Is Outsourcing Internet Marketing Right for You?

Although not entirely a new business concept or practice, outsourcing had dramatically changed into something huge in recent years. This is mainly due to the internet drawing the entire world together in a huge market place where one can choose from the many available resources anytime, anywhere.

It is therefore not surprising to see many businesses take this road with their different business needs and requirements because outsourcing does have more advantages and benefits for the business. While outsourcing your internet marketing tasks, for instance, you are able to concentrate on the core business without letting the marketing side of the business come to a halt. But venturing on outsourcing requires that you do things the right way. If done without careful thinking and planning, you might end up with disastrous outcomes.

The two important questions that need to be satisfied are: “Will it be cost effective to outsource?”, and “Do you have employees who can run an internet marketing campaign?”

The True Costs of Internet Marketing

Most business entrepreneurs think that outsourcing is just adding an expense. Of course, it would cost money to outsource, but an in house marketing campaign would also cost money. A lot of times, in house campaign costs are not calculated – probably because the mindset is that the salary of the personnel you have in mind to run the campaign for you are already being paid for.  True, but it’s not like you are not taking out money to pay for this particular work. These costs should be added and factored in to determine which would cost the least – in-house marketing our outsourced marketing?

• Cost of employees involved in the in-house marketing campaign. The number of employees needed for the in-house marketing campaign will depend on how big or small your company is. It can be a one-man show, or a team of employees. If assigned employees are not productive in the in-house internet marketing campaign, it will be wasted salary paid for no significant output. Add to that, the original task handled by the pulled out employee will be negatively affected, too. That’s double loss for your company.

• Cost of running an inferior in-house campaign. Without the required experience, knowledge and expertise on internet marketing, all in-house marketing campaign efforts will pale in comparison to outsourced marketing campaign in terms of conversion rate, increase in revenue, etc. And because the campaign is not carefully thought of and planned, the expected results may not reach peak performance, and it may take longer to see results tangibly. The cost of that extra time need to be factored in as well.  

Do You Have the Time?

Internet marketing is not as simple as it sounds. To effectively run a marketing campaign, one needs to invest considerable time. Online marketing requires constant monitoring, updating of information, interacting and engaging in conversations with potential customers, etc.

As mentioned, a successful internet marketing campaign will require full-time commitment considering the requirements of the activities entailed by the campaign. Pulling away an employee from the campaign to do the original job scope, the campaign results will definitely suffer. If your staff cannot handle the additional workload of in-house marketing campaign, it makes no sense to jeopardize the employee’s overall performance because of the additional load which is out of scope of the present job description.

Final Decision

The most important step in the evaluation process is putting your decision into action. If the final decision is to do in-house marketing campaign, get a heads up and inform the concerned staff in order to intellectually and psychologically prepare them for the new task. If, after calculating the costs you found out that in-house marketing will be more troublesome and costly, then outsourcing is the right decision for you. You’re ready to tap the world resources to have the right outsourcing partner.

There are many internet marketing outsourcing companies who have survived the never ending challenge of change in the internet marketing arena. You have to consider certain things before making that final decision on who will take care of your campaigns. You can refer to this article, Why Decide on Outsourcing?-- to give you a better view of it. Researching the right company won’t be that hard for there is a lot who is really delivering promised results.