strategy. Consultants provide valuable insight and guidance to inform the CEO's decision-making and help lead the team toward success. They can also establish effective systems and processes for the internal team to execute their plans. However, they rarely assist in the actual campaign implementation like a marketing agency does.

Content Marketing Agencies

Content marketing agencies create high-quality and engaging content to drive traffic, increase engagement and generate leads. Their scope of work varies from writing blog posts to developing comprehensive content strategies based on SEO, Google rankings, and other metrics.

Typically, content marketing agencies conduct extensive keyword research, plan and manage content calendars, produce blogs, and provide regular reports on the results of their efforts. In addition, the most effective content agencies leverage either internal subject matter experts (SMEs) or customer SMEs to develop informative content that resonates deeply and specifically with a target audience.

Growth Marketing Agencies

Growth marketing agencies take content marketing to the next level by examining the entire customer journey and lifecycle to achieve exponential growth. These agencies specialize in niche services like website optimization, brand refreshes, and organic marketing. Growth marketing agencies leverage a holistic approach and focus on putting proper mechanisms in place to drive long-term success.

They do this by creating high-quality content and developing comprehensive strategies that address every stage of the customer journey. So whether you’re building brand awareness, nurturing leads, or driving conversions, growth marketing agencies achieve sustainable growth by deploying effective marketing techniques while optimizing their marketing channels.

Benefits of Outsourcing Digital Marketing 

Outsourced digital marketing offers many benefits to businesses of all sizes, including, but not limited to, these. 

Access to Expertise: 

Outsourcing digital marketing endeavors is a convenient way to tap into the expertise of professionals in these fields beyond your team’s reach. This lets you leverage their extensive knowledge and experience without incurring high training costs or hiring new staff.

Through outsourcing, you also get to work with a team of skilled professionals who understand the complexities of digital marketing and can help you achieve your marketing goals effectively and effectively. Their expertise will likely lead to better marketing strategies, techniques, and results than you could produce without it. 

Cost Savings: 

Outsourcing digital marketing can be cost-effective, especially for small businesses needing more resources to hire or train an in-house marketing team. By outsourcing your digital marketing, you also gain access to a full range of services at a lower cost than hiring a dedicated marketing team. Their expertise and proficiency in specialized services–like social media engagement, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising–make you an expert by extension. However, since these experts aren’t a part of your internal team, you can only pay for the services you really need.

Scalability and flexibility: 

Whether you need to ramp up your marketing efforts to respond to business growth or scale back due to budget constraints, outsourcing allows you to flexibly adapt your digital marketing campaigns to your changing business needs. By outsourcing, you can quickly and easily access the expertise of a team of professionals so you can remain flexible. This flexibility lets you quickly respond to market changes or scale your marketing efforts up or down without making staffing changes.

Focus on Core Competencies: 

Outsourcing digital marketing also frees up internal resources so you can focus on core competencies and elevate your business's performance while sustaining a competitive advantage. 

Access to Technology:

Finally, outsourcing your digital marketing needs to an agency offers unique access to a wider range of tools and technologies to enhance your marketing efforts. Subscriptions to analytics platforms, social media management tools, email marketing software, etc., can be costly. If you’re a small or growing business, it’s easier to justify the costs of an outsourced partner with access to all these tools than paying double for the tools and the internal professionals to run them.

Risks 

Although outsourcing digital marketing can provide numerous advantages, there are also potential risks worth considering. Take precautions to mitigate these risks by choosing an outsourcing partner with a proven track record of delivering results.

What should you keep in mind? Here are some common risks associated with outsourcing:

Loss of Control: 

Outsourcing your digital marketing to a third-party agency means trusting them to promote your brand and communicate with your audience. However, this also means you give up control over how your brand is publicly represented. 

Communication Issues: 

If you and your outsourced team aren’t on the same page and communicating well, misinterpretations, delays, and even errors can occur while executing your digital marketing campaigns and impact your ROI.

Quality Concerns: 

Poor quality marketing and black hat tactics can harm your brand's reputation and lead to penalties from search engines or social media platforms. For businesses that rely heavily on their online presence to attract customers and generate revenue,  this negatively impacts customer trust and loyalty, which also impacts ROI.

Security Risks: 

Trusting a third-party agency with sensitive information about your business, including customer data and financial information, is always a risk. Potential data breaches or security issues can lead to losing sensitive data or financial fraud and damaging your reputation.

Lack of Accountability: 

Finally, outsourcing digital marketing can present challenges with accountability as businesses rely on a third-party agency to deliver on their promise and achieve desired results. If the outsourced team fails to deliver or meet expectations, it can be challenging to hold them accountable. This results in wasted time, resources, and revenue for your business.

How To Outsource Digital Marketing

Follow these critical best practices to achieve outsourced digital marketing success.

Establish Clear Objectives: 

Identify clear business goals and objectives, like improving brand awareness, generating leads, or increasing website traffic, and focus on finding a partner to meet those goals. By clearly understanding what you want to achieve, you guarantee that your digital marketing endeavors are concentrated, precise, and impactful.

Additionally, establishing clear goals and objectives provides clear ways to track and measure the success of your outsourced campaigns. The more precise your success metrics, the better you can adjust and refine your strategy to achieve the best results.

Do Your Research: 

When selecting an outsourcing partner for your digital marketing needs, it's essential to do your research. Start by identifying agencies specializing in your industry with a proven track record of delivering results. Next, look for transparent and collaborative agencies that offer clear communication and regular updates throughout the process. This establishes trust and confidence in the agency while ensuring they are committed to achieving your business goals.

Communicate Clearly and Regularly:

Establishing clear lines of communication with your outsourcing partner from the start is essential, as setting expectations for how you will communicate throughout the project. Frequent check-ins and updates can guarantee progress and everyone is in sync with the project's goals and objectives. In addition, by keeping communication open, you can quickly identify any issues or areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to the campaign to ensure it's on track to deliver the desired results.

Maintain Control: 

Outsourcing your digital marketing can provide access to valuable expertise and resources. However, it's crucial to maintain control over your brand messaging and ensure that your campaigns align with your business objectives and values.

Don’t relinquish control completely. Instead, establish a collaborative partnership with your outsourcing partner that includes open communication and regular check-ins to ensure your campaigns align with your overall goals and messaging.

Monitor Results:

Tracking and monitoring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts lets you analyze the performance of your campaigns, identify what's working well, and make the necessary adjustments to improve your ROI.

With careful monitoring, you can measure the success of your campaigns against predetermined key performance indicators and ensure that you are getting the desired results from your outsourcing partners. Moreover, this will keep you up-to-date on the progress and bring any potential issues to light early on so you can proactively address them.

Provide Feedback: 

Providing feedback to your outsourcing partner helps them understand your preferences and ensure your campaigns align with your brand. You know more about your ideal customer than even the best partner could. So, the more you share, the better they can fine-tune their approach and provide superior outcomes. Providing regular feedback also demonstrates that you are engaged and invested in the success of your digital marketing efforts.

Maintain Transparency: 

An outsourcing partner who is open and honest about their approach and strategies and provides regular reports on their activities and results is essential. However,  your transparency is also vital to success. If you have thoughts or concerns about your partnership, you need to share those! Otherwise, you’re setting yourself–and your outsourcing partner–to fail by not communicating expectations clearly.

The Road to Successful Outsourced Digital Marketing 

At Lean Labs, We’re a leading agency for outsourced digital marketing due to our unique approach and impressive track record of delivering results for our clients. We understand the challenges and opportunities involved in outsourced digital marketing, and we specialize in helping businesses grow by providing growth marketing and web design services.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you to grow your business through outsourced digital marketing.

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