Is Outsourcing My Marketing Management the Right Choice?

If your sales and marketing is running smoothly, you are progressive and you have a great team around you, you probably don’t need to outsource your marketing management as you will most likely have it all covered.

Indeed, you may already have a Marketing Manager in place, or a small marketing team who takes care of your strategy, outreach and business development, again you wouldn’t really benefit from outsourcing as it's covered and you are already investing in a team.

So who’s Outsourced Marketing Management for?

During my last few client meetings, I have been asking myself, what’s the general profile of a business that we can truly help?

I started by looking at how we add the most value and looking at the structures of the businesses that are in our ‘sweet spot’ to answer this question.

Firstly, we work primarily with the CEO’s MD’s or Founders of the company.

• The business, typically, is just under the threshold of employing a senior marketer to run their marketing functions.

• They often do have a non-specialist person, or small in-house team handling the nuts and bolts hands-on marketing tasks, updating socials etc. 

• They are open-minded to the outsourced model, as opposed to employing a Marketing Manager or Marketing Director.

• They have allocated financial resources to fund marketing activities, over and above the cost of the management function.

Lastly, they are incredibly busy people, they have much of the know-how for marketing and business development, but not the time or the inclination to be involved as they may have been at the very start of their venture. 

What are the benefits of Outsourced Marketing Management?

For many businesses it comes down to cost savings, it is many many times more expensive to hire a full-time marketing manager, with current salaries at anywhere between £30,000 - £65,000 according to NCS (National Careers Service) figures.

Marketing Directors can be many more times this figure, well over £100k in some cases, depending on skills and experience.

As employment costs have increased, the outsourced marketing management function is more attractive, as many companies are finding that they can have a broadly equivalent service at much reduced costs, without any long-term commitment required. 

The outsourced marketing management function runs in much the same way as the employed equivalent, in that there will be close collaboration with the business owner, CEO, Founder, Managing Director to assess the current situation of the business and to plan and implement forward to reach the goals of the business. 

Benefits, as well as the reduction in costs can be gained from the ‘outside view’ the outsourced manager can provide. In house managers and teams often don’t get the same scope of experience that is gained from handling multiple client types simultaneously.

Fresh perspectives, insights and ideas can be extremely valuable and the non-contract nature of the agreement means there is constant pressure on the outsourced practitioner to innovate and bring new approaches to the client company to stay ahead of expectations.

Outsourced practitioners are usually handling multiple technologies in terms of digital marketing platforms, with good knowledge of many CRM’s, SEO analytical platforms, AIs, Socials and so on. Not limited to what can be quite narrow exposure in a sole business.

A good outsourced marketing management function can be every bit as effective as the employed alternative, but at a fraction of the cost - retainers for outsourced functions to SME’s come in generally at between £1000 - £5000 per month* depending on experience and hours devoted per client. 

So why do so many companies prefer to employ?

Although the trend for outsourcing is on the increase it may be that businesses simply feel more comfortable going down the employment route. 

Outsourcing Marketing Management can be a big step for some businesses who are simply unfamiliar with the practice and just have a sense of being more in control if they can see a familiar face at their desk (or virtually if in a remote role). 

Although there is very little actual research to back up these theories, they are some of the familiar comments we hear when speaking to prospective clients about their preferences.

But the fact that employment costs have risen sharply due to National Living Wage (NLW) and National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for employers may explain why, even though there is some reticence, the trend for outsourcing marketing management is increasing.

The end bit…

Whether outsourcing the marketing management function of a business is right or wrong depends on many of the factors highlighted above and will remain a preference that depends on the individual circumstances and culture of the business.

What is definite, is that the trend is growing in an upward direction and this has been driven in no small part by higher employment costs as highlighted in this article. 

As practitioners ourselves, as you would expect, we see an outsourced marketing management function as being an extremely good fit for the clients in our charge, and the many more that are on the fence about their own future direction.

Want to comment or chat about any of the points in this article? Feel free to message me directly or comment below the article.