The Truth About Outsourcing Digital Marketing for Your Business

Given the prevalence of Web-based platforms as a source of interaction between consumers and business today, digital marketing is a powerful method of engagement. In fact, it forms the single most effective present-day marketing ?method; the only distinction is between types of digital marketing ? such as:

• Email marketing
• Blogging
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click
• E-commerce
• Mobile marketing

Of the above, email marketing holds a clear lead over the other methods of marketing. Despite this, metrics from the B2B Digital Marketing Strategy Survey show that 51% of B2B companies are not even close to maximizing the potential of the digital aspect of their marketing platforms.

Understanding the Power of Outsourcing

All it takes is a cursory glance at the results of the Digital Marketing Strategy Survey to see how outsourcing can have a drastic influence on a company?s ability to increase leads, conversions, customer retention, and increase sales revenue. Of the 333 businesses surveyed in the study, only 28% of them rated their strategy as very successful ? with 60% claiming it as only somewhat successful. These numbers are a bit easier to understand when you realize that just 61% of B2B companies outsource their strategy (in-part or entirely) and 39% keep it in-house.

Outsourcing vs. In-House

Because of the resources that a robust marketing platform requires, the businesses that keep it entirely in-house are having a tough time competing with the ones that allow help from an outside agency that is fully-equipped to devote the entirety of their resources to the myriad of subcategories involved. When kept in-house, a dedicated team has to be trained to erect social networks, allocate time to understanding the best bulk email providers, strategize content, hire an SEO consultant and keep up-to-speed with the fast-paced mobile device movement.

Out of all the businesses surveyed, three-quarters reported that inbound digital marketing is leading to continued improvements in their overall strategy. The rest have either hit the ceiling, or are seeing such poor return-on-investment that it?s impacting their business negatively. Since most companies outsource their marketing, it stands to reason that the ones having trouble are dealing with over-burdened or inexperienced in-house teams. With the right inbound marketing company, there?s no need to stretch yourself thin trying to handle all the elements of a marketing strategy; the key is to keep costs down while having results delivered.

A Two-Tiered Approach

A two-tiered approach involves using your own resources and outsourcing some of the work involved. In fact, 61% of the companies surveyed do this to varying degrees. Perhaps you keep the blogging aspect in-house, along with the any e-commerce that ties into your business plan. The more involved content marketing strategy can be left to an outside specialist, as well as the all-important social media marketing strategy.

The impressive 75% figure is telling here: this is the percentage of B2B companies that acknowledged continuing improvement in the effectiveness of their digital marketing strategy. One can surmise that 25% of businesses surveyed having difficulty seeing returns, are trying to tackle the most difficult aspects of digital marketing in-house: social media, content marketing, and search engine optimization.

To gain a better understanding of the needs of your company when it comes to effecting a digital marketing plan, download this free B2B Digital Marketing Strategy?Report. Your business may be better served by a fully-outsourced plan, or a partially-outsourced one; this report will help you better analyze what fits best.