Strategic Outsourcing

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Commonly outsourced skills

In terms of digital marketing outsourcing, the most commonly outsourced skills include:

• Website management
• Social media management
• SEO
• PPC advertising
• Content marketing
• Brand management and PR
• Digital design

There are a number of reasons why companies outsource. Outsourcing can offer you:

• Expertise
• Flexibility
• Savings
• Accountability
• Cross-industry knowledge
• Objectivity
• Speed to market

In-house versus third-party capabilities

The benefits of nurturing capabilities in-house are:

• Faster communication: It is much easier to communicate changes to strategy with people positioned internally within the organization.
• Closer control: Can review progress at any time.
• Savings: Don’t have the expense of outsourcing to an agency.
• Company knowledge: Have a great understanding of the company and business goals.
• Marketing synergy: Aligns activities with marketing strategy as a whole.

The benefits of using third-party expertise are:

• Save time: Can use third-parties to provide expertise quickly as opposed to extensive research.
• Professional expertise: Have a technical understanding of the task at hand.
• Outside perspective: Can provide a broader and often more objective view point of strategy.
• Access to specialized technology: Third-parties will often have access to expensive software that it isn’t feasible for the company to have access to.

Assessing third-parties

You should use benchmarks to assess the suitability of third-party providers. Typical benchmarks include:

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): System for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers, or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage
• Brand character: A set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name
• Processes: A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end
• Team personalities: Overarching personality of a group of individuals working together
• Sense of urgency: Clear desire and motivation to move with speed
• Commitment: The state or quality of being dedicated to a cause
• Technology: Machinery and devices developed from scientific knowledge

Questions to ask agencies

Ask any agency you consider using the following questions, to assess their suitability:

• Which methods do you use to communicate reports?
• Do you have evidence of past successes?
• What is your billing structure in terms of recurring fees?
• What will you do to get to know our business, industry, market, and customers?
• How do you plan to execute digital marketing differently to our current approach?
• What is your digital marketing process?
• How do you plan to do things differently, given our industry?