Marketing that Doesn’t Suck: Part 4
Example #4: Companies that Utilize an Outsourced Marketing Partner as a Part of their Growth Strategy
I just had a call today with the Director of Marketing for a mid-size technology company that is looking for an outsourced marketing resource to help them update their company’s positioning in order to be more relevant in today’s market. She has been with the company for six years and felt they needed professionals that specialize in technology marketing to take a hard look at their company and competitive environment and provide them with insights and strategic guidance. She said they were too close to be unbiased. I asked her if they have an in-house marketing department and she said, “I am it.” She works with a variety of freelancers in order to make their marketing happen. I asked her if it was hard not having a dedicated team that was all working from the same sheet of music and she said “it’s exhausting.” I bet it is.
There is a way to utilize outsourced marketing services to support a company’s growth and there is a way not to. The modern, effective way is to have a Director of Marketing or Marketing Manager at the helm internally at your company and then an outsourced marketing partner that provides all of the possible talent needed to market efficiently and effectively. This partner is dialed into your company, offerings, target audiences, customers, competitive environment, team, business objectives and strategic marketing plan. They have one or two people that are your everyday points of contact and that orchestrate all of the initiatives that you have underway. This way, your Director of Marketing or Marketing Manager, can focus on wrangling what he/she needs internally to keep things moving without having to make heads or tails out of communication from an unintegrated team of freelancers. Ultimately, the dynamic between your internal marketing person and your outsourced marketing partner becomes yin and yang, where each is using their strengths to make your marketing machine hum while getting each other’s back.
The other, more “exhausting” way is to piece things together with a hodge podge of freelancers who don’t typically interact with one another and are task driven instead of strategy driven. Sure, many of the freelancers are talented individuals who do a good job but that’s just it, it’s a job, a project, not an integral component of your strategic marketing program that they are actively living every day.
It’s understandable that companies today don’t want to staff an entire marketing department with all of the talent that is really required. They don’t want the headaches or the overhead. So they find one person with a marketing background, give them some sort of budget for freelance talent and expect marketing miracles to happen. Piecing things together is penny wise and pound foolish. If you’re going to outsource your company’s marketing, find a partner who can become an extension of your company, a participant in your total success. Otherwise you’re just treading water. and limiting your company’s growth potential.
