Are you a B2B tech marketer at an SMB facing the question of doing digital marketing in-house or externally? Then this blog post is for you. It’s written primarily for you that works with a small marketing department: 1-2 employees.
You will get an understanding of the benefits of working with an agency compared to doing marketing in-house. Hiring an agency is probably cheaper than you think, and if you choose the right agency, the value you receive makes up for the costs. We’ll start by going through the benefits and end with some common doubts when it comes to outsourcing digital marketing services.
Let’s get right into the list!
1. You get one team with all the expertise you need.
One of the most important reasons to outsource your digital marketing to an agency is that you will get one team with full expertise. Instead of trying to do everything on your own or hiring one person with specific knowledge in one (or maybe a couple) areas, you get a full team with all the expertise needed to execute a successful marketing campaign.
Let’s say your marketing agency team consists of six people, each with 5+ years’ experience. That gives you 30+ years of experience compared to hiring one employee with a couple of years’ experiences. The sum is much greater than the individual parts. 1+1=3!
In SMBs, the Marketing Coordinator might be a one-person department, responsible for copy, design, marketing automation, CRM, advertising, social media, etc. This is not a reasonable expectation for one role: the Marketing Coordinator is expected to be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. When you work with an agency, you get access to a team with professional writers, designers, web developers, automation specialists, and much more. Each of these people is trained and experienced in their specific field, which means the quality of your marketing will be much higher. And most importantly, no one will be overworked!
If you work with Brightvision, your digital/inbound team can look like this:
- Digital project manager & strategist
Your primary contact person responsible for planning the campaign strategy and optimizing success as well as give you weekly insights into campaign performance. Has deep knowledge in creating effective strategies including inbound marketing, digital advertising, personas/target groups, ABM, and event planning. - Digital production leader/coordinator
Responsible for making sure the campaign gets executed correctly and meets all deadlines. - Web developer/marketing automation specialist
Responsible for technical setups when it comes to marketing automation, website, technical implementations, integrations, etc. - Copywriter
Responsible for all copy, including short copy (ads, landing pages, etc.) and long copy, like e-books, blog posts, and case studies. Skilled in writing about highly technical solutions aligned with inbound marketing best practices. - Art director/designer
Responsible for delivering creative and attractive designs for web pages, e-books, banners, quizzes, videos, etc. - Paid media specialist
Responsible for setting up and optimizing result driven advertising in channels like LinkedIn, Google Ads, and Programmatic.
2. You reach your target audience effectively.
You will reach your target group easily, since your agency will carefully study your vision, product, goals, and audience to deliver your message on the right platform, at the right time. If you choose an agency with experience marketing to B2B tech, they will also have deep knowledge of your target group and buyer persona based on insights from previous campaigns they have done with similar clients.
3. You save money and reduce risk.
When you work with an agency, you only pay for the help you need. If you aren’t happy with the result, you can just end the collaboration and only pay for the hours invested so far. To use Brightvision as an example, we never keep clients stuck in long contracts, and as a client you can cancel or pause the collaboration whenever you feel like.
For example: when you’re running a LinkedIn campaign, you are invoiced once per day. If you’re a one-person operation, how long would it take you to handle all the administration and receipts regarding multiple ads accounts, marketing automation systems, invoices, etc.? When you work with an agency, they will handle the administration for you: you only need to pay one single invoice.
A common belief about outsourcing marketing to agencies is that it’s way too expensive. But working with an agency also saves you money since you get a full team of people for the same costs (or less) thank hiring one employee. If you calculate the cost of hiring a full team of six people, compared to using an agency, the agency choice will be much cheaper.
A last note on this point: it might be hard keeping an in-house marketer 100% occupied, 40 hours per week. What should this person do when the workload is uneven over time? Giving someone work for exactly 40 hours per week is not an easy task, and this is a problem you overcome when outsourcing parts of your digital marketing to an agency where you only purchase hours.
4. You get an objective view of your business.
It can be easy to get tunnel vision when it comes to your own organization. You might have done the same things for a long time and perhaps gotten stuck in old processes and patterns. It’s hard to stay objective and get inspiration on how to take your company to the next level.The right agency can help you by looking at your organization with fresh new eyes and come up with new innovative ideas on how to improve things. As an agency, we work with many clients, meaning that we have a lot of relevant insights and can learn from other campaigns’ success and failures.
5. You get access the latest marketing technologies.
When you work with an agency, you ultimately pay for two things; results/growth, and not having to stay constantly updated on the latest marketing trends. Your agency will be your ears and eyes into the latest strategies, tactics, software, and innovations. Staying up to date, in today’s ever-moving digital landscape, is a full-time job that an agency is happy to do for you.Since agencies work with multiple clients and different campaigns, they have great insights into different MarTech (marketing technology) solutions and can recommend the most suitable solution for your needs.
6. You get proper education and set a foundation for growth.
If you find the right agency, the goal should be to grow together and see them as an extension of your own team. That is at least always our goal for all our clients. Finding an agency you like and trust can help you with so much more than just generating result short-term.Of course, you can purchase a single campaign, get great leads, close some deals and be happy about that – but you will usually see the real results when you start working long-term and let your agency educate your team.
As a B2B tech marketing agency, we like to educate both the sales and marketing team on areas where needed. For example, we educate teams about modern sales and marketing, how to do content- and inbound-driven marketing, how to implement marketing/sales automation and CRM systems, social selling, etc. Sometimes a collaboration can be all about education if that’s needed.
7. You can get integrated marketing campaigns in multiple countries – with one agency.
Get one team covering all your target countries
If you find an agency that operates in multiple countries, with native speaking sales and marketing consultants in each country, it can be a great advantage for both your sales and marketing teams. This enables you to get one team with one contact person, covering all the markets you want to generate sales in — without having to recruit local sales and marketing people in each market/country or manage a full European sales and marketing team yourself.
After more than 20 years in business, Brightvision knows that the key to success in a new market is running localized marketing campaigns and using native speaking salespeople.
Follow up on inbound leads
Also, if your agency offers both inbound and outbound/telemarketing services, you have a lot to gain. When running inbound campaigns, the ultimate key to get great ROI is to close the leads generated from the campaigns. But this can only be done if you have an experienced salesperson following up on the leads. From our experience, the sales team is usually very busy and don’t prioritize following up on inbound leads. When they finally have time, the leads have gone cold.
When running digital campaigns, having a dedicated salesperson following up immediately on leads is usually what makes or breaks a campaign. If you work with an agency providing this service, you get both inbound leads and a dedicated BDR that can follow up on the leads generated — filling your sales team’s calendar with qualitative client meetings.
8. You get an expert saying no to bad ideas.
I think we all need this in our life. Someone saying no to bad ideas... This point doesn’t need so much explaining I think but having an agency to bounce ideas with can be very valuable for your marketing success. Your agency won’t agree with your suggestions to be nice; they will see the bigger picture and give you honest guidance based on what’s best for your company.
9. You get to do what you like.
This is a very important part. The marketing role today is very broad, covering many areas of activities and levels of strategy/production. And I guess it’s impossible to be good at everything. Some B2B marketers like being strategists/project managers, and some like being producers with a more operative role.
Working with an agency, you can decide what you want to do and let the agency do what you don’t like! Perhaps you want an agency to take a production role and deliver the exact content you want? Or you want them to help you create the strategy while you produce the content? Or maybe you need help with all of it? Agencies are usually very flexible in how they work, and to meet the exact need of the client is always priority (at least for us at Brightvision).
10. An agency knows how you can stand out from the competition.
And lastly, working with an agency that collaborates with similar clients as yourself, will have a lot of valuable insights into how your competitors operates. This is a very strong reason to get guidance from an agency with industry-specific knowledge. Knowing how your competitors work, they can guide you into a unique direction helping you to stand out and position yourself against the competition.
Common doubts outsourcing digital marketing services
From new clients that are thinking about outsourcing their marketing, we usually get some questions/concerns. We have listed the most common below.
Is an agency proactive?
This is a common question we get from new clients. And our answer is clear: yes, an agency can and should always be proactive. Some clients (perhaps due to bad experiences) “support” and think that an agency only works reactive and solves campaign requests as they come from the client. But a good agency is always proactive and provides campaign ideas and suggestions of improvements regularly.
Is an agency transparent?
Yes, a good and reliable agency is always transparent, offering 100% insights into numbers and campaign performance. It’s very important that your agency shares both good and bad news, giving you weekly updates and insights so you can improve the campaign together along the way.
Can’t we just use freelancers instead of an agency?
Well, this is a common trap for many B2B tech marketers. Managing a bunch of freelancers is usually a full-time job, and you probably will get caught in endless administration. You also don’t get a team working towards the same goal, but rather some individual experts working in silos.
Summary
Thank you for reading all the way to the end! I hope you got some valuable insights that can help you in your decision of how to structure your marketing department. I think the biggest misconception outsourcing marketing is that people believe it’s unreasonable expensive. But if you find the right agency, the value will make up for the cost, and you will soon see results in terms of an improved flow of leads and increased sales – generated by marketing. And you CEO and sales team will be forever grateful!
Would you like to learn more about Brightvision and how we work as an agency? If you are a B2B tech company and need support with marketing, lead generation and sales, book a meeting and we can chat!
