What Are the Benefits of an Outsourced Marketing Department?

Marketing is one of the most highly variable and potentially costly expenses for all businesses. Especially for small companies and startups, keeping a full-time Marketing Director and support staff trained on the latest trends; conceptualizing, producing, and managing quality campaigns; and busy during "off seasons," can be a major challenge. In this "new normal" economy of rethinking the old ways and learning to do more with less, many savvy business owners are thinking outside the box by doing away with in-house marketing departments and hiring on-demand or outsourced marketing departments.

Hiring an outsourced marketing department is not the same as contracting with a large advertising firm. Instead of being locked into hefty contracts and sold large packages, business owners who partner with outsourced marketing departments (sometimes called "on-demand" marketing departments) get the benefits of a big ad agency without the big price tag. They get high-end talent, the resources of a large company, excellent scalability, workflow flexibility, project management, and substantial savings.

Perhaps most importantly, business owners who chose this route are able to access a far greater talent pool than they would ever be able to otherwise. That is, an outsourced marketing department serves dozens of clients and can afford to hire the top minds in their field, whereas a smaller business would not be able to afford the salary such an expert demands. Better than that, instead of accessing just one expert, clients of outsourced marketing departments get access to entire teams of outstanding marketing experts because they're not hiring these experts in-house, but rather simply paying for them when their expertise is needed.

Paying for talent when it's needed is another reason so many business owners are making this change. Not only can they access better talent on demand, but also they are truly only paying for that talent when needed. With an in-house department, that level of flexibility and scalability is simply not possible. When marketing needs go up one month and down the next, business owners simply have to maintain the salaries and benefits of in-house staff. With outsourced marketing, if your business has a slower season during which you do little marketing, you simply don't pay for marketing at that time of the year.

Keeping costs down through staff scalability is an excellent benefit of outsourced marketing, as is keeping overhead down. Without an entire marketing department in the office, using office space, materials, energy, and other resources, business owners are better able to reduce overhead and make better use of their often-limited space. Space is not the only overhead expense, however. Staffing changes including searching, hiring, and firing are all major expenses. Marketing teams need frequent training due to the constantly changing nature of their industry, and they often add a lot of work to accounts receivables and payables as they work with many outside vendors and service providers.

An in-house marketing department costs a lot more than a few salaries, and an outsourced marketing department can actually save you more than you spend when it's all said and done.