Every B2B startup reaches the point in their journey when they need to launch and promote their product or service — in other words, they need to hire a marketer. And a big question for many at that moment is whether they should hire someone in-house or outsource marketing. While you will ultimately want in-house marketing skills and expertise, at that critical first go-to-market juncture, outsourcing often gives you more of what you need — faster and more economically — than hiring.
There are a few reasons for this. First, it’s usually that case that what needs to be done — and how quickly it needs doing — is impossible for one person to manage alone, especially someone with limited experience. And since most B2B startups are cash-strapped, their first marketing hires tend to be less senior, which makes it likely they’ll need external support.
That means even if you do hire internally, you’re probably going to end up outsourcing certain tasks anyway: graphic design, web development, PR, writing and the like — depending on the tactics you aim to execute. Initially, you may plan to minimize this outsourcing but when it becomes crunch time, you can end up investing more than you intended. The costs can add up.
Outsourcing your marketing function to a seasoned, integrated B2B marketing team, on the other hand, gives you instant access to deep expertise, proven processes and the complete skill sets you need. Plus, you are only paying one partner, so it is more economical and efficient.
Outsourcing your marketing function to a seasoned, integrated B2B marketing team, on the other hand, gives you instant access to deep expertise, proven processes and the complete skill sets you need.
In this blog post, I’m taking a closer look at where and how you should outsource marketing to give you the boost you need.
You need someone who knows more about marketing than about your product
Technology companies tend to put a lot of weight on their in-house team’s technical understanding of their product. That makes sense for product management, development, customer support and other key roles, but it’s honestly less important for sales and marketing. You wouldn’t hire a developer who doesn’t know how to code; why hire a marketer who doesn’t understand marketing strategy and tactics? Yet a lot of firms nudge technical people over into marketing positions instead of seeking out professionals with marketing expertise.
Part of that expertise is knowing how to define and reach the audience you are trying to sell to. The top sales and marketing people have the processes, tools and real-world experience to do this, crafting the approach depending on whether you’re pitching to large financial institutions or mom-and-pop retailers — regardless of the technology.
Obviously, sales and marketing people need to have some technical knowledge of the product they’re promoting, but only enough to tell a compelling story about it to the right buyer audience. Your company will have plenty of technical knowledge in other parts of the business.
You need someone who’s done it before when you outsource marketing
Marketing campaigns have a lot of moving parts with many, many dependencies. In a time- and resource-pressured situation like a product launch, successful execution depends on understanding those parts and dependencies, anticipating what can — and often does — go wrong, and knowing how to fix it on the fly. That understanding comes from one thing and one thing only: experience.
Experience also translates into efficiency. Seasoned marketing teams have processes and templates for making fast progress without having to reinvent the wheel. That extends to building your marketing strategy. Having a proven framework to work within will put you miles ahead of where you would be if you tried to figure it out as you go along. Just as well-defined development processes deliver better products, well-defined marketing processes deliver meaningful results.
You need to focus on your business, not on managing marketing
Managing marketing is not a trivial undertaking. It’s not always so straightforward how to provide the right guidance or feedback, and it can suck you into a lot of internal meetings that take you away from other business-building tasks. This becomes a slippery slope and sometimes even results in a business leader taking on marketing responsibilities when they could be having a bigger impact elsewhere.
When you outsource marketing to the right people, you avoid these pitfalls and relieve yourself of a lot of burden. That can generate huge benefits for the rest of the business — even going so far as to ensuring the product is released on time. It also frees you up to get out and meet more prospective customers, which has a much higher business value than you creating a social media post or building a PowerPoint template.
You need the right skills at the right time(s)
Marketing is not a single skill or even a single set of closely related skills. It covers a vast spectrum, and the chance of finding one person who can do it all is slim to nil. A marketer who is great at design may not understand data and how it can be used to deliver results. A terrific writer is unlikely to also be able to build your website.
Similarly, there’s the old issue that “to a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Because marketers specialize, they don’t often look beyond their domain to consider other tactics that will deliver the results you need. Trade shows won’t be top of mind for a social media expert, even though that may be the best venue for your audience to find you. Another benefit of outsourcing is that you can outsource to a team with diversified skills instead of hiring an in-house jack of all trades.
Take a team approach when you outsource marketing
We hear a lot in sports about the best team winning, or that a big success was a team effort. Even the best players in a game need teammates — they can’t win by themselves.
Marketing is similarly a team sport. You need a coach who understands marketing as a practice, gets your industry, can develop an effective plan, and has the skills to recruit and manage other players to deliver results. And you need those players to be the right ones to execute your plan and achieve your goals — hand-picked for the job.
Hiring an outsourced team instead of an individual may sound expensive, but it actually lowers your overall marketing cost and gives you more flexibility. Instead of paying one person a full-time salary and engaging multiple agencies or freelancers to fill gaps or execute, you pay only for the specific skill sets you need when you need them: strategy at the start; writing and design for content; and then social media, search expertise or other skills later on.
Hiring an outsourced team instead of an individual may sound expensive, but it actually lowers your overall marketing cost and gives you more flexibility.
None of this is to say you don’t need in-house marketing capacity, but when it comes to your first campaign or launching your product, the advantages of hiring an experienced team to outsource marketing to are undeniable. Don’t take my word for it, though: check out this short case study to see how it worked for Corsa Security.
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