Outsourcing Marketing for Startups: 4 Key Areas To Consider

Outsourcing marketing for startups is often a viable option to ensure timely and cost-effective development of their product. The statistics show that this business practice creates a positive impact on various businesses, most especially startups. Countless cases of outsourcing have brought companies millions of revenues. Among the world-famous corporations that began as startups and used outsourcing for business development are Slack, WhatsApp, and others. 

Outsourcing is an excellent business tool that helps a company focus on the most critical processes. This is especially useful for startup projects: a growing team often has more tasks than it can physically perform, especially at the start stage. Today you can partner with various remote companies that have specializations across different business areas. The essential functions that are outsourced actively are software development, finance, accounting, marketing, human resources, shipping, and logistics.

While some people consider PR and marketing a strategic function for business development that cannot be outsourced completely, a startup business may not have enough money to hire a highly skilled person. And this expertise for solving specific complex tasks can and should be purchased from external consultants. Let’s dive into the topic of outsourced marketing and its benefits for startups.

What Is Marketing Outsourcing?

Marketing outsourcing is a planned transfer of marketing functions to marketers outside of your organization. This is a contractual process with a third-party service provider to perform marketing tasks to help scale existing marketing efforts from a business. On Agency Vista, you can filter our network of 45.9K marketing agencies by industry, business size, location, budget size, social network experience, languages, tools, objectives, services, and partnerships.

What marketing and advertising functions can be outsourced?

• Affiliate marketing
• Animation production
• Brand management
• Campaign management
• Content marketing
• Copywriting
• Creative strategy
• Email marketing
• Event marketing
• Experiential marketing
• Graphic design
• Growth strategies
• Industrial design
• Influencer marketing
• Marketing automation
• Mobile development
• PPC
• Product design
• Public relations
• Reputation management
• Search engine optimization
• Social media marketing
• User experience design
• Video production
• Web development

Benefits of outsourcing marketing for startups:

• Quality and competencies. Using outsourced marketing and advertising services, you get a whole team of specialists with extensive experience. It would be costly to maintain such in-house employees.
• Continuity of business processes. The marketing and advertising department within outsourcing programs do not go on sick leave and vacations, do not quit. You will eliminate significant risks and will be able to be sure of the continuity of the workflow.
• Cost optimization. Using the services of marketing and advertising outsourcing, you significantly save on the salary of the marketing department, ensuring the activities of the department (workplaces, household expenses), taxes, and fees.

Types of outsourcing marketing for startups:

• Complete — external specialists perform all marketing tasks; there is no in-house specialist. The monitoring of all the processes is carried out by an external specialist of the organization that outsources marketing.
• Partial – you delegate only some tasks.

According to the CMO Survey, marketing outsourcing has grown to its highest level in recent years. Businesses keep discovering more and more benefits for their growth and development. Outsourcers, as a rule, work with projects of various client companies and have diverse experience, which allows them to find optimal solutions and non-standard moves. This is all about an invaluable knowledge of the outsourcing structure, constant self-improvement, new and advanced marketing tools, and connections in the relevant market.

4 Key Marketing Areas Startups Can Outsource Safely

Unless you are a marketing guru already, you will spend a fortune on running marketing campaigns. Alternatively, you can outsource the following marketing functions to make the most out of every marketing dollar.

1. Marketing strategy

Strategic marketing received its rapid development in the conditions of a significant increase in competition, which necessitated a clear understanding of business goals and objectives, the ability to allocate and use resource opportunities optimally, choose the market, form a long-term product and price policy, establish solid and long-term business contacts, and so on.

“Wasting time and money on marketing campaigns is a common brand fear, but lacking critical information about your marketing intentions and decision-making process can be an absolute nightmare,” – explains Neil Patel. 

Developing a marketing strategy is a rather complex process, and its implementation should be based on a systematic approach that meets specific requirements. Experienced remote marketing specialists will create a marketing strategy and an effective marketing plan for your startup, which will be the basis for further systematic marketing efforts. Setting marketing goals and objectives, identifying a target audience, competitive advantage, and positioning of the company, identifying tools for promoting the company in the market are those tasks that a professional outsourcing marketing partner can successfully handle. 

2. SEO

Creating an effective SEO strategy and further SEO promotion are the main channels for attracting targeted organic traffic, which will take a leading position in the long-term marketing strategy of your business. Also, SEO website promotion is one of the most comprehensive, time-consuming, and painstaking marketing processes. However, at the same time, it is the most effective and cost-effective way to promote a website.

Most often, startups come to outsourcing SEO services because of the need for expertise. A third-party specialist has extensive practical experience in a specific market segment and can objectively look at the current situation in the company. Such cooperation is essential if the organization does not have the resources or time to find competent employees.

The outsourcing service gives the client company many advantages such as the speed of reaction when a problem occurs and is eliminated; it is the most cost-effective solution for small organizations and startups; the client company pays only for those services and time spent that was provided while the specialist was working remotely.

Regardless of the skill level of the partner SEO agency, outsourcing will not bring good results if you do not help them understand the nature of your business, product, and services. Keep in mind that they are far from your company. That is why they do not have a sufficient level of understanding as your internal staff. The more time you spend telling them about your organization during the adaptation process, the more likely they will be able to use the right approach and apply the correct SEO promotion tactics for your business.

3. Marketing automation

Automation penetrates absolutely all spheres of our life, and of course, it is impossible not to notice what is happening in marketing today. Marketing automation minimizes time and effort spent on routine processes in the marketing department, thanks to the use of specific tools and software.

The primary function of automation is to simplify and speed up work in the following marketing areas:

• Content creation and distribution
• Marketing campaign management
• Lead management
• Measurement of results

Usually, when a company is faced with the need to use specialized solutions and services for marketing purposes, the first desire is to create your own or purchase a ready one with subsequent integration. However, if you calculate the cost of development, especially support, then almost always the option of a cloud solution, which can also fall into outsourcing, is cheaper.

Outsourcing marketing teams will “introduce” your marketing tools to each other, combine them into one system to minimize the marketers’ efforts on monotonous tasks, and focus on strategic tasks. Proper organization of marketing automation allows marketers to cultivate leads with the help of personalized content and turn potential customers into loyal ones. All this helps businesses generate new income and get a high return on investment.

4. Influencer marketing

Users of social networks are already used to the fact that bloggers and other influencers demonstrate and recommend branded products. In fact, opinion leaders are not just bloggers. For example, Forbes magazine identifies six types of influencers. The concept of influence marketing is based on the hypothesis that consumers are more likely to trust the advice of public authorities.

The main reason for the growing popularity of this form of marketing lies in the increasing influence of social networks. 90% of Influencer Marketing Hub’s survey respondents believe influencer marketing is an effective marketing form. It is equally effective for businesses of any format – from large corporations to the mobile sphere. Choosing the proper concept depends only on the specifics of the offer and the advertising campaign’s objectives.

Startup management may need much time to establish trust with influencers. The same can’t be said for outsourcing marketers who can easily connect with and pay a few social media stars to promote your brand.

Conclusion 

A startup is an idea of a new consumer value, but there is a big road from the emergence of a valuable idea to its commercialization. The biggest challenge is to convey the concept of consumer value to target audiences, and here it is essential to make sure that this idea will affect the needs and expectations of specific people or organizations.

No matter your product and market, one thing is necessary for any business — marketing. Marketers recommend starting to promote a startup already at the idea stage before being processed into a product. It will not be possible to ensure effective promotion without any investments at all. However, it is essential to minimize expenses, and outsourced marketing is an excellent solution here. Remember, you are building a startup, and there is no time for mistakes.

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