Inhouse vs outsource marketing

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When it comes to your business, the marketing and PR strategy and delivery are crucial.

But an everlasting question: should you stick to in-house marketing or hire an agency / consultancy to outsource marketing functions.

Our latest In-house vs outsource marketing paper attempts to answer this question for you.

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The benefits of outsource marketing

Are you:

• A business founder or owner?
• Without a marketing function?
• A busy marketing director?
• Confused about your own marketing direction?
  

Marketing is a key component for any business to reach the next level.

Raising brand awareness, boosting your reputation, and sharing your story with audiences old and new are crucial. But many businesses are unsure whether to hire internal marketing resource and build their own team or outsource their marketing function to an external marketing agency. The latter is often met with trepidation. Outsource? External function? What if I want someone to work closely with my team?

We get it – you want to make sure that your brand values are maintained. But this doesn’t mean that you need to hire someone inhouse. Any credible, outsourced marketing agency will work closely with your team to seamlessly develop a marketing strategy, deliver consistently and guard your brand values as closely as their own.

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Are you... a business without a marketing function?

In fast-paced industries, daily responsibilities demand your full attention. And you didn’t get into business to run your own marketing – it’s understandable why marketing tends to fall to the bottom of priority lists. But it’s also difficult to expand any business without a marketing strategy. When considering the time and financial investment, partnering with an outsourced marketing consultancy, that can handle strategy and delivery can really add value. And all for the cost of a Marketing Director alone.

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Are you… a busy Marketing Director?

You already understand the hard work and commitment that good marketing entails. You’re ambitious but need greater resource, capacity or specialist expertise to continue to drive forward your organisation’s marketing plan. Nobody can do everything, and they shouldn’t try to. One of the benefits of outsourced marketing is that you have access to more than one brain – if you have an off day, you go on holiday or you’re out of the office, you can rely on a top-level team to ensure continuity and reliability. And more than one brain means more than one brain’s worth of ideas! We regularly hold internal collab sessions where we get the team together in sessions that combine our own marketing and communications knowledge with our client’s industry and experience. They’re group brainstorms that yield a far greater number of ideas than a single brain alone.

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Are you… a founder or a business owner?

As the owner or founder of a business, you have many fingers in many pies. You understand that marketing is important to growth, but perhaps it hasn’t been a priority because all the other pies are cooking, burning or being eaten by the dog! This is where the ability to outsource marketing becomes a valuable investment – it gives you time back (to rescue the pies) and seamlessly aligns your sales and marketing to inform your growth strategy going forward.

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Are you… unsure about your own marketing direction?  

If you’re not sure who you are, or who you want to be, a marketing consultancy can work with you to define your identity, value proposition and messaging. We can work with you to identify your passions and strengths and offer a fresh perspective.

If you do know your brand identity, an outsourced team can work with you to align your marketing function with your other ambitions through strategy workshops. We’ll set a growth trajectory like no other.

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What can outsourced marketing do for you?

Outsourced marketing can supplement your team and deliver specialist expertise. We have worked with many clients in this way, supporting on:

• Thought leadership including content creation and design.

• Business development and lead generation campaigns.

• Video content scripting, filming, post-production and campaign execution.

• Public relations, including media relations and stakeholder engagement.

• Website build and development.

• SEO technical and content programmes.

And more!

“Within a year of working with Transform, we’ve achieved more than in five years working alone.” Jacob Aitken, Director and Co-Founder of Kidd Aitken Legal Marketing.

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‍Outsourced, not outsiders

We don’t like the term ‘agency’ or ‘outsource’.

They’re both quite distanced terms, sounding one step removed from true collaboration, and don’t reflect what you (and we) really care about: the success of your organisation. We prefer: ‘consultancy’.

And we earn that term. Many organisations think that external experts won’t ‘get’ them, but an experienced consultancy will bring myriad benefits to your organisation that far surpass the work of your marketing department. Consultants are experts in finding out what makes you tick and provide that priceless external view. They (we!) strive to understand your organisation, your market, and, most importantly, your people.

Partnering is not outsourcing your marketing. Becoming an integrated part of your team, your consultancy should be driven by the same values and work towards the same goals.

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Get in touch‍

Find out more about who we are, and please get in touch if you’d like some support with your marketing strategy and output.