When’s the last time you thought you had too much time of your hands?

How about the last time thought about something not related to growing your company?

Have you ever struggled with having too many hot leads?

Small and medium sized businesses always deal with constraints that hinder growth, and not surprisingly, these constraints often stem from limited marketing resources. When it comes growing a business, most managers run into these two brick walls: the lack of time or the lack of expertise of in-house staff to effectively execute marketing strategies.

Despite the problem, management will end up scratching their heads over these same 4 questions.

• Should we expand on our in-house marketing function or outsource?
• What skill sets in the realm of marketing are most important to our success?
• How do we consistently drive scalable growth?
• Do we have the right resources in place to support scaling our business?

Companies regularly call us up without having these questions completely answered. And you better believe when we ask “Have you considered outsourcing your marketing rather than hiring in-house?” we hit a hot button. It forces managers to tell us how they really feel – which is usually that they need help with all of the above.

Marketing is hard. And it’s especially hard for small and medium-sized businesses with thinly stretched budgets. There’s no industry blueprint to follow and no benchmarks marketers to gauge their program effectiveness.

So why do we passionately believe that outsourced marketing accelerates business growth?

Get marketing expertise On Demand

One thing we all know is that you will always need your marketing leadership to help you think through complex strategic decisions. And those same marketing leaders need to have proven and updated expertise in SEO, social media, paid search, and marketing automation, as a couple examples.

So, of-course many firms make the mistake of either:

1. Hiring an excellent general marketer who is good at overseeing programs and assigning projects to be done while expecting them to deliver expertly across a wide range of different marketing strategies. The reality is: even the most talented general marketer won’t be an expert in everything.

2. Hiring multiple specialist agencies to try and paste together a few of all the professionals. The challenge here is that each agency has its own individual area of expertise and this approach doesn’t breed the cohesion needed for successful operation. Even with an in-house marketer dedicated to managing these relationships, all the different relationships become put into silos over time. We see this result in wasted and inefficient marketing execution all too often.

It doesn’t matter if you’re just looking to beef up your marketing or replace it altogether with an outside source, finding the perfect match in an agency will be critical. Full-service agencies will tend to understand issues SMB’s face quickly and be able to operate with cohesion through all projects due to their wider breadth of specialization.

Operate with a company that has time-tested marketing best practices and innovations

Marketing outsourcing agencies have had multiple clients for many years, and they retain employees with a vast spread of knowledge. This way, they know more about how the path and strategies that will lead your marketing efforts to a successful level.

The right agency partner allows you to benefit from a team that is constantly finding new research and marketing strategies. This right partner will also have a time-tested set of operating procedures that gets your company moving in the proper direction quickly and smoothly.

Marketing operations naturally become more cost effective

Despite the bad image marketing agencies get for being a 5-man group huddled in a basement somewhere, this is something we always find true. The right partner will always allow the total cost of your operations to be lower than if you hired in-house due to several factors some of which are talent searching, operations already being set in place, and employee retention costs.

If you’re in doubt about this, it should be somewhat easy for a small business to compare the ROI of choosing in-house to outsourcing. Simply look at what you need, include all relevant costs, set a ballpark figure, then get a quote from an agency.

The number one thing you should remember in your search for a marketing outsourcing partner is that there is no cookie-cutter fit. You’ll have to match your needs to what you’re looking for in an agency and be selective with them. Remember to look at every facet of your marketing before making a decision, because you can’t accelerate your company’s growth if you’re working with the wrong agency partner.