What is the cost of outsourcing your marketing to an agency? Costs associated with outsourcing are usually focused on saving money in the short term, however, when looked at in a more holistic way, a strong agency partnership can save you big bucks in the long-term.
Many of our clients enjoy long-term cost efficiency focused in these often-overlooked areas:
1. Lower Employee Acquisition and Overhead Costs
2. Cost Savings on Industry Tools, Subscriptions, and Resources
3. Save on R&D Expenses: Trend Tracking and Market Research
4. Knowledge Loss / Turnover
Lower Employee Acquisition and Overhead Costs
A big push to outsource at least portions of a company’s marketing comes from how expensive it is to add new in-house team members. Most research pegs the whole cost of an employee in the 80-100k arena. That doesn’t even include the cost associated with acquiring the new team member which can be estimated around 50% of total salary. The challenge for you as a marketing leader is that you need so many different skill-sets to navigate today’s marketing landscape. Whether it be strategy, SEO, SEM, graphic design, web design, web development, maintenance, copywriting or other, it becomes unachievable to hire FTE’s for all of these positions.
When you deploy outsourced marketing, you get multiple professionals for a fraction of the cost you would pay for one qualified in-house hire.
Cost Savings on Industry Tools, Subscriptions, and Resources
Along with ongoing support needed for in-house employees, another cost to consider is the price of digital tools your employees will need access to. In order to stay relevant, in-house employees must find ways to crawl sites, find backlink opportunities, grow social media followers, efficiently track and report analytics, and so much more. Subscriptions to apps and platforms to help facilitate your in-house team add up fast. When outsourcing your marketing with an agency, they provide the resources to execute the plan, ensuring full-circle success. So, while your in-house team may still need some digital tools, the majority can be bought, maintained, and used by your outsourced agency, leaving more room in your budget.
Save on R&D Expenses: Trend Tracking and Market Research
When looking at the cost outsourced marketing, trend tracking should also be included. Your marketing department consistently needs to update your website with fresh content on a monthly basis, while ensuring the other parts of your marketing strategy are executed on time and successfully, and track trends. Once viable trends are found, in-house teams also have to make decisions about where to invest time, market research, and money. If you choose to outsource, your agency partner, like Workhorse, would stay on top of new trends for you, leaving you with more time to focus on a company vision instead of research.
Knowledge Loss / Turnover
As a marketing leader, you’ve been there. You’ve just trained up your marketing superstar and wham, they take another job. The technical calculation of loss includes the cost of hiring for that position, training the new employee, any severance or bonus packages, and managing the role when it is not filled. We would argue that knowledge loss is an even more significant cost to consider when a team member decides to leave. And then there’s the cultural impact, lost productivity while you cover their bases, the time it takes you to interview and more. Let’s just say the cost of losing a member of your marketing team is big.
As an agency, it’s our goal to always maintain and grow a body of marketing knowledge while developing better processes, allowing us to continually make improvements for you. Because we have built-in redundancies and executive oversight, there are never big gaps in knowledge or resources, thus allowing you to continue your focus on the most important and strategic initiatives.
Workhorse knows how big of a step outsourced marketing can be and we are here to provide transparent quotes when it comes to financial cost. We know that outsourcing with us can positively affect your company by cutting costs, broadening your resources, providing more expertise, and constructing better strategy. If you are looking to outsource your marketing, please contact us to set-up a free consultation.
