Category: Blog

In-house vs outsourced. You’re a business owner or a Marketing Director and you need to decide whether you invest in building a marketing team to conduct activity in-house or outsourcing it to an agency – so how do you decide?

Clearly there are pros and cons to each option and to ensure that you are making the right decision for your business, we’ve taken a look into some of the considerations below.

In-house

Pros

An in-house marketing team are absorbed within the culture of your business each and every day. They are bought into the company growth and success. This means that they live and breathe your brand voice, values and mission, providing consistency throughout all of your marketing activity.

Your in-house team benefit from continual training opportunities on your product/service portfolio as they will be working alongside the likes of Product Managers, Operations Directors etc. This gives great clarity of your offering, messaging and benefits to your customers etc which will be advantageous to your marketing activity.

Communication in many instances can be quicker and more streamlined. Unless you are a large corporate, you’re likely to be working in the same time zone, in the same language and in many cases, in the same office.

There is a perception that you have more control of your marketing team if they are working for you in-house rather than outsourced. This point is debatable as some marketing teams work very independently and many are now flexibly much more homebased, but there is still a perception that as they are ‘your’ team, their workload, working times and focus areas are within your control.

Cons

You have to invest your time and budget into the recruitment and appointment of the right marketing individuals to make up your team.

You have a high ongoing cost for the management of this marketing team – not only should you consider salaries but also all costs such as national insurance, work socials, training budgets, travel budgets etc.

Finding the right talent for your budget can be a challenge for some businesses. There are so many aspects to your marketing strategy and plan that you need a wide range of skills and expertise which are not necessarily found within just 1 or even 2 people. If you’re unable to find the right talent to cover all aspects, you may have to face the extra expense of supplementing your team with freelancers.

Creative idea creation is an extremely important aspect of the marketing team, but when your head is within the brand every single day it can have a negative impact on your creativity, making you more stagnant.

Outsourced

Pros

You have no people overhead costs, only the agreed agency spend budget to be concerned about. For this agreed agency spend budget, you’re likely to have a wide range of skillsets at your fingertips. The individuals employed within an agency should be up to date with access to the latest trends, technology and training to deliver the best possible experience to their clients. You benefit from this without having to invest your time alongside money to gain the skills of these marketers.

In many cases an outsourced marketing team are likely to have much more focus than an in-house team. Whether it is a project or a retained activity/number of hours an outsourced team have to be accountable for what happens to your investment and will be keen to demonstrate the value they have added. This means they are likely to be working in a much more efficient yet focused way to meet/exceed KPIs and target deliverables.

An outsourced agency can bring a new perspective because they spend their time being immersed in different campaigns/projects/brands. They experience what works well for other companies or industries and they can take those learnings and help apply them to your business. This can open an in-house marketer’s eyes to a tactic or strategy that they may have never considered before.

The flexibility and reactiveness of an outsourced team will always be greater than that of an in-house team. Whether you’re looking to outsource all your marketing activity or just a project. Whether you are a strategic marketer who needs assistance with delivery, or you have delivery resource in-house but you’re lacking the strategic thinking. All these bespoke options can be available much faster and more flexibly by working with an outsourced team rather than having to go through further employing in-house.

Cons

At the beginning of your partnership with an outsourced agency you will have to invest your time in immersing and training the agency on your brand, products/service offering and importantly your tone of voice. It is to be expected that even after this initial training you’re likely to need to support the agency with proofing/approving content and design in the early stages of an engagement. But the longer your relationship grows and the more you partner together; the outsourced team should become an extension of your in-house team.

In some cases communication can be slower between in-house teams and agency teams. Not being based in the same offices, sometimes not in even in the same country/language can add restrictions. What we find important is setting a clear process at the beginning of our partnership together. What is the best method of communication, how often should we be having account calls and who needs to be involved, how often do you want/need reports etc.

For some companies, outsourcing is an expensive option in comparison to utilising individuals who already reside in-house. Marketing should always be viewed as an investment rather than an expense, but if costs simply outweigh the value you feel you’d achieve from outsourcing then you need to seriously consider if it is right for your business.

Consistency of quality can be a con for partnering with an outsourced agency. If you experience a gap in perception between what you the business considers as good quality and what your outsourced agency considers as good quality, this is going to cause issues. Whether it is a one-off or an ongoing series, you have to be assured that the agency you have chosen to partner with are aligned to your perceptions, your aims and your expectations. If you cannot align, your partnership is unlikely to be long lasting.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to in-house vs outsourced and is not a decision to be rushed. Research is key, alongside analysing your business’ goals against the skills and experience and strengths and weaknesses of your in-house team or your available talent pool. Be realistic not optimistic with this decision. What is the best decision for the business at this moment in time and for the near future to reach your business goals? There is of course nothing to say that you don’t opt for a mixture, dependant on your budgets, where you seemingly are able to acquire ‘the best of both worlds’ if this works for your business, your team and your bank balance.

Key points to research include:

• Checking your values align with the prospective agency
• Understand if they have the expertise to help you reach your goals
• Checking their case studies and testimonials for real life examples of their work
• Starting the conversation with them to have a frank chat about your challenges and their experience to help you

If reading this has inspired you to get in touch for a chat, reach out on 01392 796702.

Are you marketing or are you starting a movement?

‘Marketing, it’s just about making things look pretty and fussing over colours and typefaces.’ Believe it or not, I’ve heard someone say this recently, and I’ll be honest I was surprised. I know that this is the opinion of the skills of the industry from times gone by, but I actually believed that these (simply incorrect) opinions had diminished. But it looks like us marketers still need to educate people on what our skills and goals really are.

Now I appreciate that every marketer, marketing department and organisation will have a different focus, different budgets and different methods which they find successful. But I think there is an overriding change of mentality here which should be considered. What is the goal – to simply conduct ‘some marketing’ or to create a movement towards your brand.

You’ll notice that over the last few years, across the globe but especially here in the UK, we’ve felt a movement happening. It’s been across every channel that we come into contact with whether it’s, watching a documentary on TV, hearing a news bulletin, overhearing discussions between colleagues/friends/family, seeing more ‘environmentally friendly’ branding and packaging, the list goes on.

The movement I am referencing of course, is that of climate change and the impact that humans are having on the earth including plastics. You may be thinking, why is a marketing agency writing about this, unless they want to be seen to have extra corporate social responsibility (CSR) points by covering this topic.

No, that isn’t the reason for this blog.

It was brought to my attention recently that a successful movement, such as the climate movement, has all the same ‘ingredients’ that you require for really powerful and effective marketing movement. So let’s look into that:

MESSAGE

A strong, clear message that people want to be part of, get behind and believe in. For any marketing movement, the message needs to be truthful (we’ve all seen a car wash garage who are the best in the UK, then you drive up the road and see another, how many are there claiming to be the best) and uncomplicated (people need to remember your message to get behind it).

AUTHENTICITY

There are so many messages trying to capture our attention every day, how do you get a message to people that will actually get heard and make a difference? This is where authenticity makes the most impact. People are inherently less trusting in this digital age, so you need to gain peoples trust and find a way to ensure people care about the values behind a marketing movement. People put more research goes into the why before any form of engagement can begin, especially the younger generation, as they want to align themselves with brands who share their values and who they truly believe are authentic.

CHAMPION

Putting ‘a face’ to a brand adds to your authenticity, providing it is a carefully chosen and seen as the right face. Don’t purely pick the person with the most followers, the cheapest or the one that the MD likes the most – find the champion with the most affinity who can really drive your marketing movement forward in the right way.

DELIVERY CHANNELS

You’ve got your message, your champion and you’ve established your point of authenticity, now you need to get this out to the public. Deciding on the most effective delivery channels to get your message in front of people to form your following is something that can be a struggle. It all takes time and in many cases costs money which can be restricted for some brands. There are so many delivery channels available meaning it is important to conduct the right research to discover the most relevant channels to utilise for your key audience and even why they use those channels – are they listeners, are they active, do they just utilise it for research etc. Social media, videos, TV, snippets in magazines, posters, gathering protests; are all examples of delivery channels available to your brand.

FOLLOWING

The way that any brand can make a difference is by creating a strong and loyal following. If a following isn’t established, you just become another noise in an already noisy world.

As a brand your aim is to create a movement, give your followers something strong to grasp hold of, keep them aware of everything that you are doing and give them a reason to stay passionate about your brand.

Not every brand can afford to create a movement like that of the climate movement, that I know. However, what I take from this is that for marketers to really hold their ground within organisations and at the board, we need to be able to demonstrate the value that we hold. We have the ability to create a movement, with the right ingredients and the right budget, and with this in mind the skills that we bring to the table should be not only utilised but appreciated. Every brand would love to reap the benefits of starting a movement – so is it time for us to rethink how we market?

I’ll leave you with one last thought:

“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.” ― Greta Thunberg

Opinion piece by Head of Marketing Services, Verity Studley-Wootton.

We live in a digital world where browsing the internet, especially social media, on a daily basis undeniably shapes and influences our lives. As marketeers, we have the power to use social media to make a significant difference to business performance – not only in the soft, traditional sense of building brand awareness but by Digital Lead gen – generating valuable marketing qualified leads.

Leads are a form of data identifiable through unique information such as a name, email address or phone number. Generating these leads is a primary goal of sales-driven businesses, aiming to maximise the amount of people from their target audience in their sales funnel. Leads tend to enter the funnel fairly cold and, once sent information that is relevant and of interest to them, alongside conversations are nurtured through to encourage conversion.

In this blog we discover why so many businesses use digital lead generation and provide you with our top 10 tips for success.

Why so many businesses use digital lead generation:

A high number of quality leads: Intelligent audience targeting and geotargeting combined with a vast number of users means that with the right content and budget, this type of marketing activity is an effective way to generate a high number of quality leads. What more could you want?

Cost-effective: With most social media lead generation activity on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, you only pay for activity. This is a great way to easily manage your budget and monitor spend against return-on-investment (ROI).

To track conversions: By integrating social media accounts with your CRM, you can track where your converted leads have come from and use this information to inform ROI. Real-time delivery of results also means that you can engage with leads immediately.

Optimisation: As changes to most social media channel algorithms now make it difficult to gain organic reach, businesses are always on the look out for other ways to optimise their social media accounts – paid activity is a fantastic way to do so. Additionally, being relatively easy to monitor and report, digital lead generation can be optimised through A/B testing to ensure budgets are efficiently spent on the best performing ads or LinkedIn InMail messages.

Top 10 tips for success:

1. Implement persona marketing to refine your target market.
2. Use visual content and copy that is relevant and interesting to your target audience.
3. Produce gated content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies, vlogs, infographics, webinars) and email opt-ins to capture lead data.
4. Include a call-to-action, directing leads to take actions that are going to be of value (e.g. form completion).
5. Consider what activities you are going to do to directly remarket to your leads and nurture them through the sales funnel (e.g. email marketing, direct mail, telemarketing and appointment setting).
6. Allow activity to run for 2 weeks, then set aside time in your schedule to regularly review and optimise.
7. Mix-up your strategy – use paid activity to complement organic outbound and inbound social activities.
8. Find and engage directly with leads on social media.
9. Stay up to date with the latest social media trends and channel updates – implement them to stay ahead of the game.
10. Outsource to the experts.

Is digital lead generation a part of your marketing strategy? Understanding your business aims, marketing goals and sales objectives, the Roots to Market team can help you shape your digital marketing to get the most out of your investment. We will advise you on the best strategy for your target market and your budget. Schedule a call with us to learn more: 01392 796 702 or email contact@roots2market.co.uk

Defining a target audience is simply a must for business success. But to stand out and produce a pipeline that delivers, it is wise to further refine your audience using persona marketing.

By implementing persona marketing, you allow yourself the opportunity to refine your audience into key segments creating ‘characters’. The way that each ‘character’ or persona experiences your brand will be influenced by their business needs, industry and of course, their demographics.

Getting to know your target audience in this way is a powerful tool that helps shape your marketing strategy. If you’re consistently generating unqualified leads from outside of your target audience, or your leads aren’t being generated at the rate they’re forecast to, it is likely your messaging is too generic. Persona marketing is a well developed technique best placed to help you meet and exceed lead generation and conversion targets.

What can persona marketing help with?

• Lead Generation: Identify with your audience and get to know them better – making them easier to target and tailor messaging.
• Lead Nurturing: Produce specific strategic content that appeals to your target audience to warm them along your sales pipeline.
• Client Satisfaction & Retention: Meet their goals and solve their challenges.
• Strengthened Strategy: Enhance overall marketing and sales performance.

Getting started:
Begin with a small number of personas and branch out as your original personas become more refined and sophisticated. Between 3 and 5 personas usually provide an accurate representation of the majority of your core audience, although it’s not unusual for large, complex businesses with a diverse product or service portfolio to develop up to 20 personas.

Using a template will help you to structure your personas into clear and concise sections. We recommend using:

• Name
  – Say hello to Justin, Gary, Francis and Elizabeth – the persona names of our sister brand, Air Marketing. Gone are the days of simply numbering your personas… be creative (but realistic) and bring your persona to life by referring to them in conversation, email and strategy planning as their name.
• Job title
  – Setting a brief job title or business area alongside professional seniority informs interest, goals, frustrations and decision-making ability.
• Company
  – It may be useful for your business to define a company or industry to inform interest, goals and frustrations.
• Demographics
  – Use gender, age, income/salary, family, location and education to learn about what influences your target audience.
• Background
  – Role, decision-making ability, motivations, loyalty and professional interests.
• Previous experience
  – Educational experience and career path.
• Personality
  – Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
• Goals
  – Career goals, company goals, targets and responsibilities.
• Expectations
  – Expectations, values and ability to influence.
• Frustrations
  – Frustrations and restrictions.
• Social
  – Interests in social media, digital content, events, education, professional development and purchase behaviour.
• Spare time
  – Interests in music, sport, TV, travel and socialising.

A persona template can initially be optimised by considering core areas of your marketing activities. For example, if you use social media and/or print advertising, for each persona include what social media platforms they use and what publications they are likely to read.

Collecting data:
Team Meeting: Meet with team members who have regular interaction with clients. Knowing your clients best, your team can provide valuable insights, each with different perspectives. As a group, put yourselves in the shoes of clients so that you can fully immerse yourself in characterising them into personas.

Client Interviews & Surveys: Discuss with your team which clients may be open to participating in an interview or survey. If you prepare questions around your persona template, client interviews are a brilliant way to discover in-depth qualitative data.

Data Review: Reviewing analytics and lead scoring (if implemented), will provide quantitative data about the audience and leads currently being generated. This activity is useful if you are happy with the quality of leads but you are aiming to increase the number generated.

Market Research: If you’re working in a start-up, lacking raw able data or unable to reach out to existing clients, we recommend using reliable market research. Using market research alongside other data collection methods is an optimal mix for highly informed and accurate personas.

Implementation:
Consider personas throughout your marketing activity:

• Demand generation
  – Target the right people in the right place at the right time. This will allow you to better meet client needs and generate marketing qualified leads (MQLs) with a clear website user journey including relevant landing pages, call-to-actions and forms.
• Marketing strategy and planning
  – Help shape strategy by determining a focus point for all marketing activity and attract more of those types of clients.
• Digital marketing
  – Easily analyse your campaigns – identify the best performing channels and platforms for your personas and use results to intelligently target prospects.
• Direct marketing
  – Start conversations with valuable marketing qualified leads (MQLs) via telemarketing, direct mail or direct email campaigns.
• Content creation
  – Blogs, articles, infographics, photos, videos, vlogs, podcasts and brochures are proven to increase lead generation and engagement if implemented effectively. Consider where content is broadcast, how it is used and change topics as new trends arise.

Optimisation:
We are all striving to continuously improve our business activities and make the most out of our opportunities. Take your persona marketing to the next level by:

• Testing and analysing to refine messaging and sharpen targeting.
• Reviewing on an annual basis, or ad hoc, when your target audience focus shifts to accelerate results.
• Using information to brief sales teams and outsourced telemarketers (see our sister company Air Marketing) for lead nurturing and conversion conversations.
• Produce negative personas to segment out ‘undesirable’ clients and avoid resource waste.

Reflecting on your own business and target audience, think about the quality and quantity of leads that you are generating, as well as the individuals that you are talking to. Are you consistently talking to your ideal clients?

If you think that your marketing could be improved through the implementation of personas, we would love to hear from you! Here at Roots to Market, we are driven by building intelligent marketing capabilities that generate demand and marketing qualified leads. Call 01392 796 702 or email contact@roots2market.co.uk