Should You Do Your Own Marketing or Hire A Professional?

In today’s digital landscape, marketing can help you build a cohesive brand and drive sales through awareness. As your business grows, you should consider how your marketing will be handled. This brings us to the question, should you do your own marketing or hire a professional? Each route has its benefits and drawbacks. In this blog post, we point out the advantages and disadvantages of both options, so you can make the best decision for your business.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Doing the Marketing Yourself

When you go the DIY route, all the activities are handled by the employees of the business. According to a study from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), businesses do more than half of their marketing in-house, but 90% of businesses still work with external agencies despite having an in-house team. This is due to the fact that marketing is a big job. Even with a highly skilled in-house team, there may be holes that need to be filled by an outside marketing agency. However, there are still some advantages and other disadvantages of doing your business’ marketing yourself.

Advantages

You Have a Deep Understanding of Your Brand

When you work with an in-house team, you can be sure they understand your products, services, and company culture. Therefore, they often know the best approach to market your brand. This can be incredibly helpful when trying to develop brand awareness with your target audience. This can pose a challenge to an outside agency. However, it is not impossible, especially for an experienced agency. Many agencies put together a list of questions they ask their clients so they can know their clients’ businesses better to avoid this issue.

Fast Communication

Since an in-house team works in the same place, they will give fast feedback regarding their efforts. Having a direct communication channel enables you to respond more quickly to the upcoming trends. When the whole team is engaged, relevant topics can easily be discussed. If you outsource a team of professionals, it can be more difficult to schedule meetings at once. Outsourced teams will likely have other clients they need to meet with. So, meeting with them oftentimes requires a scheduled meeting.

Boosts Members Motivation

When working with an in-house team, they will likely feel very equipped and motivated to do the job correctly. After all, working to improve customer acquisition, leads, or brand awareness of your business is their sole duty. However, this is not to say an outside agency will be unmotivated. Agencies typically work hard to get great reviews and referrals, which is a major motivation. Numerous negative reviews can destroy a small marketing firm, so they will likely work hard to help you reach your goals.

Disadvantages

Lack of Experience and Resources

An in-house team may lack the necessary marketing experience to do the job. To ensure you produce high-quality content, you should create the best strategies for your company. Without the right talents, you may not meet your marketing goals, and since the technologies change at a lightning pace, you could end up singing the same old tune. When you work with outside professionals, you’ll stay on top of the latest marketing trends, more easily than if you use an in-house marketing team.

To achieve your marketing objectives, the team must have diverse skill sets like social media expertise, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing – you get the point. Keep in mind that infographics on social media are shared three times more than any other content. So, having a in-house graphic designer is often a requirement as well.

Same Old Perspective

When you work with an in-house team, they may not bring fresh ideas. This is because they are accustomed to the same philosophy and old habits. Sometimes, it’s hard to think outside the box. With an outsourced team, they will typically stay up to date on marketing trends. Also, marketing agencies work with a variety of clients. This gives them a great deal of experience and ideas to draw from.

Dreaded Workplace Politics

When people work together, distractions can happen and conflicts can arise. This may cause drama at the workplace – it’s just natural. If you don’t address this issue immediately, you could miss the bigger picture. When you outsource to a professional team, they will only focus on the company’s marketing strategy. This can be an important issue to resolve if it ever comes up.

When Should You Do Your Own Marketing?

You should choose this option when you want to grow and keep the expertise in your company. However, you must have clear marketing goals and a long-term marketing strategy. Another thing to keep in mind is whether you’re willing to build a powerful marketing team. Are you eager to start and keep it lean? You should see this as an investment that will pay off in the long run. Finally, you should evaluate whether you’re willing to spend on processes that will involve third parties. When you avoid external communication, this can save you valuable time and money. Then again, there are additional costs associated with hiring employees. These are all factors that should be considered.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hiring a Professional

Many small businesses prefer to hire help from a marketing firm or agency. This is because the cost of hiring another employee is oftentimes much more than outsourcing the work. Also, the marketing agency should already have their own marketing tools, which can be costly to purchase yourself. Many marketing agencies can help you develop your marketing strategy, and then help you implement it effectively. Read below to see the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing work to a marketing professional.

Advantages

To Keep a Competitive Edge in the Industry

In the evolving world of digital marketing, you should keep tabs with the best practices. A professional team will first look at the emerging trends and groundbreaking technologies that can take your business to the next level. It’s worth mentioning that modern marketing strategies involve a wide complexity of platforms. To achieve your marketing goals, you must work with professionals who can handle different tasks.

Allows You to Focus on Your Strengths

When you hire a professional, you can concentrate on what you are best suited to. This means that you don’t have to spend your time learning new marketing strategies or finding new avenues to calculate ROI. Additionally, working with a professional ensures you achieve your goals on time. In general, you’ll have people with different skill sets, like content marketing specialists, social media experts, graphic designers, website developers, and the list goes on.

Fresh Inspiration

A professional marketing agency will inject new blood into your marketing efforts. It will not only help you enhance your current campaign but also help you identify new opportunities. More specifically, they can enhance your social media reach via Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you’re a startup business, you must do a lot of marketing to get it off the ground. This may include tackling aspects that you’re familiar with. When you hire a professional, you’ll easily solve this dilemma.

Saves Time and Money

Business owners have lots of responsibilities waiting for them. If you take all the marketing activities on your own, it can just be an additional burden. While in-house marketing may look affordable, it’s expensive in the long run. Apart from bringing a new breadth of knowledge, working with a marketing professional is almost always more affordable. Any in-house team needs a monthly salary, overtime pay and other perks.

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Disadvantages

It Costs Money to Do it Right

It’s expensive to hire a professional to do the marketing for you. Unfortunately, many businesses make the mistake of leaving their marketing strategies to incompetent people who provide the cheapest quote. This can, in the worst-case scenario, ruin your business. Before you hire someone, make sure you understand the background and professional experience. Also, be clear about what you expect from them. A competent professional will help you understand the pitfalls that lie ahead. And along these same lines, bringing on an intern isn’t a bad idea. But if you do this, make sure there’s an experienced marketing professional who’s in charge of developing and directing the intern. Leaving all your marketing activity into the hands of someone who’s experienced, could cause problems, if not done correctly.

No Control Over Speed

You aren’t in charge of a professional’s calendar and schedule. As such, you can’t necessarily force them to always get things done as quickly as you might like. Although they can give some deadlines, you’re not guaranteed that they will meet them. This is why it is best to look at the reviews of an agency to make sure there are no reports of them being late on their deadlines.

Different Visions

The marketing professional may provide a different idea for your vision of strategy. If you try to convince them that your idea is better, you could end up with conflicts. However, most agencies are dedicated to being professional and serving their clients well. Also, if you are open to the ideas of an expert, this should be no problem.

When Should You Hire a Professional?

When you are looking for innovations, but your in-house team lacks the capacity. Besides that, you should hire a professional if you need the results immediately. Outside agencies, such as our own, are dedicated to providing their clients great results, as the success of their services can dictate their income. If word gets around that they do not provide quality services, it can affect how often they get new clients.

Market Yourself and Hire a Consultant

If you don’t have the resources to hire an expert, consider building an in-house marketing team. Then hire a consultant to keep things on track. The consultant will also be able to train your team, making them more effective in the long run. This option comes with flexibility. It allows you to expand your team and decide the experts to work with in the future. Be sure to consider the pros and cons of each option to see which one suits you best.