5 Reasons You May Need Marketing as a Managed Service
Marketing is difficult, especially for budget-conscious SMBs. Here are five reasons your organization needs marketing as a managed service.
Blog Post
6 minutes
Oct 29, 2020
Marketing as a managed service is one of the best and most cost-effective solutions for formulating and delivering a successful strategy for your organization.
Marketing is difficult, particularly if you’re trying to do it on your own.
Maybe you’re a growing business looking to take it to the next level; or launching a new product and you want to attract new customers.
In any case, you need the right tools and the right talent to successfully market your company.
For many SMBs, this can be especially challenging. After all, a fully in-house marketing team can cost a hefty sum.
This might be okay for large enterprises with extensive resources, but for owners and decision makers of small and midsize business, marketing budgets can be a lot tighter.
Today we’re going to be taking a look at some of the reasons you might want to consider managed marketing services for your business.
5 Signs You Should Consider Managed Marketing Services
1. Marketing is an Afterthought
You might have the best product or service in the industry, but the fact is that without a strong strategy for getting your message to your target audience, you’ll struggle to make sales.
If you’ve been dedicating every waking moment to perfecting your product, marketing unfortunately might not get a look-in.
There’s only so many resources that SMBs can draw on, and it is often the case that many simply don’t have the time (or energy) to dedicate themselves to marketing on top of juggling every other business aspect too.
If you find you’re not focusing any attention on marketing, it’s time to consider an agency to help you.
34% of SMBs outsource their marketing efforts, and consider efficiency and expertise to be the most important factor in getting help
2. Costly Marketing Budget
Spending on marketing, particularly digital marketing, has grown consistently in recent years.
Businesses continue to up their budgets to take advantage of now-popular methods like inbound marketing.
Hiring an internal marketing team to carry out new marketing strategies isn’t cheap and can add up very quickly.
Even just a small team can set you back to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Benefits, bad hires, and office space don’t come cheap, and assembling an expensive in-house team can be a headache.
For many SMBs, they simply don’t have the time or resources to cover these costs. This is when you should start thinking about outsourcing instead.
3. Poor Marketing Results
Just because a campaign didn’t work out for you doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to kill marketing initiatives altogether.
It’s highly unlikely that a business won’t benefit from the right marketing campaign if the strategy, creation, and delivery are solid.
Instead of throwing your hands up in frustration and writing off marketing altogether, consider why past campaigns did or didn’t succeed and try and find where you’re going wrong.
The chances are, though, if you’re consistently attempting to market your brand and failing to find any breakthroughs, it’s time to have a think about your strategy or revamp it altogether.
In 2018, only 37.5% of SMBs considered their marketing efforts successful, with 45.9% considering their efforts ineffective.
4. Lack of Expertise and Technology
Do you have the right personnel to drive your marketing ambitions?
A strong marketing team requires a lot of expertise in several areas, whether it’s SEO, video production, copywriting, or design—there’s a lot that needs doing and you need to cover all your bases.
Much like a tight budget can have an effect on hiring and department size, it can also have a profound impact on the tools that you’re able to use.
Marketing is as much a science as it is creative, and if you’re lacking the right tech to get the job done—think analytics, audits, research—then it’s virtually impossible to know how to position your brand and build a successful strategy.
If your product is great but your sales are showing signs of stagnation, you could be dealing with an ineffective strategy for raising awareness for it.
Connecting with buyers requires a streamlined and simple message—something that can be achieved to great effect through digital marketing.
If you’re still relying solely on more traditional methods of generating leads with your sales team and not seeing desired improvements, it might be time to start investing in a more sophisticated traditional and digital marketing strategy for your organization.
What to Expect With Managed Marketing Services
Skilled and Experienced Experts
When you partner with a managed service provider for your marketing, you instantly gain access to a roster of talented professionals to help you in your efforts.
Hiring an agency gives you a key advantage just through the diverse array of skills they can bring.
Every stage of development, from conception to production, is overseen by marketing specialists who are dedicated to your account.
Enterprise-Level Tools
Marketers use a wide range of tools to help them in their efforts—whether it’s insights about your customers’ behavior, how you’re ranking on Google, or your monthly traffic stats.
A few examples of tools that professional marketers use would be SEMRush, Hootsuite, or Ahrefs.
If you partner with managed marketing services, you can rest easy knowing that they’re using the best tools for the job. Say goodbye to limited, free options you found on the internet.
Budget-Conscious Planning
This is, of course, the primary concern of any decision maker. Cost efficiency is a huge factor when considering a managed service partnership.
A quality provider will want to be with you for the long-term, and will work with you to plan your expenditures and arrange a reasonable payment plan which doesn’t require full payment up-front.
And then there’s the reduced cost of not having to hire a whole team. You certainly don’t need the budget of a large enterprise to get a quality managed marketing service onboard.
If you’d like to know more about hiring a partner for your own business, check out Impact’s managed marketing services now to see how we can help you thrive and stay relevant in increasingly competitive and digital-focused markets.
