Understanding that your business can benefit from outsourcing your marketing efforts is only the first step. Depending on the role you occupy in your organization, you also have to convince those with budget responsibility of those same benefits.
You may know that the reduced time commitment, increased strategic approach, and other advantages of the concept make working with an external marketing partner beneficial for your company. But how do you get others to agree? Here are 5 tips for convincing your boss about the benefits of outsourcing your marketing.
1) Quantify Your Current Efforts
First, make sure that your boss understands exactly what goes into planning, executing, and evaluating your marketing strategy entirely in-house. Budget spent on actual marketing tactics matters, but so does the time commitment you have to put into making it all work.
Ideally, you should create a report that quantifies your current input in a given time frame. If, for example, you can show that you spend $15,000 per month on marketing (time plus initiatives), your boss has a better idea of the resources currently spent to make it work.
2) Benchmark Your Competitors
A second benchmark that could be very beneficial when talking to your boss is making sure they know about your competitors’ marketing efforts. Everyone, especially those in leadership positions, has a competitive edge that can be used as a persuasive tactic.
Maybe your research shows that your competitors are outranking you on search engines. Maybe they simply grow faster than you. Find the weak spots in your current marketing strategy as compared to your competitors, and share that data with your boss.
3) Show Case Studies
Once leadership both knows the resources spent and the results of your current marketing efforts, it’s time to present them with the alternative. Here, your best bet may be a relatively comprehensive case study for a company similar to yours, or at least operating within your industry.
Marketing agencies love sharing case studies as evidence of their success. They act as credible data points on why an external partner can help and improve your marketing efforts. Share these success stories with your boss to help them understand how outsourcing can actually benefit the company.
4) Outline Collaboration Potential
Particularly for managers who tend toward micromanaging individual departments, handing off a large set of responsibilities like marketing can be a difficult decision. That’s why in your pitch for outsourcing, you should always include the ways in which you (and your boss) can stay in touch with the agency and hold them accountable for the money you spend on and through them.
Marketing agencies don’t work in isolation. They regularly meet with clients, sharing reports and ideas on how to improve strategy and individual tactics. Making sure your boss knows about these avenues for collaboration is a crucial step in getting them to sign off on an external partner.
5) Work Together in Setting KPIs
Finally, embrace the possibility of working together in setting the success metrics for the agency. Never sign a contract without first establishing the key performance indicators of that contract. If your boss is involved in setting these KPIs, buy in will be more likely.
Your boss may be reluctant to sign off on a marketing agency because he or she is not confident that someone not working for the company will actually be accountable for success. By working together to set KPIs, you can communicate accountability succinctly, and involve your boss in the process for more buy in.
Outsourcing your marketing efforts comes with a number of advantages. The key is to not just understand them for yourself, but also make sure that your boss is on board. Through the above five steps, you can get the buy in you need to work with an external marketing partner and grow your business.
To learn more about working with a great Marketing Agency, give us a call or send us a note today at Small Dog Creative 661-702-1310!
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