Marketing is a crucial and vital aspect of every business. From the traditional marketing of print media adverts, TV and Radio jingles, Banners, and others to the digital marketing(SEO, Social media, SEO Copywriting, Paid ads) of the 21st century.
The importance of marketing can not be overemphasized, and requires a lot of thought and plan to get the best result. One of the greatest headaches you can face as a business owner, or a manager of a business is that of marketing.
This problem materializes in different ways, but one of the most common issues is the decision (or indecision) about the right marketing method to adopt.
The majority of people are split between using an in-house marketing team or outsourcing their marketing to a digital agency.
This is what the article looks to help you understand, as it outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options to help you determine the best option for your business.
Page Contents
In-House Marketing: Pros
Complete Understanding of the company
This tops the list of the benefits of in-house marketing. The in-house marketing team will most likely be well familiar with the product and services of your company.
Due to that fact, they will find it easier to think up, create and employ marketing techniques that will align perfectly with the goals and objectives of your business and the products or services.
Quick Communication
This is another reason why you might want to consider in-house marketing over outsourcing. With in-house marketing, you can transcend quick communication to instant communication between you and your marketing team.
With this, you can create and roll out new marketing campaigns seamlessly. Also, with in-house marketing, organizing a meeting is easier and quicker than in an outsourced marketing situation.
Dedicated and motivated team members and employees
Your in-house marketing team will most likely be made up of employees who are obligated to the progress of the company. They understand that the continued success of the business is a vital deciding factor for their continued remuneration.
For this reason, the in-house marketing team will be more dedicated and motivated to achieve success for the business.
When the in-house marketing team now has a special interest or belief in the product and service offered by your business, this serves as an extra motivating factor to transcend and go beyond set goals.
These are some of the many advantages of in-house marketing. There are others that you’ll discover as you progress in your marketing and during the day-to-day activities of the business.
The Cons of In-house Marketing
Loss of interest and zeal
The interest and belief that a marketing team has for a product or service as offered by your business will serve as a motivator for the marketing team.
Therefore, if the marketing team suddenly suffers from a loss of interest in the product or service, this could lead to a lackadaisical attitude toward their aims and goals.
Loss of interest is a common factor among in-house marketing teams due to the monotony of the job. This is mostly true with single-product or service businesses.
The lack of variety can lead to boredom for the team and this will hurt the marketing campaign, sales, and ultimately the profitability and growth of the business.
Lack of Resources
As a small business, creating a dedicated in-house marketing team might be a strain on the company.
An in-house marketing team requires the hiring of all aspects of marketing from content creators to writers, campaign managers, graphics designers, and web designers among a lot of other required roles.
This might be too much for a small business to handle and can lead to watered-down creativity and below-par campaigns.
Commitment to staff
If you own an in-house marketing team for your business, you’ve directly made a long-term commitment to them as your employees. If the team is underperforming, it will be hard to just order the disbanding of the team.
Rather, you’ll be obligated to try and get them back to excellent performance. Over time it can get difficult to manage.
You might have to make a lot of adjustments and restructuring within the department, introduce fresh faces, hold meetings, organize training, and so on.
If there’s a need to release any one of your in-house marketing team members, this will become a tasking situation for HR. Severance packages and other accruing payments might be required in such situations.
This is one thing you can avoid with a digital agency. Once they are not productive, you can simply break ties with such agencies for another.
Outsourced Marketing: Pros
Outsourcing your marketing is an alternative to in-house marketing that you can explore for your business. How then can outsourcing digital marketing help your business?
The benefits of outsourcing your marketing include:
No problem with communication
The main concern of business owners with the outsourcing of their marketing is that of communication. However, with ever-increasing and powerful additions to the available modern technologies, the communication gap has been adequately bridged.
The marketing agencies of the 21st century have set up excellent communication channels to smoothen communication with clients. Therefore, the problem or issue with communication has been adequately solved.
Adequate experience and creativity
Marketing agencies have been in the business of creative marketing for a long time. They have marketers that are outside-the-box thinkers.
While your in-house marketing team might have deep personal knowledge and understanding of your products or services, outsourcing your business’ marketing needs helps you to leverage the experience and creativity of the agency.
Instant operation
With an in-house marketing team, you will be required to set some things in order. Like hiring, onboarding, training, and so on to ensure the productivity of the in-house marketing team.
However, when you outsource your marketing to an external agency, there will be no need to put all these things in place. All you need to do is hire the agency and work will start in earnest.
There’s no wait time, instant operation, creation, and implementation of marketing strategies for brand and product or service.
Cons of Outsourced Marketing
Fear of lack of dedication
One big reason why business owners are skeptical about outsourcing their marketing to an external agency is for the fear that the agency might not be as dedicated to their business as much as an in-house marketing team.
External marketing agencies have a lot of customers and clients to focus on. This is perceived by business owners as a split of focus. While this isn’t an irrational thought, it shouldn’t cause any worry.
The external agencies understand that their success is based on the success of your business. For this reason, they have made adequate provisions to address every one of their clients’ needs and deliver the best results.
Finding the perfect fit for your business
This is a downside of outsourcing your marketing to an external agency that’s worth noting. There are a lot of external marketing agencies that you can hire for the marketing needs of your company.
You have a lot of questions on your mind before making a decision about the perfect agency for your business. Making the wrong choice of an agency will definitely affect your business negatively.
To ensure you don’t enter the pitfall of the wrong choice of a marketing agency, you must make enough research and choose the best available agency. You can check for recommendations and reviews from other clients.
Hybrid Marketing
You can take the positives of these two worlds and adopt them for the success of your business.
Hybrid Marketing: Pros
Flexibility and performance are maximized with the adoption of hybrid marketing. It involves the enmeshing of the good aspects of the two marketing options and helps to make the most of your marketing strategies.
Hybrid marketing also offers your business control over your marketing assets. It also allows you to easily and seamlessly adapt to changing needs.
Cons of the hybrid marketing
The main and probably the only problem or disadvantage of the use of hybrid marketing strategies is that it takes more managerial ability and it cost more than adopting only a single option.
What’s the right choice for your organization?
Your choice of preferred or needed marketing option will be based on some personal evaluation. What you need to make the best choice is to take your business model into consideration.
This will help you make the best decision about the right way to go. Any and all of the options have their own pitfall and upsides, therefore, sufficient thought is required to make the best choice of marketing option for your business or brand.
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