There may come a time when your marketing team needs a little extra help to complete a big project or even just certain tasks. This leads to the question of whether or not you should bring in outside help, such as a marketing agency, or hire a new employee. Using an outside source may feel like a big step (or even a little awkward at first), but the benefits are worth overcoming that initial hesitation.
Below are the questions that frequently come up when deciding whether to bring in outside help, and the answers you need to make the best decision for your team, straight from the experts.
When should I bring in outside help?
There are three strong reasons to bring in a marketing agency for support:
- Your current teem doesn’t have enough bandwidth
- Your team lacks a specialized skill or experience
- You need to boost your growth
When faced with any of these issues, having someone you can call on to augment your team is essential. You’ll get access to skills and resources you don’t have internally, you get a fresh perspective and new ideas.
Over the span of her career, Content Matterz CEO, Cara McDonald, has been part of in-house marketing teams and is now founder of a successful B2B marketing agency. With her expansive background and experience, she offers good insights and perspective on when to bring in outside help:
“Having been on both sides of agency and in-house marketing teams, I know how much everyone has on their plates. The pace of business and slim marketing teams makes everyone feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day or hands to get it all done.” Which is part of the reason she opened her own agency. “My absolute favorite, most rewarding part of being on the agency side is seeing the relief on the faces of our clients that comes from getting high-quality outside help. The pace is stressful and so often hiring is not possible. By getting help from an agency or contractor – you can just breathe a little easier and get a few things more checked off your list.” A reason Content Matterz is brought in time and time again to aid marketing teams with an assortment of projects.
Why should I hire outside help?
Having outside resources to go to when your team needs help offers you the flexibility to fill in holes where needed without long term commitment. Marketing agencies that are brought into help can concentrate on the assigned projects only, allowing them to ramp up quickly and focus their attention where it is needed the most. TrueNorth, an agile marketing platform company, calls these outside resources ‘super-subs,’ who “provide the flexibility modern marketing teams need to respond to emerging trends, bring in new talent as it’s needed and change the size of individual teams quickly, without risk.”
Keep in mind, using an outside marketing agency as a resource is actually more common than you might think. In their 2020 survey, the Content Marketing Institute reported that of those respondents who outsource, 86% of them outsourced content creation.
Are outside resources expensive?
The short answer: no. Hiring outside help often feels like it will be expensive, but when you step back and look at the overall costs of hiring a full-time (or even part-time) employee to take on these tasks, you will see the benefits of outside help. The costs of hiring an employee includes salary, benefits, and on-boarding, not to mention the time and effort it will take to recruit, interview and hire the new team member. In comparison, when pulling in an agency, you negotiate the cost for the project, provide the background materials, guidelines and timeline needed to get started, and the agency will take it from there.
To help visual the costs savings, the article 3 Reasons Your Business Needs a Marketing Agency, outlines the annual salary costs for premium marketing roles and how it compares to bringing in outside resources. Here’s what they found:
- a Marketing Manager can cost upwards of $120,000 per year
- a Social Media Manager can cost around $50,000 annually
- a marketing company may only charge your small business anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 per month (estimated) depending on your needs.
To drive this point home, Jonathan Aufray, CEO of Growth Hackers stated in a recent article:
“when you work with an agency, you will have access to web designers, copywriters, data analysts, PPC advertisers, social media managers, content creators, SEO experts, and more. If you want to hire those skills in-house, you will need to hire 10 people. Working with an agency instead is cost-effective.”
Won’t getting an agency involved slow us down?
Not in the slightest. Pulling an agency in on a project can actually save time, especially when it’s a project or task your team doesn’t have the skills or tools to complete. Agencies and contract workers are experienced in taking the information provided and getting straight to work on a project. This frees up you and your team to focus on top functional areas.
I need the help. How do I get started working with a marketing agency?
Take a look at your marketing strategy and goals, as well as the projects you have lined up. Make a list of the projects where bringing outside resources and tools will add efficiencies and better support your team. Not sure how or where you could best use the help? At Content Matterz, we’re here for you! Our experts can help you assess when and where you may need agency help. Don’t be shy, reach out to us today to talk more!