Why Outsourcing B2B Marketing Efforts Will Benefit Your Business

Most small to medium-sized businesses tend to feel they are at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing. Larger companies have more resources, putting them at a greater advantage in their marketing capabilities. More prominent companies have the financial flexibility to build massive in-house marketing departments and to supplement those capabilities by outsourcing to top-level B2B services. While outsourcing to a marketing agency may seem like a privilege that only businesses with significant budgets can afford, it's a perfectly suitable strategy for smaller to medium-sized companies with smaller budgets.

If you haven't considered outsourcing B2B marketing yet, we suggest you strongly consider doing so. By strategically outsourcing your marketing needs, you can put yourself in a better position to compete, both in the present and future. The following are ten examples of how your small or medium-sized business can benefit from outsourced B2B marketing:

An effective marketing department generally consists of a large team of marketers boasting years of experience and specialized expertise. Unfortunately, it's not financially feasible for most small to medium-sized businesses to put together such a comprehensive marketing team. Odds are, you only have a handful of marketers in-house, all of whom are wearing multiple hats as they juggle a wide range of marketing-related responsibilities. Some smaller companies don't even have employees who are officially designated as "marketers." Instead, their owners manage their marketing campaigns while running core operations at the same time.

Without a dedicated marketing team, creating and managing a successful marketing campaign becomes challenging. Even if you have a small, dedicated marketing team in-house, many team members are likely generalists. As you grow, your marketing strategy will have evolving requirements that they may not have the experience or expertise to handle. The only way to gain access to the extensive knowledge and expertise you will need at a cost you can afford is outsourcing to a professional marketing agency.

Access To Specialists When You Need Them

Outsourced marketing services have access to every type of marketer you might need, from generalists to specialists. However, it's the access to specialists that makes outsourcing so essential to your marketing campaign. Specialists are professionals who can handle particular tasks that require a high level of skill and knowledge. When you outsource your marketing, specialists are available whenever you need them. Access to specialists means that your marketing campaign won't be held up or run into issues due to a lack of the required expertise.

It's also worth noting that hiring specialists in-house when you need them is both costly and time-consuming. Hiring any highly-skilled marketing personnel can take time, causing your marketing team to fall behind schedule.

Save Time And Money Avoiding Poor Marketing Decisions

Specialists possess a significant amount of experience, which means that they are much less likely to make poor decisions. If your team is making decisions without the knowledge or expertise required, it can lead to mistakes, costing you money and time. A bad mistake, such as investing in the wrong marketing tool or emphasizing a strategy that performs poorly, can delay the timeline you've established for achieving specific marketing goals.

It can't be stressed enough how expensive building an internal marketing team can be. Businesses often prefer having internal marketing departments because it provides the illusion of control. While you have more control over an internal marketing team than you might have over an outsourced team, it's incredibly cost-prohibitive to build a team with all of the talents required in today’s digital landscape.

Supplementing your existing marketing team with outsourced team members is much more cost-effective. The money you can save by outsourcing can give you more flexibility with your marketing budget allocation. You'll have more resources to bolster your marketing campaign and drive better results. With that in mind, the following are a few specific ways outsourcing can help reduce costs:

Reduce Hiring And Replacement Costs

When you use an outsourced B2B marketing service, they will already have a pool of marketers ready to work on your campaign. You won't have to worry about hiring internally, which is a process that can be long and expensive. Just consider all of the costs associated with the hiring process:

• Advertising the position
• Interviewing candidates
• Performing background checks
• Hiring new employees
• Onboarding new employees

On top of all of these costs, if you're forced to let an employee go (or they leave on their own accord), you'll have to take on the cost of replacing them. Replacing an employee not only requires you to pay for the hiring process all over again, but you may also be forced to pay severance costs.

Reduce The Cost Of Maintaining An Internal Marketing Team

When you use an outsourced marketing service, you're paying a flat fee for access to an entire team of marketers put together to meet your specific needs. While this fee depends on your needs, you'll save a significant amount of money compared to the costs of maintaining an in-house marketing team. All of the costs of keeping just a single full-time employee are virtually eliminated when you choose to outsource instead. As a reminder, the costs of maintaining only a single full-time employee include:

• Salary
• Health benefits
• Retirement benefits
• Social security taxes
• Workers' compensation
• Medicare taxes
• Unemployment taxes
• Vacation days
• Sick days

Reduce Operational Costs

Marketing agencies have their own base of operations, which reduces your operation costs by a wide margin. Some of the operational costs associated with building an in-house marketing team that you can avoid through outsourcing include:

• Office space - The more FTEs (full-time equivalents) you take on, the more space is needed to work.

• Equipment costs - An FTE will require equipment that includes particular necessities, such as a desk and computer.

• Marketing tools - You may need to invest in new software solutions or invest in a higher tier package with the more FTEs you take on.

• Phone costs - Maintaining numerous in-house phone lines or providing employees with cellphones can significantly increase over time.
• HR costs - The more FTEs you take on, the greater your HR needs will become.

One of the biggest challenges of having a smaller marketing budget is that you can't build the internal marketing team you need. If you allocate all of your budget dollars to FTEs, you may end up finding that your team can't handle all of your marketing needs. This lack of ability goes beyond experience and expertise, as well. If your team is shorthanded (which can happen if your business suddenly experiences growth within a short period), they will quickly find themselves overwhelmed.

By outsourcing, you can augment your existing marketing team, preventing them from becoming overworked. Internal marketing personnel will be able to focus on what they do best, while outsourced personnel will handle any tasks or responsibilities that fall outside of their comfort zone. Finding such a balance can help make your internal marketing team more efficient and more productive. There will be less risk that they will become overworked, overwhelmed, or stressed out by an unrealistic workload.

As you know, losing an employee can cause massive disruption, especially for smaller businesses. If one of your marketing team members is fired, let go, or quits on their own, their workload will have to be taken on by the remaining team members. If they specialized in certain responsibilities or tasks requiring a specific skill set, the work they were doing might have to be put on hold until you find a replacement. Considering how long it can take to find a suitable replacement to fill their specific roles, such situations can be costly.

Even an employee who calls in sick for more than a few days can cause significant issues for smaller businesses. When you work with an outsourced B2B marketing service, you'll never have to worry about suddenly finding yourself shorthanded. A marketing agency will always have staff on hand to ensure that your marketing efforts aren't affected by an employee quitting, getting fired, or taking time off.

Because of how expensive hiring FTEs can be, attempting to build your in-house marketing team can leave you with little room in your budget for anything else. Outsourcing B2B marketing can help make room in your overall budget. These funds could boost existing marketing efforts or expand your marketing strategy; however, they could also invest in other facets of your business. The money you save outsourcing instead of hiring FTEs can invest in your business's growth in many different ways.

Your marketing capabilities rely heavily on your available software solutions. Solutions such as CRM platforms, analytics tools, and automation tools are all a must. While there are free and affordable versions that you might implement successfully, a professional marketing agency will have the latest, high-end marketing solutions. If you work with such a service, they will leverage such tools to maintain and monitor your marketing campaigns. If you choose to keep everything in-house, the more extensive versions of various marketing solutions could run you thousands of dollars a month.

The margin for error becomes much more narrow if you keep everything in-house. Outsourcing to an external marketing agency can help reduce internal risks. For instance, marketing agencies tend to have larger teams of more highly experienced and skilled marketers. Improper budget allocation resulting from a dependence on FTEs can result in very little wiggle room in your budget. A lack of budget flexibility can result in drawbacks causing severe financial problems, especially if you make budgetary mistakes. Even if you don't make budget-related mistakes, sudden budget cuts can leave you in an unnecessary bind.

Your risk isn't just budget-related when it comes to marketing. There's an element of risk involved when investing in marketing strategies and executing those strategies as well. If your in-house team is too inexperienced or doesn't have the know-how needed, it can result in mistakes. Serious mistakes can affect your marketing campaigns' performance, making it more challenging to achieve your goals within your budget constraints. Outsourced marketing agencies tend to have the most qualified marketing personnel you could ask to reduce such risks.

The ability to scale is vital to successful marketing. If your business is growing, then your marketing efforts should evolve with it. After all, if your marketing doesn't keep up, then growth will likely slow down sooner rather than later. Trying to boost your marketing as your business is growing is challenging if you rely solely on your internal marketing capabilities. You may have to overwork existing marketing staff, affecting their overall performance or take on new employees. This can be financially risky if you barely have room in your budget to do so, despite experiencing growth. And hiring and onboarding those employees takes time, which means your business's growth may significantly outpace your marketing capabilities.

It's also important to note that you need to be able to scale down as well. If your business experiences a prolonged period of slow sales, you may be forced to scale back your marketing efforts. You may even be forced to make cutbacks to your marketing team. If you're maintaining a small internal marketing team, then such cuts can cripple your marketing efforts. Not only will your marketing capabilities be severely reduced, but you'll have a difficult time driving growth via your marketing strategy as well as scaling up should your business improve.

Outsourcing Provides More Flexibility

By outsourcing your marketing, scaling becomes much more manageable. An outsourced marketing agency generally provides various pricing tiers and can scale up or down to meet your requirements whenever the need arises. The ability to scale without risk will provide your company with greater flexibility and put your business in a much better position to either thrive or recover in the future.

Staff Augmentation Fills Temporary Talent Gaps

As your company grows, your marketing needs will evolve. You may develop and execute larger marketing projects that require a unique set of skills that your internal team doesn't have. Hiring an FTE may be out of the question, especially if the specialist you need is only for a single project. Hiring an FTE in such a case wouldn't be very cost-effective. An outsourced marketing agency has the talent pool available to augment your existing team with the specialists you need to plug talent gaps temporarily. Once the project is complete, you won't be stuck with an employee who has no further use at your company.

Creating, managing, and monitoring your existing B2B marketing efforts consumes a lot of time as it is. Trying to keep up with the latest marketing trends at the same time is often too much to ask. However, staying up-to-date with the latest B2B marketing trends is critical to maintaining an advantage within your industry. Some marketing trends may be of great benefit to you, but you could end up falling behind your competitors if you're not aware of them. A professional consulting firm will have their finger on the marketing world’s pulse, which means that they will stay on top of your latest trends.

Businesses are often resigned to the loss of ROI if they were forced to make cuts to their marketing budget. However, outsourcing your marketing could help you find a way to maintain your ROI despite those cuts. One thing to keep in mind is that outsourcing isn't just about saving money; it's also about getting more out of your existing marketing efforts. A professional consulting firm can work closely with you to improve how you allocate the funds you have. For example, they can help fill talent gaps left by reducing your marketing team or identifying the most cost-effective marketing strategies and reallocating your budget accordingly.

Outsourcing B2B marketing could be the difference between struggling to make do with a limited budget in the present and greater financial flexibility and marketing success in the future. By strategically outsourcing your B2B marketing needs to a marketing agency, you can gain access to resources you may not have been able to afford internally. With such resources, you'll be able to implement an effective marketing campaign that can help drive both immediate and future results. All while providing you with financial flexibility, you need to focus on your core business needs without sacrificing your marketing capabilities.