Marketing is important for every business. It’s how new people hear about your brand, it’s how you attract new customers, and it’s how you help retain the customers you already have. But there are many ways a marketing strategy can go, and not all of them are favorable. If you want to make sure your marketing campaign is effective, you need to make the right decisions for it from the beginning.

One of the biggest decisions you’ll need to make is whether to outsource or handle all your marketing in-house. Which of these options is better and how can you choose which is best for you?

The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Marketing

Outsourcing your marketing has many advantages, such as:

• Potentially reduced costs. Though not always the case, working with a marketing firm is often associated with reduced costs. Each person you add to your in-house marketing team is going to have a significant salary, access to benefits, and will be associated with other expenses. By contrast, spending a few thousand dollars per month could give you access to many experts at once in a marketing firm. For what you get, working with an outsourced partner allows you to get more for your money.
• Instant availability. If you want to build a marketing team from the ground up, you’ll need to go through a process of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. But if you want to start working with a marketing firm, you can start the arrangement almost instantly. It’s a much faster way to get your campaign up and running.
• Diverse experts and resources. Eventually, you can build a marketing team in your business that features a wide array of different experts. But if you look at your potential outsourced partners, you’ll realize they already have access to those diverse teams of experts, as well as an abundance of resources. You can get access to everyone you need, all at once.
• Scalability. Outsourced marketing offers scalability. If you’re currently a small business and you don’t have many marketing needs, you can choose a small, inexpensive plan that works perfectly within your budget. As your business begins to grow and your marketing needs begin to change, you can change your plan and invest more heavily in expanding your brand. It’s much harder to grow efficiently if you’re constantly adding new people to your in-house team.
• Accountability and flexibility. Your marketing partner is going to be both flexible and accountable, making it much easier to work with them throughout the duration of your partnership. They’re incentivized to show you positive results, so they’re usually working hard to serve you as best they can.

The Benefits of In-House Marketing

There are also some benefits to handling your marketing in-house, such as:

• Brand familiarity. People who work for your business on a regular basis are going to have a much better understanding of your brand, including your brand values and personality. This is going to give them an advantage when planning your marketing and advertising campaigns, since they’re going to be more familiar with your core material. That doesn’t mean that an outsourced marketing partner won’t be able to understand your brand, but it may take a few meetings or a few campaigns for them to understand everything there is to understand about your business.
• Accessibility and departmental interactions. Departmental communication silos are already difficult to contend with. It may be harder to deal with them if you’re also juggling communications with several external partners. If you build an internal marketing team, and you foster an environment full of interdepartmental interactions, your communication will be much more streamlined.
• Control and direction. Some people prefer in-house marketing because they have more control and can offer more direction for their campaigns. You’ll always be able to approve or reject the suggestions that your marketing firm makes, but providing more direct leadership is preferable for some businesses and work environments.
• Exclusive focus. In-house marketing may also appeal to you because your in-house marketers will be exclusively focused on your brand. Rather than developing marketing materials for dozens, or hundreds of clients, they’re only going to work on relevant to your business needs.

Which Approach Is Right for You?

So is it better for you to focus on outsourcing your marketing or keep things entirely in-house? For many businesses, outsourcing is the clear choice; not only is it more cost-efficient and much more flexible, but it also has a tendency to generate better results. 

If you want to have more control over your marketing, if you want to build a more cohesive collaboration team, or if you just like the idea of having marketers exclusively dedicated to your brand, in-house may be better.