Hiring an Internal Marketing Person vs. Outsourcing Marketing Operations

If you are a business owner, tough choices are likely an everyday occurrence. Assembling all the right pieces to ensure your business is running like a well-oiled machine is critical. When it comes to marketing, the ideal scenario is a steady flow of interested and educated prospects for your products and services. Following up on prequalified leads requires less persuasion because the prospect has advanced midway through the purchasing behavior cycle by the time you contact them.

To achieve this level of marketing synergy, a business owner can do the following:

1. Hire a person internally to run the inbound marketing program. This might consist of social media and pay-per-click management and reporting, analytics reviews and written content that achieves high search rankings. These staff positions range in salary from 40K+ (plus benefits), depending on experience.

2. Outsource to a team of inbound marketing experts to handle all of the above.

The benefits to hiring a person internally are (a) their focused oversight of the program, (b) their ability to meet in-person and on-demand and (c) their access to the day-to-day events at your company for social media posts. The limitations include that (a) they are only one person, (b) they are probably limited to a single skillset and (c) they are likely not holistically knowledgeable about inbound marketing best practices. A prominent negative is: Recent studies show that 50% of all new hires quit or are fired within 6 months (Source: Humetrics)

For the same (or less) money required for a marketing associate’s annual salary, an experienced team of inbound marketing specialists can be retained to create, execute and measure the marketing program. The main benefit of this approach is that it builds a multidisciplinary team of content writers, SEO experts and web designers who apply best practices they learned from inbound campaigns for other clients. You’ll receive a subjective appraisal and suggestions for necessary modifications of your company’s marketing message. To prove the results, review analytical insights of the key performance indicators of your campaign monthly. All of this without vacation pay and benefits!

It is helpful to have an internal person as a messaging conduit to the external marketing team. This could include providing current information regarding your company and/or shooting candid photography and video within the company. However, none of this requires a marketing degree or formal training.

To substantially move the marketing needle, an outsourced marketing team will make a greater impact over a single internal hire. For more information on outsourcing your inbound marketing campaign, or to request a quote, contact info@x-factormarketing.com.