Should You Outsource Digital Marketing or Keep It In-House?

The decision to outsource your digital marketing or keep it in-house is undeniably one of the most impactful you’ll make. The success of your marketing efforts, the growth of your company, and your ROI are dependent on your next steps.

The problem is, most people offering advice have an agenda—to sell their outsourced digital marketing services, of course! But today, I want to flip that notion on its head. I don’t believe you have just one decision to make.

As a business and digital marketing consultant, I believe you have several decisions to consider. Each function or role within the digital marketing team, such as content creation, SEO, PPC, and analytics, should be evaluated on its own merit.

More importantly, I think the “right” answers will be different for each organization depending on its specific needs, internal capabilities, and strategic goals.

So, rather than provide you with a list of reasons why you should outsource digital marketing, I’ll show you how to make an informed and strategic decision on your own on a case-by-case basis — covering the full picture below, from what outsourcing actually involves to its benefits and disadvantages to a role-by-role breakdown you can apply to your own team.

What is Digital Marketing Outsourcing?

Digital marketing outsourcing involves leveraging a third party to perform digital marketing activities or create content that your company uses to grow.

In some cases, the third party may be a freelancer or agency, while at other times, it may be a digital marketing consultant like myself.

Marketing efforts run the gamut as well. For example, you may hire someone to help with advertising initiatives, streamline customer acquisition, enhance customer experience, or cultivate stronger relationships to create more loyal customers.

Tasks can range from full-scale management to search engine optimization to help more prospective customers find your business through organic search, content marketing, graphic design and creative work, and display advertising.

In short, whether you have a goal in mind or need a certain task completed, outsourcing can help.

What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing Digital Marketing?

With nearly half of all B2B companies outsourcing at least some of their marketing, according to Statista’s latest research, and popularity holding steady for roughly two decades per Harvard Business Review, most companies explore it at one point in time or another. It’s easy to see the applications, but how can outsourcing be beneficial compared to hiring an in-house professional? With so much diversity in the field and unique benefits for each goal and task, the list is long. Here’s a high-level overview of the top eight benefits.

Your Digital Marketing is Managed by Someone with Experience

It’s often said that it takes 10,000 hours or ten years of deliberate practice to become an expert. Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers,” the concept draws on examples throughout history—from composers to artists—and indicates few people create publicly known works until they’ve honed their craft for at least a decade. That said, a typical digital marketing manager only has around five years of experience or less, per PayScale data.

Experienced professionals such as this are in short supply. As a result, it’s challenging to build a quality digital marketing team using only in-house talent. Because outsourced digital marketing professionals tend to work on multiple projects at once; it’s much easier to find someone who has the experience you need.

You Have More Industry Expertise

Industry expertise is just as important as experience. You need to work with marketing professionals who understand your brand, challenges, and customers. It’s hard enough to find someone with experience due to the talent shortage, but finding someone who knows your industry on top of it, let alone building an entire team of people like this, is close to impossible in some niches. Because outsourced professionals work on multiple projects simultaneously, creating your dream team is much easier.

Your Team Knows the Latest Trends

It’s estimated that Google changes its search algorithm around 500 to 600 times each year, per Search Engine Land. This is only one facet of one role. While an in-house professional can certainly read articles and keep a pulse on what’s happening in their area of expertise, their information is wholly limited to how each change impacted your business and the limited number of steps they took to account for it.

When you choose digital marketing outsourcing, your team is working on a multitude of projects and interacting with other professionals outside your business more. That means they’ll know which strategies are performing for businesses today and how various approaches impact the effectiveness of campaigns. It’s like having the knowledge of a small army at your disposal.

Your Digital Marketing Performs Better

You develop a partnership where industry specialists breathe life into marketing campaigns with the latest trends and expertise. Each strategy is meticulously crafted and supported by analytics and valuable insights, promising better results. This level of precision ensures marketing messages not just reach audiences but engage them deeply, transforming every campaign into a powerful conduit of engagement and conversion.

You Benefit from Continuity

Nearly 60 percent of chief marketing officers have been in their position for three years or less, according to Harvard Business Review. Challenges abound, from misunderstandings about what the role entails to limited decision-making abilities. This constant changing of the guards impacts everything, from the strategies in play to branding and team morale. By outsourcing digital marketing, you can keep key players in place longer.

Furthermore, your campaign rollouts are more consistent, as you’re no longer balancing vacations and sick days with releases. Instead, your digital marketing outsourcing provider ensures rollouts happen on schedule.

Many Costs Reduce

Navigating the financial aspects of building a solid digital marketing strategy can be challenging for small businesses. With the traditional route of hiring in-house teams coming with its own set of financial implications, such as recruitment, onboarding, and ongoing salaries, the need for a cost-effective alternative becomes paramount. This is where the advantages of outsourcing digital marketing come into play. Business owners looking to optimize their marketing efforts, while keeping an eye on cost savings, often turn to outsourced digital marketing. This option allows you to hire a team of skilled digital marketing professionals, experts in SEO and content marketing, and up-to-date with the latest trends, without bearing the costs associated with full-time employees.

ROI Improves

Analytics is huge in digital marketing. First, they’re leveraged to help refine campaigns and improve them over time, so return on investment climbs as your team turns up the dials on what’s working for your audience. Secondly, outsourced marketing teams often use analytics to demonstrate the growth they’re producing for the companies they serve.

When teams have high analytics usage rates, their marketing budgets are a whopping 70 percent higher than their counterparts on average per Deloitte. Undoubtedly, companies see the ROI they’re receiving and are eager to amplify the results.

You Can Focus on Your Business More

The average small business owner works at least 50 hours per week, with 25 percent clocking at least 60, according to Inc. Startup employees are not immune, often expected to work 50-60 hours each week, per Business Insider. While there’s something to be said for grit and cross-training, there are only so many hours in a day and dollars available to your company. Digital marketing outsourcing frees you and your team to focus on core functions of your business and unlocks resources being tied up in inefficient or ineffective processes.

What Are the Disadvantages of Outsourcing Digital Marketing?

While outsourcing may have several benefits, there are some disadvantages to digital marketing outsourcing too. These include a lack of brand consistency, scheduling conflicts, and the potential for unexpected costs. I’ll go over a few below.

Outsourced Talent Has Less Company and Culture Exposure

One of the best things about keeping your marketing in-house is that the team gets to know your business and customers inside and out. In contrast, freelancers and digital marketing agencies, due to their split attention across various projects, might not establish the same depth of connection with your business. Allow me to provide a few examples.

A freelancer handling your marketing efforts, such as analytics, might deliver results without having in-depth knowledge of your business.

An agency manages your PPC marketing campaign and runs a company that makes specialized CRM and billing software for accountants. Because the agency doesn’t know your company or customers well, they don’t realize that a search for “accounting software” is usually a business looking to purchase software they can use versus an accountant looking for software their firm can use. In the end, you wind up needlessly spending thousands of dollars marketing to the wrong audience. This isn’t necessarily an issue of in-house vs. outsourcing. Outsourced talent can perform the job, but you need someone with industry knowledge.

When relying on a remote social media strategist, it’s important to consider their limitations in efficiently addressing queries compared to an in-house team with insider knowledge. Let’s say a freelancer is managing your social media and encounters a customer complaint about a product issue and a prospective customer inquiring about product features. Without access to internal information, the freelancer may provide incorrect answers or redirect the questions back to you for a response. Meanwhile, tensions mount as your social media queries wait. It’s technically possible to find a freelancer who can perform well, but because they’re removed from your company, you’re usually better off keeping the role in-house.

Brand Consistency May Be Lacking

The issue of “too many cooks in the kitchen” might arise with digital marketing strategies when outsourced. Even when two people are given the exact same guidelines, they can produce radically different things. Your brand voice may sound different from one person to the next, colors may be different, shapes won’t match… the list goes on.

To keep branding consistent, you either need to keep certain roles in-house or provide creatives with a detailed style guide, templates, and other materials. Your results will be even better if your team collaborates and has dedicated asset sharing.

You Can’t Set Freelancer or Agency Schedules

The moment you start telling freelancers or agencies when they have to work, they stop being outsourced talent and become employees. In many cases, that may mean you’re responsible for offering them the same benefits as employees, and employee taxes start to apply. It can hurt the relationship, too.

This loss of control can pose challenges when urgent marketing tasks or meetings are needed.

You can get around this disadvantage of outsourcing digital marketing by planning workloads, tasks, and meetings ahead of time. Using a good project management tool will help greatly with this. In addition, if you develop strong relationships with your extended team, they may volunteer to jump in for the occasional unexpected need, too.

Costs Can Climb if Not Managed Well

Unexpected and hidden charges are one of the biggest disadvantages of outsourcing digital marketing. This can happen due to:

• Failure to Discuss Limits: It can be uncomfortable to discuss money and hours worked, but it’s essential to understand how much you’ll spend on tasks before your talent starts work.
• Miscommunications: Sometimes, business owners and talent have different ideas about what it takes to complete a project.
• Scope Creep: Maybe you started off thinking you wanted a website and then realized you wanted it optimized midway through, only to find that’s an extra charge. Or, maybe you asked for a ten-page site but then realized the site needed special functionality.
• Intentional Slowness: Unfortunately, some hourly talent will intentionally work slowly to increase their billable hours. This can happen with in-house talent, too, though.
• Upcharges: Particularly with agencies and specialty firms, you may find there are surprise upcharges. For example, you might look at sample blogs on a website and see the company is charging a low price for content, only to submit an order and find out there are additional charges if you want a subject matter expert, longer copy, editing, optimization, and so forth.

Regardless of who you’re outsourcing to, the only way to manage these issues is to have your agreement in writing, develop good relationships with talent, monitor results, and take corrective action if your extended team isn’t delivering on your cost expectations.

You’re Trusting “Outsiders” with Proprietary Data

One of the most worrisome disadvantages of outsourcing digital marketing is the potential security risk. It’s hard to know if you have the same level of loyalty as you do with in-house employees, and there will be times your team needs access to things like pre-market product info, customer data, and company numbers.

The reality is that these issues can creep up with in-house talent, too. Errors may be made, or disgruntled employees may intentionally share information. Protecting proprietary data is handled much the same way. Limit data sharing only to those who need to know. Have the team sign NDAs and similar agreements. When you’re sharing sensitive data, always remind people that it’s not public knowledge and needs to be kept confidential.

5 Questions That Will Tell You if Outsourcing a Digital Marketing Role is Best

Because my background is in business, I build digital marketing teams and strategies mindfully around an organization’s needs and goals. You can do the same by asking yourself these five questions for each role you’re considering filling in-house or outsourcing.

1. Does Your In-House Team Have the Required Skills and Expertise?

Become familiar with the role and the necessary capabilities someone must possess to be able to perform the duties associated with it. Better yet, start by creating a list of these skills. If your in-house team doesn’t already have them, consider how big of a challenge it would be to find someone you’re certain possesses them.

For example, you may be able to gauge whether someone can write or not, but do you have the background to assess whether an SEO writer can actually write for search engines?

If you can’t judge with accuracy, you don’t have in-house talent who can already fulfill the role, or you can’t easily hire someone you’re sure can perform for you, it’s usually better to outsource.

The only caveat here is that sometimes you need an “insider” who understands what’s happening within your organization on a daily basis. Before you settle on outsourcing as your solution, consider whether you need someone with a pulse on your company and, if so, if it’s possible for an outsourced provider to have one.

2. Does Your In-House Team Have Access to the Right Tools and the Ability to Use Them Effectively?

Secondly, create a list of tools your employee will need if you keep the role in-house. Consider “tools” in a broad sense. An in-house writer, for example, will need a workstation and software. An in-house video production team will need that and perhaps recording equipment, props, editing software, and more.

You might be able to get a writer set up in-house, but purchasing all the tools your in-house video production team will need is going to become costly fast. If you don’t have the tools and purchasing them will be cost-prohibitive, it may be better to outsource to someone who already has them.

3. Does Your In-House Team Have the Time to Effectively Manage the Role?

The next thing to consider is how much time it takes to perform the work well. Again, identifying how much time something takes may require research. For example, you may think someone on your team can tackle your email marketing.

That person may have the skills, and you may already have tools on board. But did you know the “average” email campaign takes 12 hours to plan and implement, and most organizations run several per month? The time will add up and, if your internal hire doesn’t have the bandwidth, he or she will either underperform or get burned out fast. You’ll need to hire additional staff or outsource to a third-party if your in-house marketing team members don’t have the capacity to do the job well.

4. Do You Have KPIs to Measure the Success of the Role?

An additional consideration is how you’ll measure the success of the role. How will you know your marketing professional is meeting objectives? If you’re drawing a blank, you should probably outsource the digital marketing role to someone who can provide you with transparency and reporting.

5. Have You Run a Cost Analysis?

Thus far, if all things thus far are equal, consider how much you’re spending on keeping a digital marketing role in-house versus outsourcing. Oftentimes, outsourcing is more cost-effective, simply because the professional specializes in the role they’re fulfilling for you and already has the tools.

For example, your in-house team might be able to use inexpensive software to make explainer videos for marketing, but if it’s not really what they do, they could easily spend a full day doing something a pro might spend an hour on.

Role-By-Role: Should You Outsource Digital Marketing or Keep it In-House?

Now, let’s put those five questions into practice. Below, I’ll break down some of the most common digital marketing roles and show you how to decide if you can keep them in-house or would do better to outsource.

Copywriting

Copywriting is one of the few roles that can be successfully outsourced or kept in-house. I touched on the role a bit earlier. It’s one that requires few tools, and the success of the role is largely based on the skill of the individual. Do you have someone in-house who can maintain your brand voice that creates copy people read and share, and does this person have time to create quality copy? If so, you can keep this role in-house. If you struggle to find someone who can meet any of these objectives, then it is a necessity to outsource it. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Copywriting or Keep it In-House?

Email Marketing

Like copywriting, email marketing can go either way. The role requires all the skills associated with copywriting, plus a greater understanding of the sales process and sales optimizations, as well as an assortment of tools ranging from an email service provider through render testing software. If you have someone in-house who can do all this and has the time available to do it well, email marketing is another role you can keep in-house.

Most email service providers will also provide you with stats to measure performance too, so it’s easier to tell if your team is meeting goals. However, if your internal team doesn’t have the skills or time required or is not meeting objectives, you can outsource this role. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Email Marketing or Keep it In-House?

Social Media Management

Generally speaking, social media marketing is a role you probably want to keep in-house. This is one example where the caveat outlined in the first question comes into play. Your social media manager will likely not only be managing the posts but also interacting with people and businesses on your behalf. They will become the voice of your brand.

Moreover, there will be times when this individual has to make rapid-fire decisions on how to address questions, comments, and concerns posted by your audience. In order to perform well, your social media marketing professional must know your brand, its voice, and what’s happening with the organization on a daily basis. It’s very hard to find someone who can do this through outsourcing.

However, if your outsourcing partner has one dedicated person working on your project who genuinely gets to know your brand and interacts with you enough to have a pulse on the business and provide the consistency your target audience needs on social media, you can outsource this role too. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Social Media Marketing or Keep it In-House?

Analytics

You’ll probably want to keep analytics in-house too. Although it’s a highly specified role that may be challenging to fill, your data is what brings all your marketing efforts into alignment with the business goals. That naturally requires having a pulse on the organization and its daily operations and also being tuned in as well as available to the team for reporting needs. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Your Digital Marketing Analytics or Keep it In-House?

Digital Marketing Management

If you’re hiring someone who works like me, you can outsource digital marketing management. Otherwise, keep this critical role in-house. What’s the difference? Well, at best, most outsourcing firms meet with a client a couple of times at the onset of a project. From there, they devise a strategy, tell you what they’re doing, and then carry out their plan.

Already seeing the problem? Yes! You can’t effectively manage a company’s marketing if you don’t live and breathe that company every day. You’ll never understand its objectives, who its customers are, or what metrics to measure that way. You may not even know if your marketing plans are performing if you’re not tuned in. That’s precisely why I don’t just meet with the company.

I become part of their team while I’m consulting and managing their digital marketing. If you have someone who operates like this, outsourcing digital marketing management can work. If not, it needs to be an in-house role. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Digital Marketing Management or Keep it In-House?

App and Website Development

Outsourcing development projects is generally best. This is one area where virtually every possible box you can check will point to outsourcing. First, the field is very specialized. It’s unlikely you’ll have someone on your internal marketing team with the skill set necessary, and most projects require more than one type of development specialist, so you’d be hiring a team versus a single developer.

You’d also need to purchase a multitude of expensive tools, and you’d probably only use them once, during the initial build of your app or website. In other words, getting everything you need in place to carry out a single project would be overkill and not cost-effective. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Your Apps and Other Development Tasks or Keep Them In-House?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You should probably be outsourcing SEO, too. Like development, SEO is typically performed by several specialists. There are people who perform keyword research, analysts, strategists, on-page optimizers, off-page optimizers, and more. Hiring a full team to perform all these duties, particularly when many of the tasks don’t need to be done repeatedly, would be excessive.

Moreover, people who specialize in SEO and work with it daily are likely to have a deeper understanding of SEO. They are likely to be more efficient and cost-effective. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Your SEO or Keep it In-House?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Outsourcing PPC will usually produce better results. Suffice it to say, taking a wrong turn with your digital ads can be a costly mistake. A strong PPC professional will have lots of different skills, such as the ability to carry out customer and keyword research as well as an understanding of analytics and consumer behavior. Plus, the person should be well-versed in multiple ad platforms, too.

While you may be able to hire someone to manage this all in-house, the other catch is that managing PPC for a small or mid-sized company is not generally a full-time job. It could take ten hours per week or ten hours per month. The time investment will vary based on your ad spend.

However, suppose your in-house professional is only devoting a small amount of their time to your PPC. In that case, it’s going to be very difficult for him or her to stay abreast of trends in PPC and keep getting you the results you deserve from your investment. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Your PPC or Keep it In-House?

Video Production

For the best results, you’ll want to outsource video production too. As I mentioned earlier, high-quality videos require lots of expensive and specialized equipment. And, while you can use inexpensive software to make catchy slideshows or explainer videos, not only will your in-house person probably do it much slower than a pro because they won’t do it often, but it won’t have the same professional polish.

That means you’ll pay more in the long run and not get the results you otherwise would. To be fair, video production isn’t usually a single person’s job either. You’ll need writers, videographers, animators, editors, voice actors, and more.

It’s a huge undertaking to create videos in-house, and you probably won’t get ROI from them that way. If you’re going to include videos in your digital marketing strategy, and you should, outsource them. Read the Deep Dive: Should You Outsource Your Marketing Video Production or Keep it In-House?

Selecting a Digital Marketing Agency or Partner

Chances are, you’ve decided that your business would be better served by outsourcing one or more marketing roles. The natural pivot for most business leaders would be selecting a digital marketing agency that can tie up all your loose ends for you. If this is where your mind went, pause for just a moment and think through all the different skills and resources required to successfully fulfill the role you want to outsource—the very things that led you to your decision. It’s a lot to take in, right?

This is why you do not want to hire a digital marketing agency either. Most agencies offer a lot of different digital marketing services, but they don’t excel in any one area. As the adage goes, they’re a “Jack of all trades but master of none.” If you’re going to outsource marketing because you can’t do it all, don’t give the job to someone else who can’t do it all. Entrust it to someone who will create the systems you require and find the right talent for each role.

Get the Support You Need to Build a Killer Digital Marketing Team That Strengthens Your Organization

Still not sure what path is right or overwhelmed by how much is involved in digital marketing? That’s totally understandable. If it’s not what you do every day, it’s easy to get lost in all the options. Thankfully, it is what I do every day. I’ve helped Fortune 100 companies level up, taught digital marketing at a college level, and even taught Google Partners how to leverage Google’s marketing platforms effectively.

These days, my passion is for helping mid-sized companies that are hungry for growth reach the next stage by getting the right teams in place and creating comprehensive digital marketing strategies that align with the business’s goals — the kind of hybrid, role-by-role approach this guide walks through. If that sounds like what you need, contact me for a consultation.

FAQs About Digital Marketing Outsourcing