How to Outsource B2B Marketing

Before diving deeper, let's explore why your current setup might be hitting a wall:

• Limited Expertise in Key Areas: Your in-house team is proficient, but might lack specific skills in SEO, social media, or email marketing, which are vital for broadening your reach and improving lead generation.
• Resource Intensity of Marketing Activities: Keeping up with the constant demand for fresh content creation, managing CRM systems like HubSpot, and tailoring marketing campaigns to meet evolving marketing trends can overwhelm your existing team members.
• Cost Inefficiencies: Employing a full-time marketing department with a breadth of expertise can be prohibitively expensive, especially for startups or small businesses trying to optimize budget allocation.
• Slower Adoption of Marketing Innovations: The pace at which digital marketing evolves requires continuous learning and adaptation. An in-house team may not always have the real-time capability to stay abreast of new marketing strategies or automation tools.
• Scalability Constraints: As your target audience grows and becomes more diverse, scaling up marketing efforts effectively without compromising on quality or customer experience can be challenging.

Outsourcing your B2B marketing to a specialized agency can address these pain points effectively. By partnering with a full-service provider, you gain access to a team of experts with years of experience across all facets of digital marketing. These professionals are adept at crafting bespoke marketing strategies tailored to the specific needs of B2B companies.

• Expertise on Demand: Gain immediate access to specialized skills and knowledge in areas like SEO, content marketing, and LinkedIn outreach without the long-term commitment of hiring.
• Cost Efficiency: Reduce overhead costs by paying for expert services only when you need them, allowing you to allocate funds more strategically within your business.
• Enhanced Capacity for Innovation: With a team that’s always on the cutting edge of marketing trends and technologies, your marketing strategy will continuously evolve to keep you ahead of the competition.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Outsourced marketing services can be scaled up or down based on your current business needs and market conditions, providing flexibility that is hard to achieve with an in-house team.
• Improved ROI and Metrics Tracking: Outsourced teams bring sophisticated tools and techniques to measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities, ensuring better alignment with overall business goals.

Outsourcing your B2B marketing can offer numerous benefits, but it's not without its caveats. Understanding these limitations is crucial for determining if a fractional or hybrid approach to outsourcing might better serve your business needs.

• Loss of Personal Touch: Fully outsourcing can sometimes lead to campaigns that feel less personalized or disconnected from the core values and messaging of your company, especially if the outsourced team is not fully integrated with your in-house team.
• Communication Hurdles: Working with an external marketing agency can introduce challenges in communication and alignment, particularly when dealing with complex projects or when rapid real-time decision-making is required.
• Dependency Risks: Relying entirely on outsourcing companies for your marketing needs can create a dependency that might be risky if the service provider faces operational issues or if there's a need to suddenly switch providers.
• Less Control Over Marketing Activities: With full outsourcing, companies might find themselves with limited oversight of day-to-day marketing activities, which can lead to discrepancies between expected and delivered results.
• Cultural Misalignment: An outsourced team might not have the same understanding of your target audience or company culture, which can impact the effectiveness of outreach and customer experience strategies.

The Fractional Solution: Combining the Best of Both Worlds

For many B2B companies, especially startups and small businesses, a fractional approach to outsourcing marketing can mitigate these issues while still leveraging external expertise. This model involves outsourcing specific marketing functions while keeping strategic elements in-house.

1. Focused Expertise Where Needed: You can hire fractional team members for high-skill areas such as SEO, content marketing, or automation, where specialized knowledge is pivotal, while maintaining core marketing activities in-house.
2. Enhanced Collaboration and Flexibility: A fractional marketing team works closely with your in-house staff, leading to better integration and alignment on messaging and strategy. This setup fosters a seamless collaboration environment where external experts feel like part of the in-house team.
3. Control and Oversight: Maintaining involvement in strategic marketing functions allows for greater control over your marketing campaigns and a direct line of sight into day-to-day operations.
4. Scalable and Customizable: You can scale your fractional team up or down based on project requirements and budget constraints, offering a tailored approach that fits your specific needs without the commitment of a full-time hire.

In action, this is how we help you derive all of these benefits with a fractional marketing team at your side:
 

Consider Your Options Carefully

Choosing between full outsourcing and a fractional marketing team depends on your company’s specific needs, the complexity of your marketing strategy, and the capacity of your in-house team. If you’re considering how best to enhance your marketing efforts, reach out to us. Our team of experts is ready to help you design a solution that optimizes your marketing function, balances your resources, and drives your B2B sales effectively.

Here are five reasons why companies use agencies to outsource their marketing initiatives:
 

1. Your competitive edge will increase with marketing expertise.

Your company may have distinguished goals for a marketing plan but lack the time and funds necessary to put it into practice. Or maybe your company sells cutting-edge goods but doesn't know how to get in touch with the correct clients. A marketing strategy needs long-term planning, a concise narrative, and strategic brand alignment to achieve the best outcomes for your target audience. By combining your organization with existing knowledge, outsourcing prevents delays. Especially when hiring a Fractional CMO, who ensures your budget and strategies are aligned to your goals and helps your existing team more effectively excel in their respective roles. 

When you outsource your marketing, you're putting your job in the hands of marketers who have made it their career to work with businesses just like yours and have the know-how and resources to make it happen.

A marketing agency may work as an extension of your team, taking your ideas and turning them into reality. They can do everything from creating a brand identity and rebuilding your website to devising a content marketing plan and securing media coverage. Allowing an outsourced digital marketing team to work under an in-house project manager is always an option for those projects that require extra handholding. 
 

2. Lack of time and resources shouldn't impede the expansion of a company.

Many business owners have their marketing plans in mind, but they frequently lack the time and money needed to carry them out. Even the best marketing plan won't be successful if it's not prioritized or consistently carried out. Outsourcing your marketing activities doesn't mean giving up on your ideas; rather, it makes use of professionals who can assist in making those concepts a reality.
 

3. Return on investment is much greater than the initial investment

Cost is the main deterrent for businesses from outsourcing their digital marketing activities. The most successful businesses and astute business owners regard marketing as an investment in their expansion rather than as an expenditure. While there are certain fees associated with using an outside agency, there are substantially fewer administrative expenses. Gaining access to a whole team of marketing experts—typically for much less than the cost of one full-time employee—is one of the main advantages of outsourcing digital marketing efforts. Additionally, it avoids the extra expense of modern equipment and technology as well as continual professional growth.
 

4. An invaluable asset is an outside perspective.

Accessing perspectives outside the purview of your internal team is a less obvious but no less significant advantage of outsourcing your marketing. Using outside resources to lead marketing initiatives like branding, content generation, and graphic design can let in fresh, original suggestions from a group of objective professionals.
 

5. Devoted attention to particular marketing projects

When it comes to specialized marketing projects that demand a lot of time, money, and/or expertise, like a website redesign, a rebranding initiative, a content marketing strategy, or a media relations program, this is a wonderful moment to outsource your marketing activities.

How to outsource marketing?

The choice to outsource is a significant one that calls for both a financial commitment and a cooperative working relationship between the companies. Therefore, it can make more sense to use a combination of the two, or to keep some jobs in-house if you have the resources and funding to do so. You have three options for outsourcing:

• Completely outsource your marketing.
• Keep all your internal marketing initiatives.
• Combine internal and external marketing efforts.

Companies will have different requirements. Your financial circumstances, as well as the expertise, capability, and skill set of your existing in-house staff, will influence which alternative you choose.
 

Choosing the best digital marketing agency for your company will be based on your unique demands and expectations.

For more information on how to make outsourcing work for your business or to chat with a digital marketing strategist about O8 fractional marketing services, get in touch today. With a vast range of outsourcing experience, looking to a fractional team to fill gaps in your own may be the best investment you can make in the success and growth of your company.