BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

Reasons for SMB’s to Not Have In- House Digital Marketing Team

By Shruti Agarwal
September 2, 2017

Marketing teams globally are spending more than $135 billion on digital marketing tools as the world is moving towards being more mobile and technology-dependent. However, spending your marketing dollars doesn’t quite ensure that you succeed in your campaigns. The law of Economics states that every business must try and work on an optimum scale – there might not be profits, but there shouldn’t be losses either. When it comes to the digital marketing of brands, SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses) have two options – having an in-house team (DIY style) and outsourcing to an external marketing agency. Outsourcing digital marketing cuts down the costs to a large extent, and some even suggest that the total cost of outsourcing would be roughly equivalent (if not less than) to having one digital marketing recruit in your team. Digital marketing today is not about a single road of action – it varies considerably depending upon market demands, consumer preference and changing trends. There are many good reasons to believe that a single recruit will not be adept in all the aspects of the job, which – again – is being continually updated. Apart from these, there are several other reasons why outsourcing work to digital marketing agency can be better than having an in-house team.

#1. High Cost

Hiring a full-time digital marketer for your in-house team can be quite expensive. Mid-career professionals demand salaries that can be quite overwhelming. Here’s what you are expected to pay on an average:

Digital Marketing Manager: $73,000
Web Designers: $47,000
Social Media Managers: $49,000
SEO Marketers: $60,000
Content Writers: $55,000
Graphic Designers: $53,000

By combining all of the above (which is necessary for any targeted digital marketing campaign), businesses would be spending $337,000 every year in salaries – and this amount is excluding the cost of training, infrastructure, health care benefits, sick leaves and paid vacations!

#2. Reduced flexibility

An outsourcing agency offers more than just marketing skills, while the job responsibilities of an in-house executive are clearly defined. An expert web designer will not be a skilled content writer or a social marketer and vice versa. However, outsourcing will give you access to the best designers, writers, SEO professionals and social media marketing professionals – all in the same place, but in a single paycheck. Further, finding someone talented enough and ready for the industry takes a lot of time, and seldom do businesses get a dependable recruit.

#3. Cutting yourself from the latest technology

An in-house executive depends on your company’s marketing budgets to organize a marketing campaign. Consequently, his/her expertise and freedom in choosing the best technology platforms and software tools are greatly limited. Furthermore, you cannot choose to buy all the software technology that’s available, as it would be unproductive. Here are the top marketing tools that outsourcing agencies provide:

Bright Local costing $64.99 / month
HootSuite costing $99 / month
Raven Tools costing $249 / month
Manage Filter costing $49 / month / account
AWeber costing $50 / month
Sprout Social costing $500 / month
Release Wire costing $70 / release

Outsourcing will let you use all these platforms without any unnecessary monthly spending.

#4. Unpredictable efficiency

There are two ways in-house marketing recruitment is taken care of. Either company hire new professionals (who cost a lot depending upon their experience in the industry) or assign new roles to exist employees (after a brief training of their new responsibilities). In both cases, there is a strong likelihood of burnout which in turn reduces productivity in the longer run. For smaller companies that don’t regularly come up with extensive marketing campaigns, having an in-house team will be tantamount to paying employees for simply sitting idle!

#5. Training costs

Digital marketing channels and tools are continually being updated, and new platforms are being created to make digital marketing more diverse and intrusive. If you are working with an in-house team, you would also have to regularly invest in training your guys on the latest technologies so that they don’t lose to the market competition. On the other hand, outsourcing provides you with the option of experienced and qualified professionals ready to start the work. Also, 82% of global marketers understand that digital marketing is better learnt on-the-job and rarely from training.

#6. Difficult to scale up

The only way to scale up marketing operations when you are working with an in-house team is to hire more people. This again lays an extra burden of implementing recruitment processes, extended infrastructure and training. This is a stark contrast to reputed digital marketing agencies, who have an unlimited arsenal of workers ready to take up projects of any magnitude. Globally, 60% of businesses admit that they have an ineffective in-house marketing team.

#7. Following the learning curve

Growing by the learning curve is a good thing, but not so much when it comes to the tough nature of market competition. In such a scenario when your marketing team is learning from experiences, competing brands would already be ahead, helped by the best third-party digital marketing team. 79% of B2B marketers also face a skill gap when recruiting in-house professionals.

#8. Losing out on the outsider’s perspective

An outsider’s perspective to your marketing strategy is important, especially when brands are investing in unique campaigns. It has been seen that employees find it hard to express new ideas or bring up their personal concerns against a campaign in the fear of losing their jobs or getting humiliated. However, two heads is definitely better than one when it comes to idea generation. Digital marketing agencies will always share their perspective and business marketers might even find it more credible to listen to the experts.

#9. Not ready for challenges

The marketing world today throws regular challenges to any marketer. In-house teams might not be capable enough for challenges they have encountered for the first time. However, third-party service providers come with huge industry experience and are ready for any situation.

#10. Monotony

Finally, the average digital marketing responsibility for any business revolves around repetitive tasks, such as social media updates, social engagement, tweets, sharing and similar things. Rather than setting up a cumbersome in-house infrastructure to deal with this, these are better allocated to a third-party service.