A lot of our big corporate clients believe that all marketing services should be done in-house. In other words, the marketing agencies that they partner with should employ the people that do the work.
Although there is merit in this traditional thinking, we believe that it could be short sighted. There are a lot of positive reasons why outsourcing to best of breed marketing experts could potentially really benefit your business.
- Marketing agencies do not employ only the best in the marketing business
Let’s face it, all businesses exist to make a profit. For this reason, graduates and low cost employees are better for profitability. Unfortunately marketing agencies often employ these young individuals who lack experience, but show potential to do most of the hard graft. This is why agencies who outsource or partner with freelancers can certainly offer you more as a client/customer than those who employ all the staff who will represent your brand. - Digital marketing is a specialist skill
Digital and social marketing is a specialist skill that needs constant development. Freelancers often upskill themselves to stay abreast of the newest developments. Employees often are so overworked that they don’t have time for upskilling. They are also complacent to upskill due to the lack of need to do so. - Focus on finding a digital marketing partner you can trust
A better marketing model (and one that Digital Gap Marketing Agency adopts) is specialist partnership with TRUE best of breed individuals in the industry. This means contracting the best person for a client’s brief; the person who can deliver on time and within budget is given the opportunity to take on a project. These are individuals hand picked by Digital Gap. Tried and tested and put through the fire. A hybrid employee and freelance partnering model works best for excellence.
This allows a client one point of contact, one point of due diligence, one level of accountability, synergy in output, strategic oversight, but still best of breed skills.
- In-house agencies lack originality
Having the same people consistently work on your brand is not the best idea. I will say this again… If the “everything-in-house” agency that you partner with has the same creatives working on your brand the whole time it will lead to creative that is… well… uncreative. - The capacity vs employee conundrum
Every agency that employs people has the capacity vs employee conundrum: employing the right amount of people for the right amount of work. The problem though, is that clients come and go but employees do not. For this reason you often find creative marketing agencies that are over capacity. This puts their employees under pressure and the output poor. Most marketing agencies lack the leadership to manage the ebb and flow of work optimally. Using an agency with a more hybrid model of employees and freelancers ensures more consistent work.
At the end of the day it is about finding a marketing partner in a digital marketing agency that you can trust. The question is not whether they personally employ all the people needed to get the job done, but rather if they have what it takes to get the job done.
And by “job” we mean blowing your competition out the door and feeding your bottom line.
Period.
