Internalizing all of your company’s processes doesn’t always pay off.

While you know your own company and its needs intimately, specialised marketing teams include niche employees with varying expertise and have a much wider range of capabilities than non-specializing companies.

In many cases they can perform more efficient work for a lower overall cost.

So how can you tell when it’s more efficient to hire your own staff to devise and carry out your marketing strategies, and when it’s more efficient to outsource the work?

Here are some reasons for taking the plunge:

1. Your revenue isn’t growing quickly

Marketing campaigns aren’t the only factor in encouraging revenue growth. However if you do find your revenue to be growing slower than usual, it could be time to outsource at least some of your marketing efforts. An outsourcing partner in this area will be able to link their efforts to a specific amount of new revenue, giving you an objective insight into how much extra revenue you’re generating per your outsourced marketing spend – your all-important ROI.

2. Your marketing staff is overwhelmed

This is particularly common for small businesses with a small number of marketing staff. Often marketing staff have too many hats…and the executive has other responsibilities. You probably also have an intern or random employee managing your social media! If you have more than 150 hours of marketing work required and only three people to handle it all, it could be time to get help to reduce the workload—especially if you can’t currently afford to hire another full-time employee. You might consider an outsourced company for a finite number of tasks or for a full multi-channel campaign.

3. Your strategies are thrown together.

Proper marketing requires time and thought. Each campaign should start with a brainstorming session, then objective market research and evidence of results from similar campaigns. Then, it would be create, and refined in a process that eventually yields the best product. After a series of tests, it’s rolled out gradually and carefully measured. Sounds like an ideal scenario in a perfect company that doesn’t exist? Well too many last-minute strategies can compromise your reputation and waste your budget. An outside agency can help with the time, resources and expertise to orchestrate a campaign properly.

4. Your marketing is outdated

Does your website look like it was created in 1994? Still working in Flash? What about those old-school brochures? Outdated material can hold back your brand. You want your assets to reflect your modern image and show your audience that you’re a relevant, active figure in your industry. Your in house marketing team might be too close to see this, or they simply don’t have the resources and expertise to make the changes.

4. You seem to be running behind.

If you find that all your projects get pushed to the last moment, forcing you up against tight deadlines on a consistent basis, an outsourced marketing team might be able to alleviate the pressure.

5. You’re limited to a handful of channels.

Are you using the same marketing channels over and over again? Old-school industries, like manufacturing and mining, often end up focusing only on printed advertisements, while tech startups tend to focus heavily on free or cheap online strategies, like social media marketing. These might be the best use of resources, but new (and old!) options are available, and if you don’t have the expertise to explore them, you could be missing out.

Specialised marketing teams usually have a broader range of experience, so you can rely on them to help direct you to the best channels, or at least possibilities for new channels in addition to your traditional strategies.

6. You focus on tasks and not on strategy.

If you’re so overwhelmed with individual tasks that you never have the time to consider longer-term implications of those tasks, leaning on an outside team could help you rediscover a greater vision. Companies shouldn’t sacrifice long-term strategy for day-to-day task checking. And you can’t make your campaign better if all you ever do is knock out low-level tasks—let your outsourced team handle it.

7. You’re disappointed with your marketing results

Finally, if you aren’t getting anywhere with the marketing strategy, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by placing your campaigns in the hands of experienced professionals.

You don’t always have to choose between all-internal marketing or all-external marketing. In fact, hybrid marketing strategies are becoming more and more common. If you notice your company demonstrating some of the items above, you can start outsourcing small portions of your marketing efforts to an outside team.

SBA BPO can supply individuals and teams to ease the pressure on your marketing department – for stand-alone campaigns or general and long-term marketing strategy.