“Why aren’t we doing more [insert video, podcasts, social media, long-form content, etc.]?” Are you a marketer who’s ever been asked this by your leadership or sales department? Maybe you glance around you at other overworked team members or peek at your calendar with back-to-back meetings and wonder how you’ll ever churn out more specialized content this year. You are not alone. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 67% of content marketers surveyed in 2022 say they are being asked to do more in the next year with the same resources.
Great marketing doesn’t happen overnight. It takes planning, creative minds, research and a whole lotta time and effort. Where many people only see the final deliverable, you know the work that goes into making each piece move the needle. It’s a lot! You and your colleagues can’t possibly do more without hiring an entire production team. But, can you afford to bring all of those specialties in-house?
What does it cost to employ an internal content marketing team?
To figure out what it costs to hire a team to cover all the marketing specialties the average marketing department needs to be successful we can start with some rough math.
For simplicity: imagine each role on your marketing team is getting a salary of roughly $100,000. Multiply that salary by 1.4 to include things like benefits, onboarding, and office space. That’s roughly $12,000 per month per person. Your specialist lineup may look a little different than this but in general, a well-rounded group of marketing specialists could look something like this:
- Content Strategist
- Copywriter
- Graphic Designer
- Video Producer
- Social Media Manager
Five additional roles on your team can cost more than $60,000 per month, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. When you start to consider the roles of SEO specialists, PR managers, brand strategists, website developers and PPC specialists that number gets really big, really fast. [Want hard numbers? Check out “What to look for in a marketing agency“] When faced with this reality most marketers quickly realize one of three things.
1. They can’t afford to build a team internally.
2. They may be able to hire for some of these roles but there will still be big gaps in their talent bench.
3. They already have people in these roles but those people are at capacity or don’t have the cross-functional skills to do all the things they need.
Outsourcing marketing specialties is very common; here’s why it’s a smart practice
Outsourcing can help you stretch budgets and capabilities far beyond what could be accomplished with even a single hire. Hiring a marketing agency is like hiring a whole range of marketing specialists as fractional employees and getting all the best talent, while only paying them for the hours per month that you need them. Not to mention, there are little to no hiring costs or overhead because all of those are absorbed by the agency.
Even in large companies where marketing teams are full of specialized talent, the majority of marketers are still outsourcing marketing tasks to agencies or contractors. This speaks volumes about the way marketing works. Even in the largest companies with the biggest hiring budgets, companies are outsourcing marketing specialties.
It begs the question, if they have the budget, why not hire internally for every role? It’s because outsourcing marketing talent brings additional benefits that aren’t budget-related, and outsourcing plays a role in success. One recent study of over 1,200 B2B marketers showed that the most successful companies outsourced some of their marketing while the least successful did not.
Marketing agencies bring creative power to internal marketers. Agencies see all kinds of clients and they live in the day-to-day of what’s working and what’s not. If you work with an agency, chances are that there are people on that agency’s team whose job it is to think up great ways to make you look like a rockstar to your leadership team. Who doesn’t want that kind of support in their corner? And, you get to take all the credit.
The math adds up! Whether it’s maximizing your budget or infusing creativity and having a stellar marketing team in your corner, outsourcing some of your marketing tasks is a great way to add skills to your roster so you can make the bad-ass marketing content that your company wants and needs.
The challenges of outsourcing marketing specialties
Even though outsourcing can be a great tactic to maximize your budget and talent pool, there are some challenges that go along with sourcing a team that can support you in all the ways your specific business needs it. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 65% of marketers say their top concern with outsourcing is finding partners with adequate expertise. Bringing on the right marketers for the job is the lynchpin that makes your marketing flywheel spin.
Need some tips and advice about how to find the right marketing agency and how to plug them into your marketing plans and hit the ground running? Check out “What to look for in a marketing agency“ to get some quick tips and tools that can help you know what to look for in a marketing agency partner.
Content Matterz can help you reach those goals with solutions that delight, engage, and inspire. Contact us for a strategy session today.