For businesses of any size, marketing is a necessity, but how businesses go about that marketing is a matter of choice.
For example, businesses can choose in-house marketing, hiring full-time employees who dedicate themselves to the company’s marketing needs. Or, they can choose to outsource their marketing needs to an agency.
Which approach is best? Both have pros and cons that businesses should consider, along with another solution that combines the best of in-house and outsourced marketing.
In-House Marketing Pros & Cons
Some businesses choose to build a marketing department within the company. Whether that team consists of a single marketing professional or several employees with specialties in areas such as social media, copywriting, or digital marketing, this team dedicates itself full-time to the company’s needs.
Pros of In-House Marketing
✅ Product/Service Expertise
One of the most appealing benefits of an in-house marketing team is their expertise in your brand. Because they work within your company and only for your company, they develop a deep understanding of your values, priorities, distinctives, products, and services. The result is an ability to create marketing that accurately communicates your brand to your target audiences. That level of expertise can make your in-house marketing more effective and more on-point than that provided by an outsourced marketer.
✅ Proactive, Flexible & Agile
Sometimes, marketing requires rapid adjustments to your campaign. A new product is released. A crisis requires a public response. An ad isn’t working. At these times, an in-house marketing team delivers quickly, thanks to an ability to rapidly flex to meet your company’s needs. All you have to do is stop by their desk or jump on the phone to let them know what you need, and they can deliver new ads, messaging, or approaches almost immediately.
✅ Invested In Your Success
An in-house marketing team is naturally invested in your businesses because your success is their success. As a result, you can trust your marketing team to work hard on your company’s behalf. You never have to worry about sharing their time and attention with any other client. Their marketing efforts are devoted entirely to you.
✅ Accountable And Transparent
Keeping track of your marketing activities and success is much easier with an in-house team. Access to your marketing analytics tends to be easier, and identifying any issues that arise tends to occur more quickly when the people responsible are part of your organization.
Cons of In-House Marketing
In-house marketing has many benefits for your organization, but this approach also comes with some drawbacks.
❌ Costly
Hiring an in-house marketing team is an expensive undertaking. A single marketing employee can cost an average of $70,000 per year between salary and benefits. In addition, you must account for the expense of supplies, tools, programs, offices, and more.
You may also accrue costs when you need to fill gaps in your organization’s marketing expertise. Even a multi-person team is unlikely to have the numerous skills necessary to build a comprehensive marketing campaign. You may need to hire outside help for videography, CRM, display ads, and more. These expenses can quickly become very expensive.
❌ Lack Of In-Depth Expertise
An in-house marketing team often provides support for a wide range of marketing efforts, but without in-depth expertise. They may, for example, be able to implement a basic social media presence with videos and image posts, but without the years of experience that comes from devoting oneself exclusively to videography, photography, or social media. The result is a marketing campaign that, while broad, may not perform at the level necessary to meet your business goals.
❌ Lengthy Hiring and Firing Processes
It takes an average of 50 days, or about 2 months to hire a marketing professional. Firing an ineffective team member can take just as long (or even longer), as you work through the complex HR processes of your organization. In the meantime, your business may struggle to implement effective marketing in the absence of the talented and driven team members it needs.
❌ Unknown Effectiveness
Finally, an in-house marketing team is somewhat of a gamble for businesses, because the effectiveness of the individual team members, and of the team as a whole, is as yet unproven. What looks good on paper may not work for your business, leaving you with the time-consuming responsibility of replacing team members or reworking your marketing approach.
Outsourced Marketing Pros & Cons
Outsourced marketing refers to hiring an agency to meet your marketing needs. This approach has a number of advantages that make it a popular marketing option for small businesses.
Pros of Outsourced Marketing
✅ Expert Marketing Support
Comprised of experts in every area of marketing, marketing agencies make it possible to access the talent you need, when you need it, without the time and expense of hiring it yourself. Need a photographer? Require a print ad expert? Looking for a graphic designer? They all work for your local marketing agency, and are ready to help. Their expertise also ensures a high quality of work so you can create the compelling marketing campaigns your business needs to stand out.
✅ Industry and Technology Expertise
A marketing agency’s only job is to deliver exceptional marketing solutions to customers. That means that an agency will always be on top of industry trends and the cutting-edge technologies and tools that your business needs to run a modern marketing campaign. That kind of expertise is hard to find anywhere other than in a dedicated, outsourced, marketing team.
✅ Proven Quality of Work
Marketing agencies have many clients you can consult to find out more about the agency’s performance, quality of work, and customer service. By carefully vetting agencies, you can identify one that is proven to deliver a high quality of work, measurable results, and a responsive approach to customer service.
✅ Scalable Solutions
Your business needs may change over time, and your marketing approach needs to be poised to change as well. An agency makes scaling your marketing solutions easy, with the option to hire an agency for the amount of work that you require. Use them for just a few projects or hire them to run your entire marketing initiative. It is your choice.
Cons of Outsourced Marketing
❌ Costly
Outsourced marketing can be expensive, particularly when you need to add requests to your contracted work. Additional requests come with additional costs that can quickly add up.
❌ Lack Of Transparency
Marketing agencies can make it difficult to see exactly what is happening behind the scenes of your marketing campaigns. Keeping track of analytics, measuring performance, and seeing how your money is being spent is not easy or intuitive with an agency.
❌ Contract Commitments
Outsourced marketing locks businesses into long-term contracts that they must fulfill regardless of the agency’s performance. That can make it difficult to move on to a better marketing solution if your agency is not performing to your standards.
❌ Limited Flexibility
Choosing to outsource your marketing can limit your flexibility when it comes to adjusting your marketing approach. If you hire an agency to run social media and SEO, for example, you may struggle to add Google advertising or email campaigns. Small requests, message adjustments, and ad changes can also take a long time to implement.
❌ Long Turnaround Times
Even the best laid marketing plans can change with little warning. The rapid adjustment of messaging at the beginning of the pandemic is a prime example. Agencies often have a difficult time rapidly implementing these changes, which can make staying relevant to your target audiences difficult.
Marketing-as-a-Service: A New Approach
Marketing effectively in an ever-diversified landscape can be a challenge. From social media to Google Ads, search engine optimization to display ads, billboards to print advertising, there are hundreds of platforms businesses can utilize.
Building, implementing, maintaining, and managing a marketing campaign requires a wide range of skills from the modern marketer, and the modern business. Both in-house and outsourced marketing solutions, however, leave gaps in a business’ ability to promote itself effectively.
Instead, modern marketing deserves a modern solution: Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS) from CODESM. This new approach offers all of the benefits of in-house AND outsourced marketing, without the downsides by making a full marketing team of more than 30 experts available to your business at a flat, and affordable monthly fee.
How does it work? Set the number of hours you want CODESM to work for you each month, work with us to develop a strategy, and utilize our enterprise-level dashboard to maintain constant communication, send new requests, and track the progress of your campaigns.
The benefits of MaaS
| Product/Service Expertise | Our experts quickly pick up on your brand’s voice and distinguishing characteristics and devote themselves to it. |
| Flexibility | We can turnaround urgent tasks in 24-48 hours and adjust messaging and campaigns rapidly. |
| Dedication to Your Success | Your success is our success, so we are invested in helping you reach your marketing goals. |
| Transparency | Use our dashboard to stay on top of every step of your projects and track your analytics so you always know what is happening with your marketing. |
| Marketing Experts | Access the best experts in every marketing field. |
| Proven Experience | We have helped many clients achieve marketing success and boost their ROIs. |
| Quality Work | Our experts work quickly, efficiently, and excellently to create exceptional campaigns for you. |
| Scalability | We can adjust hours and work to meet your business needs, every month. |
| Month-to-Month Contracts | Monthly contracts mean you are never locked into a long-term commitment. |
| Affordable Rates | One flat monthly fee puts an entire marketing department at your fingertips. |
| Direct Communication | We are available and responsive so communication is never lacking. |
It is time to move away from in-house and agency-driven marketing and embrace a revenue-driven strategy, innovative software, a team of 30+ marketing specialists, and multi-channel analytics to drastically reduce cost, increase efficiency and drive maximum results. Contact CODESM today to learn more.
