Marketing can be challenging, especially if you’re unsure whether to hire an in-house team or outsource your marketing altogether. For example, on the surface level, hiring an in-house team can seem obvious, as they will be dedicated to your business and its growth. In-house teams can be costly to hire; without proper management, they can end up underperforming and disappointing your expectations. Outsourcing marketing, on the other hand, can help businesses cut costs, access a wider talent pool, and improve overall business performance. Read on if you’re unsure whether to hire an in-house marketing team or outsource your marketing tasks to an external agency.
Deciding to hire offshore staff is one effective way to determine whether in-house or outsourced marketing is best for your business. At Founders Arm, we provide a virtual marketing assistants growth engine service. These skilled offshore marketing efforts help you stay on track whether you manage marketing in-house or outsource to an external agency.
Table of Contents
In House vs Outsourcing Marketing, How Both Work
In-house marketing involves one company’s employees managing all marketing activities. Building an effective in-house marketing team entails several steps, including:
Identifying your company’s needs
Defining roles
Creating job descriptions
Recruiting candidates
Interviewing
Hiring
Onboarding new employees
Essential positions for an in-house marketing team typically include:
Marketing manager
SEO manager
Graphic designer
Marketing data analyst
An in-house team offers numerous benefits, such as control over marketing efforts and potential cost savings.
Outsourcing Marketing: Gaining Expert Help
Outsourcing marketing is where a company hires an outside firm or individual to handle any or all aspects of its marketing strategy. This could include:
Social media management
Product launches
Public relations
Cost-Effective Marketing
There are numerous reasons why outsourcing marketing has gained so much traction. For starters, it’s often more cost-effective than hiring an in-house marketing team or paying for advertising campaigns. Plus, outsourcing to experts with years of experience can result in higher-quality and more effective marketing initiatives.
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The Pros and Cons of In-House Marketing
In-house marketing comes with several advantages. Here are some of the most important benefits of having your marketing team:
Brand Familiarity
When you have an internal marketing team, they know your brand. This familiarity informs all their marketing decisions and materials. While agencies will get to know your company’s value, tone, and overall brand, that process takes time.
Accessibility
It’s easy to access your in-house marketing team. Just walk over to their desk or office. In comparison, agencies aren’t located right next door. You need to call or email to chat. This is why you want a responsive agency if your business outsources its marketing.
Focus
In-house marketing teams focus 100% on your business. Agencies will learn your brand and dedicate time to its marketing strategy. Still, they also focus on other clients and their marketing needs. Depending on your company, you may prefer having a team all to yourself.
Control
When you outsource your marketing and hire a marketing firm, you share the responsibilities of your marketing strategy. In some cases, businesses prefer to have complete control over their marketing. This makes working with an agency difficult. That’s why, if you like having that level of control, it’s best to build an in-house team.
The Drawbacks of In-House Marketing
Despite the benefits, in-house marketing isn’t right for every business. Here are some of the potential drawbacks of having an internal marketing team.
Higher Costs
In-house marketing is generally more expensive than outsourced marketing, especially considering initial start-up costs. Salary is only one consideration when figuring out a budget for an in-house marketing team.
The reality is that the actual cost can be 1.5 to 1.75 times more than the salary alone. You have additional costs, including:
National insurance contributions
Workplace pensions
Office overheads
Bonuses
Other benefits
The Efficiency of Outsourcing
And that’s not factoring in the cost of recruitment itself. You can use an external provider such as a recruitment agency, which often charges 20-30% of the final salary, or do it yourself. While not as expensive as the outright cost of a recruitment agency, you have to factor in the time to create the adverts, pay to place them, review applications, and interview candidates. It can all add up.
More Time Spent Recruiting
Establishing an internal marketing team takes time, patience, and dedication. The average time to hire for a marketing position is around 50 days, almost two months, and a lot of work. For instance, the company's HR department must:
Create a job listing.
Schedule interviews
Meet with numerous candidates to find the right professionals for the team.
Instead, the business might benefit from using this time and effort to focus on other business activities. To counteract this drawback, a company can consider hiring recruitment agencies on their behalf.
Lack of Experience
An in-house marketing team will likely have less experience than an external agency. External agencies work with companies in several industries, allowing them to gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of marketing and advertising activities.
They may also have previously worked with clients or brands similar to the organization and are seeking external marketing assistance so they can easily create effective marketing strategies for this organization.
Fewer Resources
Companies typically need to invest significant resources to get effective results from their marketing efforts. This includes:
Buying the latest technological tools and software to streamline
Automate their marketing processes to run effective marketing campaigns
Investing in these resources is costly, encouraging many organizations to forgo them altogether, adversely affecting their marketing efforts. To counteract this, companies can use numerous free software and marketing tools to ensure their marketing initiatives help the business grow.
Less Creativity
In an in-house marketing team, the same employees may work on the same marketing ideas and campaigns. This may lead to a lack of inspiration, hindering a business's growth. In contrast, an external team can offer a fresh perspective on things and provide a business with a competitive advantage by improving the company's marketing efforts.
Companies may want to invest in developing their in-house team's skills to counteract this. They can do this through training programs, team-building activities, and workshops encouraging employees to think creatively.
Reduced Flexibility
When a company works with an external team, it can quickly change to another agency if the first agency needs to produce work that meets a high enough standard. In contrast, a company requires more flexibility when working only with an in-house marketing team.
For instance, if the in-house marketing team's work could improve, restructuring the team and adjusting the strategy can take significant time. Dismissing individual team members requires the organization to invest funds in recruiting and onboarding new team members.
The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Marketing
Did you know there are approximately 300,000 jobs outsourced by the United States each year?
One of the most significant benefits of outsourcing marketing is cost savings. Instead of funding a yearly salary for employees, many outsourced marketing teams are implemented on an “as-needed” basis.
Your funds are put towards specific tasks that play into a larger strategy that is developed, and in turn, they cost your organization less than the salaries of a full in-house marketing team.
Tapping Into a Specialized Team of Experts
Due to the difficulty of finding an effective unicorn employee who can make all marketing efforts work, outsourced marketing teams provide you with an expert in all fields of marketing who can work together with their specialties to offer high-value marketing materials and efforts.
Free up Management Time to Focus on Core Competencies
Management teams often find themselves caught up in overseeing their marketing team's efforts rather than focusing on the competencies that will provide greater future growth for an organization.
This is another major benefit of outsourcing marketing. By outsourcing, management knows they have experts on the projects and don’t need to interact with marketing except to review and approve final marketing products.
Risk-Sharing
When you outsource your marketing efforts, your company shifts responsibilities to the outsourced team. Since the outsourced team is filled with individual specialists, they can better plan your risk-mitigating factors.
Loss of Control
When outsourcing, brands often cede a certain amount of control to their outsourcing partners. This can lead to misalignment with the company’s vision or strategy, challenging the management and coordination of marketing efforts.
Quality Issues
While outsourced teams bring a wealth of expertise, there can be situations where the quality of work produced needs to meet the desired standards. This could be due to misunderstanding the company’s:
Brand
Miscommunication
Other factors
Time Zone Differences
Outsourcing to teams in different time zones can lead to communication challenges and delays in response times. This can make it difficult to coordinate efforts and achieve timely execution of marketing strategies.
Reclaim Your Time and Scale Your Business
Founders Arm helps startups and agencies supercharge their growth with highly trained virtual marketing assistants. We specialize in finding top-tier offshore talent beyond primary admin. Our assistants are skilled in:
Social media management
GTM strategy execution
Comprehensive marketing support
Our unique offering includes:
AssistantOS (detailed blueprints for delegation and automation)
24/7 customer support capabilities
A rigorous selection process where we handpick the perfect assistants from over 1,000 candidates.
Each assistant is screened for:
Excellent English
Relevant experience
A proven track record with offshore companies
We offer affordable rates without placement fees, perfect for funded startups (pre-seed, seed) and consumer apps looking to scale from 1 to 100.
Our assistants help you reclaim your time and amplify your growth strategy by supporting tasks such as:
Customer support
Email management
Social media
Admin tasks
Drop your email and company to get a free custom plan on delegating tasks within your business and scale intelligently.
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In-House vs Outsourcing Marketing: Which Do You Choose?
In-house marketing teams can feel more control and flexibility when running campaigns. They can easily adapt to changing circumstances and business goals to develop effective marketing strategies. Internal marketing teams also possess a deep understanding of the business they support. This knowledge can help them create more effective, personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with target audiences.
The Perks of Outsourcing Marketing to a Specialized Agency
Outsourcing marketing to a specialized agency can give businesses access to a wealth of knowledge and experience. Agencies often house teams of skilled experts with diverse backgrounds.
Free Up Resources and Time
This means you can get fresh perspectives on your marketing challenges to help your business overcome hurdles and achieve its goals. Outsourcing your marketing can also free up internal resources and time. With less, you can focus on running your business and improving operations.
Exploring the Hybrid Approach to Marketing
When a business contracts out marketing duties, it’s not an all-or-nothing decision. Your company can outsource parts of the marketing department or specific tasks while keeping other marketing responsibilities in-house. For example, an organization might hire a third-party vendor to manage social media while retaining blog content writing in-house.
A Hybrid Approach for Budget-Conscious Businesses
This hybrid approach can be an effective solution for businesses without the budget to hire a fully staffed marketing team. By hiring a digital marketing agency, companies can access a range of experts while retaining some in-house capabilities. For instance, with the salary of a social media manager, you could hire a professional social media firm, gaining access to various digital marketing specialists.
Scaling Your Marketing with a Hybrid Model
As the business grows, a hybrid model allows for a blend of in-house expertise and outsourced agency services. This approach ensures that the company’s voice is consistently represented while benefiting from the fresh ideas and strategies an external agency provides. Core marketing activities can be managed internally, while specialized tasks, such as social media management or advanced analytics, can be outsourced to experts.
The Best of Both Worlds
There are distinct benefits of both in-house and outsourced marketing teams. By combining the two, you can enjoy the advantages of both models. For instance, an in-house marketing team understands your business, its goals, and its customers. They can create marketing strategies that align with your company’s vision and culture.
Leveraging Outsourced Expertise for Growth and Innovation
On the other hand, outsourced teams bring a fresh perspective and a wealth of expertise and resources. They can help you discover new opportunities for growth and innovation that your in-house team might overlook. Combining these distinct advantages allows your business to create a hybrid marketing model that drives growth and improves efficiency.
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Get a Free Custom Plan on How to Delegate Tasks and Scale
When startups offload marketing tasks to offshore teams, they free up valuable resources to focus on their core mission and fuel growth. For example, a funded startup is struggling to stay afloat while managing:
Social media
Email marketing
Website customer support
Delegating these tasks to an offshore marketing team can help them regain control. Not only will this buy back time to help the business get back on track, but it will also allow them to implement what is learned from the delegated tasks to improve their overall operations.
Their offshore assistants will be able to carry out these tasks so well that it will seem like the business never missed a beat. Offshoring marketing tasks can help startups scale intelligently, reduce stress, and improve business performance.
Finding Your Business a Lifeboat: How Offshoring Marketing Tasks Can Reduce Stress
The journey to startup success can be overwhelming. Many business owners experience severe anxiety and depression while trying to manage their operations and achieve growth. Offshoring marketing tasks can help reduce this stress by providing an immediate lifeboat to struggling startups.
Imagine a team of experienced offshore marketing assistants being brought on board to handle a startup’s customer support operations. Not only would this relieve the business owner's mental burden, but it would also:
Improve overall performance
Enhance customer satisfaction
Reduce the risk of business failure
The sooner you offload your marketing tasks to an experienced offshore team, the quicker you can regain control of your operations and improve your business’s health.
Smooth Sailing: How Offshoring Marketing Tasks Can Help Startups Scale
While offshoring marketing tasks can help immediately stabilize a struggling startup, it can also create a smoother path for scaling. Continuing with the example above, once the business owner’s mental stress is alleviated, they can focus on improving their operations and developing growth strategies.
Building a Foundation for Future Growth through Offshoring
The startup can implement what it learned from the offshore marketing team’s performance to enhance its operations. In short, offshoring helps startups buy back time to regain control of their operations and provides an opportunity to establish a solid foundation for future growth.
