Are You Outsourcing Your Marketing? 4 Areas Marketing Agencies Can Help

This talent crunch is hitting close to home in the marketing world as well as 4.3 million technology, media, and telecommunications workers are expected to take part in this labor shortage by 2030.

If you’re like one of the millions of companies affected by this talent crunch, you may be looking for help by using a marketing agency. If so, here are 4 areas that outsourced marketing partners should be helping your team to beat the odds and set yourself up to crush your goals.

1. Budgets, Planning, and Measuring ROI 

The first way a marketing agency can help your business accomplish your goals is through budgeting, planning, and measuring your ROI. 

People think this is a chicken or the egg scenario. Let me tell you, it’s not. To truly track ROI, your team needs a budget. And a marketing agency can help you set one up to better plan and track your tactical objectives. 

A budget helps you define the dollar you’ll spend, but then can also help you define which category or bucket to track. Using a budget, you can then break out major initiatives and create a plan for the year. Sitting down with a marketing agency should help you understand where you are spending money, how you’re spending it, and where it can be more effective to better show ROI. 

One way you can start laying out your budget is by breaking it down similar to this: 

• Categories where you’ll spend
• Major initiatives for each category 
• Tactics used to hit your initiative

Tip: Make sure you define your overall goals before this process. This could be leads generated, new products sold to current customers, or a return on marketing spend. 

Keep it simple but make sure your agency is involved so there is accountability for both teams to hit your goals and metrics. You’ll love the new collaboration this will bring and be able to better paint a picture of how your objectives are turning into returns. 

2. Accountability

Companies need an accountability partner. According to the American Society of Training and Development, people who have an accountability partner have a 65% chance of actually reaching their goal when they have someone to keep them accountable. 

Overall, teams aren’t that different when it comes to accountability, and your marketing agency should be playing a huge role in this to ensure you’re on the right path towards achieving your goals. 

A marketing agency can keep you on track, make sure you hit your initiatives, and keep internal teams from getting pulled in different directions. When you have an external marketing agency on your team, they should help you refocus your priorities to help you better accomplish your goals. 

Here are a few more ways that marketing agencies should be helping you with accountability: 

• They should act as your project manager and make sure each task is completed on time to keep your team going. 
• They should help provide clear objectives to your tasks through weekly meetings and agile processes. 
• They should be evaluating data that is collected during your marketing initiatives to determine whether your tactics are working well or if something needs to change. 
• They should ensure that the marketing department is aligned with the strategic vision of the company. 

How accountable is your current team? How accountable is your marketing agency? Let us know in the comments below.

3. Process and System

The third way that marketing agencies should be helping your team continue on the path of success is by creating processes and systems for your company. We like to call this “Left-Brained Marketing.” Having these “left-brained marketers” on your side is essential to accomplishing your goals. Here’s why: 

Processes:

To do efficient and effective work, you need to have clarity around the processes you have (or need to have). Marketing agencies should help you document your current processes or help you define and create processes you need.

With this, it can help align your sales and marketing teams so that each party has a clear direction of their roles, their tasks, and their assignments.

Here is an example of a workflow we created that shows how leads are captured, nurtured, and passed to sales for follow up. 

Systems:

Marketing agencies should also be providing you with valuable information on the systems you need to make your job easier. In 2019, there were 7,040 marketing technology software platforms available to help - but how do you know which one to choose?

When you work with an agency, you should be receiving their personal library of knowledge, experience, and advice. Because most agencies work with multiple different clients, they typically come with a wide variety of tools and different perspectives on what could help your company the best. This experience that they should be bringing you will allow them to steer you towards the best system that will work with your team.  

Whether you need a broader view on how to accomplish work effectively, or you need a unique tool to get the job done more efficiently, a marketing agency that has these “left-brained marketers” is a valuable partner to have.

4. Lead Generation

In my opinion, the marketing department’s main role should be focused on generating leads to pass on to your sales team. And if your marketing agency isn’t doing that, what are they actually accomplishing? 

But generating leads isn’t always easy. In fact, 61% of marketers say that generating leads is one of their top challenges. However, you need leads to not only maintain but to grow your business. A sales team is typically only interested in those “hot” Sales Qualified leads, but a  marketing team should be focused on all the stages of the funnel, and making sure there are enough new leads coming in at the top of the funnel to get those “hot” qualified leads to sales.   

Having a marketing agency on your side should be bringing in fresh ideas, helpful resources, and new ways of generating leads for your company so that you can continue to accomplish your goals. If they’re not, you may want to reconsider. 

Questions to Consider:

So, what’s your goal list look like right now? Are you prepared to accomplish all that you’ve set out to do, or does your team need a boost to make up for the ongoing talent crunch? 

If you’re currently outsourcing marketing agency, are they helping you in these 4 areas? 

If you’re not using an agency, can you think of areas where these 4 areas could come in handy in your business?

Leave us a comment and let us know, or subscribe to our blog to keep up with all of our latest content.