To outsource or go in house with your digital marketing – that is the question! And the answer? Well, have a read below:

I see many business owners and MDs both abroad and here in South Africa, with SME sized businesses that ask themselves this question.

They see the need for internet marketing but are not sure of how to harness this crucial medium for their business.

Many chose to try and hire a person and do it in house. This in my experience repeatedly leads to disappointment, wasted time, and lost revenue. What’s the reason for this? Why are these otherwise smart and successful business owners making this decision?

Two reasons:

The first – they are unsure of what a digital marketing strategy actually comprises of and what are the opportunities and necessities for their business through digital.

The digital solutions Digital Fire may use utilise for clients of this size can vary across:

  • Existing digital offering SWOT analysis
  • Digital strategy
  • Website creation, evaluation.
  • UX
  • Social media
  • Customer data management
  • Profiling
  • Push email marketing
  • Animation
  • Content production
  • Video marketing
  • Advertising
  • Search engine marketing, (on and off site.)
  • SMS
  • MMS
  • App creation
  • Loyalty programmes

No one marketing person has the expertise to deliver all these solutions.  A team of specialists is needed as each solution often integrates with the others to drive successful sales and profit, the end goal of all marketing.

The second – cost, clients often think that if they hire a marketing manager then they have saved money and covered the digital arena. Perhaps they pay them a decent salary a month and they think, “That’s all taken care of. We have invested in digital.”

As we have seen one person cannot deliver all that is needed and by not being able to deliver a well conceptualised, executed and managed digital strategy then a business is simply losing customers and revenue to their competitors that can. It costs a client more in lost revenue and market share.

Below are some factors to consider before you consider bringing digital in house:

Skills and Expertise – Every digital superhero has a Kryptonite weakness that you’ll uncover after a short time. Maybe they are a great website builder but have no idea how to optimise a site. Or maybe they are a great social media person but have no commercial understanding. A good analogy is to imagine you have an urgent medical need:  By going in house you’ve traded a hospital of cardiologists, neurosurgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists for a live-in general physician.  I have nothing against GPs, but I don’t want them performing surgery on me.  Specialists deliver better quality work, and in business that leads to success.

Expense – By going in house with a GP digital marketer your costs have actually increased. Not only do you still need to pay an agency for the work that the GP digital marketer can’t conceptualise or do, but now the digital marketer’s salary is on the books.

Training/Turnover – Digital is a dynamic environment. Keeping your digital person in house sharp on new tactics is paramount, but it isn’t going to directly get you any new customers or improve your product/service today. However if you don’t train them then they’ll leave for someone that will and you are back to square one. Digital agencies keep up to date on the latest trends, but not on your clock.

Availability – Does any digital marketing get done when your digital marketer is on vacation? You create a bottleneck by having a single-point of failure for the organisation on these processes.

Revenue: You in house marketing manager will not be covering the same amount of ground, as quickly or efficiently as your agency. Projects aren’t implements as timeously or as well as they should be, opportunity to drive revenue through effective marketing is lost.

Philosophy – If you really think you need in house resources try for a set period. To forecast costs you should take the budgeted number you have in your head and multiply it by anywhere from 4 to 8.  That’s what you will lose, in bottlenecks, wasted time, lack of applicable skills and understanding and falling behind your competitors in the race for market share. Sadly we have many examples of these sorts of clients who come to us. That’s usually what people have spent on digital before they see the light and come and hire an agency like Digital Fire. Happily we are able to swiftly get them back on the right path,

If you have an in house marketing manager then they should be the liaison, from within your business, to interact with the agency to get the job done to an excellent level.

A rule of thumb I agree with, is that a role within your business that is not directly adding real value should be outsourced to a specialist team who can do it better, faster, and more profitably for your business.

This is especially true in Digital Marketing.